Roy Gaynor, Managing Director of management consultants' training and support network, Navisys Academy recounts his experiences as a head of HR, when he had to make redundancies and reflects on what he learned about the process from those that lost their jobs.

I was once the head of HR at an engineering company that employed around 1,200 people across the UK. It was an old company, in production for about 70 years, which used many traditional skills as well as some higher tech methods.

Its HQ and main factory were located in an ancient, close-knit village on the edge of a large city. I had worked there for some years and had many friends in the company when this story began to unfold.

There was a serious and bitter industrial dispute involving a strike and then a lockout at the main factory. The dispute lasted many months and ended in a decision to close the factory and move production to other factories in the group of which my company was a part. More than 600 people lost their jobs, many who lived in the village or nearby.

One of the worst experiences of my professional life was the days I spent sitting at a table in the village hall handing out redundancy papers and payments to a long queue of very sad, deeply unhappy and in many cases, desperate people, who no longer had a job. The company had, had pride in the long service of its people and so for a large number of them it was the only job they had ever known.

Although I moved onto other, bigger things in the group, I remained deeply concerned for the people that I had ‘left behind’ as I felt it at the time. After about a year I decided to find out how they were getting on.

I expected to discover that a few had fallen on their feet but that most were, at best unhappy about what if anything they were doing and still bitter about what had happened. What I actually found surprised me.

More thoughts from Roy on how making redundancies affected him…