‘You are forgotten about’: the mental health impact of redundancy

Much of the experience of the coronavirus pandemic is reduced to numbers. A daily total of new Covid cases is the most frequent snapshot of the virus’s spread. Lives lost become lines on a chart. Furloughed workers become statistics in rolling news stories. Jobs lost during the crisis are similarly often spoken of in terms of headline numbers. According to the Office for National Statistics, 314,000 people in the UK were made redundant in the three months to September, a record quarterly figure. But behind the numbers are colleagues, work friends, bosses and mentors – and workers in the real estate industry know this as well as those in any other sector. Throughout the pandemic, many property firms have had to make cuts to staff as a result of the financial and business impact of Covid-19. The agency sector has been hit particularly hard, with hundreds of roles put at risk and job cuts implemented to reshape businesses for a post-pandemic world. Now, with redundancy-related mental health issues on the rise, workers who have lost their jobs have spoken to EG – in all cases anonymously – about why the industry needs to rethink the way it handles mass job losses to limit as much of the pain caused to workers as possible. The need to acknowledge the mental health effects of the redundancy process is clear. According to LionHeart, the RICS charity, job security and employment issues are both key drivers in a spike in helpline calls it has received this year. The charity, which runs the helpline for property professionals, has seen calls about mental health issues such as stress and anxiety rocket by 130% compared to this time last year, with Covid-related employment issues “driving a lot of these calls”, according to head of operations Juliet Smithson. There has been a 300% increase in viewing figures for webinars the charity runs, the most popular of which are linked to job hunting, Smithson adds. LionHeart is making more referrals than ever before to a scheme through which RICS members and their partners can access free help from external consultants providing support with job hunting – referrals are up by 90% since this time last year. For Smithson, the goal has been to make sure that workers know they are not alone. “The answer is to raise awareness of all of the various types of support regularly and make sure that people know where to go for support all of the time – not just when something bad may be about to happen,” she says. But according to several people who shared their stories with EG over recent weeks, many have not known where to turn for support. ‘It’s a hit to your ego’ A senior member of staff from one of the UK’s biggest agents said that although the real estate industry has taken a “tremendous” step forward in the way it approaches and understands mental health problems and wellbeing issues, this seemed to be lacking during his recent redundancy process. “Once they’ve cut the ties, it really does feel like they have dropped you,” he says of his former employer, which he asked not to be named. “As soon as you’re gone, you are forgotten about. Is that right?” It’s a bit of a body blow being rejected for anything. I’ve been doing my job for decades and for someone to say “actually, we don’t need you anymore”, it hurts He compares the situation to the criticism once levelled at TV channels’ lack of support for former reality show contestants readjusting to life when they leave the programmes. “ITV have now instigated a service for those people,” he says. “It would be good for something like that to be available – for all the agents to contribute towards a specialist company so that when they make people redundant, there are services available.” He says the redundancy consultation at his former agency was “very good” in the way it was handled, but that he was nonetheless left reeling from the ordeal. He was able to stay resilient, he adds, because of the length of his career and skillset he has developed working in property, which he hopes will stand him in good stead. But he says the need to provide more support for junior property professionals who have less experience is crucial. “It’s a hit to your ego,” he says. “It’s a bit of a body blow being rejected for anything. I’ve been doing my job for decades and for someone to say ‘actually, we don’t need you anymore’, it hurts.” ‘I was kept in the dark’ Another ex-employee at a well-known agency echoes the sentiment that the silence that comes after losing your job is hard to deal with. But in her experience, the limited contact she had from her employer throughout her own redundancy process had much more of a lasting impact. She lost her job after the agency lost its mandate on a retail scheme at the beginning of the year. She knew her role was likely to disappear but found herself in limbo once Covid-19 hit, still working at the agency but with no clarity over how long for, she says. “There was a three-month gap when I was expected to carry on as if nothing was happening, as the deal was under an NDA,” she says. “It hung over my head. I only had an update when I asked. That was extremely hard.” Finally, she got the update from her line manager and HR department that she was dreading. “They repeated to me that it was a business decision, nothing personal,” she says. “But it is personal. It cannot be anything other than personal.” The lack of communication throughout the process made her “feel worthless”, she says. “I would have liked more contact, even if they had nothing to say,” she adds. “Even if nothing is happening, tell me that, give me a call once a week. But I got nothing. I was kept in the dark.” ‘There was no empathy’ Several people who spoke to EG about losing their jobs pointed to what felt like a lack of empathy from their company and colleagues during the redundancy process. For a senior member of staff at a major agency, sitting down and thrashing out the details of his redundancy package left him with a “sour taste” in his mouth. Calls he had with the agency’s HR team made him feel like he was ignored and overlooked when he voiced concerns about the process. “There was no empathy,” he says. “And they became confrontational quite quickly. I was challenging a couple of things – some procedural aspects – but it felt like a door was slammed firmly closed in terms of any discussion on those points.” Later in the process there was a change in HR representative and the process became easier to handle. “The contrast between the two individuals was huge,” he says. “My takeaway was that if I had been dealing with the other person from the outset, it would have been much less stressful. It could have been a lot easier if I had been treated with the same level of respect from the beginning.” He says that the experience brought his lengthy career at the agency to a bitter end. “When they’re in a situation in which they’re making people redundant, of course they know that’s going to have an impact, and they know it’s going to be tough for the people concerned,” he says. “But the way it was all handled, from my perspective, felt so uncaring. Did the way it was handled impact my mental health? Unquestionably, yes it did.” With the latest national redundancy figures even higher than the spike in job losses recorded at the peak of the global financial crisis (311,494 between February to April in 2009) and with the country still in the throes of a second lockdown, more redundancies may be made before the economy recovers from the pandemic. And with an increase in the number of people flooding the real estate jobs market as a result of widespread redundancy consultations, the mental health impact from this process will only grow. For people in the agency sector, seeking a new role, competing for a limited number of jobs and trying to stand out in a saturated market will be a tough prospect. As one recently redundant agency worker told EG, the industry needs to make sure it is handling the process in the best way possible – even after the cuts have been made – so as not to treat those people as if they are just more numbers on a spreadsheet. 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