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    Life After a Layoff or Downsizing
    Life After a Layoff or Downsizing
    Life After a Layoff or Downsizing
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Life After a Layoff or Downsizing

    By T.A. Kelly

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    About this ebook

    Life After a Layoff or Downsizing is for people who are either fed up with where they work or anxious that they will lose their job and see self-employment on the horizon. It starts with the reasons why people should be concerned. Even though the economy seems to be recovering, there is always concern about the future, a concern that is exasperated by some trends that have been developing over several decades: a mutual lack of loyalty between employers and employees, a tendency for people to seek their own destiny and change careers more than once during their lifetimes, and a willingness by employers to outsource jobs.
    The text, written from the author's own experiences, aims to help people answer some vital questions: How can I sense that my job is at risk before it happens, and what can I do about it before the axe falls? Should I stay with my current employer if I have a choice? Should I choose to become self-employed?
    The self-employment option is the one that the book concentrates on the most. It helps the reader to decide if he or she is suited to self-employment, and it does this by outlining all the decisions that must be faced: decisions about income, benefits, stress, family life and many more. It presents detailed advice on how to write a business plan that will help the reader decide what type of business to launch, how to promote it, and how to ensure success as much as success in business can be assured. It shows how to set the fee for a service, how much time to budget for marketing and growth and how to avoid pitfalls and aim for success.
    Throughout it offers advice from the wisdom of the ages drawn from Scripture, and the wisdom of the moderns from successful business leaders and leading business consultants and teachers. This advice is offered to help people overcome the stress involved with losing a job and embarking on self-employment. It is also offered for people who suspect there is a conflict in business between serving God and serving mammon. It shows that for many of the most successful people in business, there is no conflict: the wisdom of modern entrepreneurs is a more modern way of expressing some of the wisdom in Scripture. It boils down to serving clients and customers with a high level of excellence; prosperity will follow.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherT.A. Kelly
    Release dateAug 27, 2013
    ISBN9780992049324
    Life After a Layoff or Downsizing
    Author

    T.A. Kelly

    T.A. (Tom) Kelly gained his knowledge of business and of self-employment from a long, successful and award-winning career as a technical and business journalist and as a marketing promotions consultant to high-technology enterprises. He was an editor and editor-publisher for leading publishers in Great Britain and Canada. Since the mid-1990s, he operated his own business as an independent, self-employed editorial and communications specialist. He served on an editorial quality-assurance council for Maclean-Hunter Business Press and on advisory boards of the Canadian School of Management and Ryerson University. He contributed to the skills of members of the Association of Independent Consultants through presentations on media relations and business writing.He now lives in Hamilton, Ontario, with his wife Mary.

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      Book preview

      Life After a Layoff or Downsizing - T.A. Kelly

      Life After a Layoff or Downsizing

      A step-by-step guide to being your own boss

      ✓ How to face the many decisions you will have to make

      ✓ How to choose remain in employment or to work for yourself

      ✓How to launch a winning business

      By T.A. Kelly

      Published by Gracie Books

      Copyright: T.A. Kelly, 2013

      Smashwords Edition

      ISBN: 978-0-9920493-2-4

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      *******

      Dedication

      To Mary, who has been my encourager, supporter, proofer, copy editor and love.

      Life After a Layoff or Downsizing

      A step-by-step guide to being your own boss

      You can live with anxiety about losing your job in an uncertain economy, or you can take charge of your prospects and see the future as full of new possibilities.

      You can endure the stresses of working for an organization under pressure to boost revenue or reduce costs, or you can find freedom to take control yourself.

      All this can happen if you work for a corporation that closes down is downsizes or is merged with or is taken over by another. It happens if you work for a publicly-funded organization when a government cuts its budget. You face the risk of being laid off or, if you're among those who remain behind, you and your colleagues will lose a sense of security, experience reduced morale and likely be expected to take on increased workloads.

      If you're laid off, what do you do?

      If you stay and are unhappy, what do you do?

      If you're given a choice of stay or take severance, what do you do?

      This book has been written to help you to be forewarned and to make these tough decisions. It is intended, primarily, for people who are considering the option of self-employment. Depending on your age, you might not have much of an option, since employers typically prefer younger recruits. But age is not a deterrent to self-employment, as this ebook shows, since your experience is still valuable, if not even more so.

