Losing your job in this climate is a massive blow, but it needn’t be the end of the world. Five individuals from different retail backgrounds discuss their experiences with Charlotte Hardie

It is the news that everyone dreads. Being told you are losing your job is a daunting and harrowing experience. And it has happened to thousands of retailers in the past few months as the recession bites.

Retail Week has talked to five retailers – from chief executive to store manager – who have been through it. There is no doubt that some felt the redundancy process could have been better handled, particularly when administrators have been involved.

They have felt sidelined, uninformed and unprepared for job-seeking. But most notably, all five remain positive about the future. Two say there are plenty of opportunities but that they are waiting for the right job. Three are now in new and fulfilling roles.

It has been an unwelcome experience for those affected, but for many people it can also be the making of them. Former Woolworths store manager turned businesswoman Claire Robertson, for instance, is proof that redundancy can be the incentive people need to go on to bigger and better things.

The head of HR

Nadine Jones was head of HR at Baugur until its collapse. Having turned down an HR director role with a company outside the retail sector at the 11th hour, she is still job hunting.

I was big enough and ugly enough to know Baugur was a high risk business. It had grown quickly and its success was huge. I genuinely don’t hold it against them, but I think they were a bit naive about what was going to happen. People assume: “Oh, Baugur would have looked after you.” They couldn’t. It was out of their hands.

The administrators? All they want is their fees and no one is telling the employees what’s going to happen. We were told we would be given a redundancy package. It turned out to be an RP-1 – a form for claiming redundancy from the Redundancy Payments Office. That was about it.

My absolute horror in all of this is that the process goes out of HR’s hands. The employees have little in the way of rights or representations. I’ve dealt with a lot of restructures and redundancies in various jobs over the years, and I’ve always sought to put myself in the shoes of the individual. I treated them how I would want to be treated, organising or running outplacement, CV clinics, job shops, helping individuals find their way through the benefit system, and so on.

Job hunting isn’t demoralising, but it’s exhausting. Getting on that treadmill and running where you can’t see where you’re running to. But then again, no one’s died.

Talk to everybody. Use your network. If you haven’t got one, develop it. Us former Baugur execs who are out of work have weekly catch-up calls to help and support each other and share contacts. Headhunters have been amazing. They’ve even given me details of other headhunters and told me about jobs on the market even if they’re not handling them.

Great candidates will always find roles. There are jobs in the market – retailers need a very different skill set and individuals to manage their business at this time.

I nearly took a job a few weeks ago. It had gone as far as looking at houses and schools, but I decided it wasn’t right. When you don’t have any income, there’s a tendency for that to frighten you into making the wrong decisions.

I was given a great tip that I should have put into practice earlier. Someone told me that as a successful manager you need to put your own oxygen mask on first. If I’d been a little less trusting and a little more selfish I would have sorted out my own position first. Would I go back and do it differently? No. I like who I see when I look in the mirror, and that’s important in this climate.

The past couple of months at Baugur were tough, but it was fantastic role and who hasn’t heard of Baugur? I’m going to take my time to find the right role and build on the positives of the experience.

The Store manager

Claire Robertson was store manager of the Woolworths shop in Dorchester, Dorset. When no buyer was found to rescue it from administration, Robertson launched her own business on the site, and called it Wellworths. Of her 24 Woolworths colleagues, 22 work at Wellworths. The other two found jobs elsewhere immediately. The store opened last month and is thriving.

It was a shock. Don’t get me wrong. I think we all knew there were problems, but we didn’t think it was that bad. We had assumed someone would take it over and it would be happy ever after.

Everything that came out in the media was all we knew. Even if we got an email it would be at the same time as something came out in the press or shortly after. On the whole it’s regrettable how it was handled.

We went into autopilot. It was depressing. We were just trying to prevent the store from looking awful. As soon as the stock dwindled to the point where it looked really empty, we started condensing it all to the front. Some people really did let their stores go, and I don’t blame them. 

