Member-only story
How to beat the fear of unemployment
And sleep easier at night
I was chatting my neighbour the other day and he’s worried. The sun was beating down in green and leafy Cheshire, home of Bentley Motors but it wasn’t enough to lift his mood.
The prestige car maker is making 1,000 people redundant. My brother-in-law is also in the mix. My neighbour has spent the last 12 weeks furloughed and to my envy, has been out in the sun making his house look beautiful. New lawn, re-painted exterior, new garage doors etc.
“If it happens, I’ll just feel like I’ve let the girls down, you know?”, he said to me. He has two primary school aged kids.
“I do know how that feels,” I replied.
During my 18 years in the corporate world I was made redundant three times. Before any of those occurrences happened I spent nine soul-destroying months unemployed.
I had come back from working abroad in 2002. In the five years before that, at the start of my career, I’d had done well in the PR world. Promoted three times in five years, I then accepted the challenge of turning-around a publishing company, in the Turks & Caicos Islands. Is that the sound of your sympathy ebbing away? I wouldn’t blame you.
Roll forward three years and mission accomplished. Publishing company saved and…