      There are many, many crucial decisions to make when faced with what amounts to a crisis, especially for people who must supply the needs of their families. This book has been written to give detailed guidance on what those decisions are and how to make them. It offers guidance on how to cope with the stresses of disruption in your employment, of the day-to-day running of a business, and of keeping a balance between work life and family life when the home is where you do your business.

      The book focuses on the very human aspects of living without the employee benefits that are woven into the safety net of an employer. It helps you keep your confidence that you will win when you don't have (or don't want) a boss to direct your destiny.

      Its purpose of the book is to make your path to self employment fulfilling, fun and happy. To that end, I have included quotes from Scripture and from leading business entrepreneurs and coaches. It might by surprising to see how similar they are. I offer them to help you avoid and deal with the stress of job changes and running your own business, and to help you maintain the values you learned, especially for those of you whose values are grounded in the Bible.

      A note on websites: For your convenience, and to prevent you from accidentally clicking on a website link, the links for the experts, organizations and companies mentioned in this ebook are listed separately in the Appendix.

      Life After a Layoff or Downsizing

      A step-by-step guide to being your own boss

      CONTENTS

      Chapter One: How and why to be ready for unwelcome job changes

      Chapter Two: How to sense if your job is at risk

      Chapter Three: How to choose employment or self-employment

      --Pros to staying with your employer

      --Important advice about pensions

      --Cons against staying with your employer

      Chapter Four: How to decide to go it alone

      --Some helpful attitudes to adopt for self-employment

      Chapter Five: How to start your business

      Chapter Six: How to develop a business plan

      --Components of a business plan

      --BUSINESS PLAN PART 1. Business strategy

      --BUSINESS PLAN PART 2. Revenue targets

      --BUSINESS PLAN PART 3. Growth targets

      --BUSINESS PLAN PART 4. Operational details of what resources you need

      --BUSINESS PLAN PART 5. Marketing strategy

      --BUSINESS PLAN PART 6. SWOT: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

      Chapter Seven: How to set up your home office

      Chapter Eight: Daily life for the self-employed

      Appendix: websites in this ebook

      About the author

      Chapter One

      How and why to be ready

      for unwelcome job changes

      The good news is whether the economy is booming, heading for a crash or struggling to recover you can win either way. Uncertainty creates opportunity for anyone who ever dreamt about being self-employed, or by force of circumstances is forced to consider it as an option.

      When the economy is booming, opportunities abound. But when it is declining, the need for employers to down-size but still gain the expertise of skilled professionals also yield opportunities.

      The trick to success is always to be alert and ready for the unexpected and to recognize opportunities when they occur.

      A trend in employment and the routes that people's careers have taken over the past few decades have added to the wisdom of being prepared for unforeseen changes, even when the economy is robust and your job seems secure. For the past 30 years, there has been a decline in the mutual loyalty of employer to employee and vice-versa. There's less security in a job than ever before.

      This arises from the fact that there is more self-absorbed ambition and less feeling of responsibility to employers and employees than decades ago.

      Employees, especially highly-skilled people, changed from being loyal to their employers to being loyal to their profession or trade and now to being loyal to themselves, which means they are willing to, even ambitious to, change careers.

      Employers are increasingly loyal to shareholders rather than employees, and are more likely to regard employees as a commodity they can do without. Employers are more willing to outsource tasks—witness the number of jobs being outsourced overseas.

      The good news from this is that there are growing opportunities for self-employment.

      Throughout this ebook, I urge you to accentuate the positive. So let's concentrate on the good news.

      Self-employment creates opportunities.

      I wrote this book largely from my own experiences. I benefitted from some good mentors and teachers, but learned much from trial and error. I hope you will learn from my successful trials and save yourself time and grief by avoiding my errors.

      To quote from Dr. Ben Carson's book, Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence -- Anyone who can't learn from other people's mistakes simply can't learn, and that's all there is to it. There is value in the wrong way of doing things. The knowledge gained from errors contributes to our knowledge base.

      The most poignant experience I can relate is that seeing your job under threat and then losing it is highly stressful. Deciding to launch out on your own and then forming and running your own business is even more stressful.

      Unfairness, bitterness and rivalry among colleagues

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