I came up with the Wellworths idea just after Woolworths went into administration, and started a conversation with the landlords about how well the store performed, the demographics, and that we had no general retailers in Dorchester.

My learning curve has been steep. I would like to think that I’ve always been good at the shopfloor side of things, but I had no experience of running a business. I read everything about writing a business plan on the internet. Things are going well, but it’s been a mad few weeks.

I have no idea what I would be doing otherwise. My partner was also a Woolworths store manager and left the company just before it went into administration, thinking he had a new job, but it fell through. Since then he hasn’t found anything.

The assistant buyer

This 25-year-old buyer, who wishes to remain anonymous, was made redundant from her role at a furniture
retailer when it went into administration at the end of last year. After two months of signing on and job hunting  she has found a role at a start-up online retailer.

Things had been tricky for a while, but I do not think we expected it to go bust completely. It had already been bought out of administration before. We were called into a meeting by the management in the morning, they told us what was happening and why, our contract was immediately terminated, and that was it. They were remorseful, to be fair. They had all invested time and money into it and they did not want to see it happen either. 

They could have informed us better. We found out a lot of what was happening through the press. 

Just leaving your desk with all your work on it, knowing there was not going to be anyone to pass it on to and without knowing what you were going to be doing next was hard.

Job hunting was difficult. I applied for one confectionery buying job, but was up against people from Harrods, Harvey Nichols, Woolworths, and so on – people with more direct
experience. There’s so much competition out there. 

Financially it was tough. We were paid for the work we’d done, with a bit of holiday pay, plus statutory redundancy. That was it. I was out of work for two months and signed on, and fortunately my parents helped me out. I tried to find temp work – admin jobs or secretarial work – but as soon as they realise you don’t have, say, PA experience, the temp agencies don’t bother getting back to you.

I ended up finding a job through a former colleague. I’m at an online retailer that hasn’t yet launched over here. It’s a great role, I’m lucky. That said, I now have to commute further out of London to get to work, so in a way it’s not perfect, but you can’t be fussy. A lot of people I knew in my old job are still looking for work.

The chief executive

Milton Guffogg was chief executive of greetings card shop operator Celebrations. He also works with Price-waterhouseCoopers as turnaround director and is in the process of setting up a consultancy company that runs health checks for retail businesses to help ensure they are maximising results and improving resilience.

To let it go is difficult. It is extremely disappointing when you’ve built up a business, you’ve got great teams and a business that’s in a much better shape than it was. But then suddenly it’s out of your control, but your people still look to you for confidence. Your leadership is never more important.

Administration can come about for lots of different reasons. Celebrations was profitable but the lenders chose not to continue to support it. 

It’s incumbent on the senior management team to work with the administrators whose job it is to maximise value for the creditors. It’s not for senior managers to throw their toys out of the pram when the administrator comes along. 

You need to keep communicating and showing your people a future, whatever that looks like. With the administrators’ permission, I got recruitment agencies to run workshops to better equip people to market themselves in the future. For store colleagues we helped them create CVs and gave them a list of companies to contact for employment. 

It’s a big challenge to lead a business that’s in administration. You’ve got a team of people that are seriously hampered by their motivation and worried about their future.

I’m very positive about the future. There are opportunities. I’m not sitting here and waiting. You need to create opportunity and build up your network.

Companies should look at the market as an opportunity. There are some seriously good people out there who are out of work through no fault of their own. It’s a forward looking company that looks at these people and considers whether they could be more effective than their present team and if so hires them.

The IT director

This IT director had worked within the same retail sector for 30 years and was made redundant last October. He is unable to name the retailer because he signed a compromise agreement, whereby the employee receives a lump sum in return for agreeing to have no further claim against the employer. He spent two months doing consultancy work before securing a permanent role outside the retail sector.

I’d already made a number of reductions in the department, but more were required. My employer decided to shrink the board and not have either an IT or an HR director. I don’t have any real complaints about the redundancy process. I didn’t think it was in the interests of the business to cut numbers among the less senior roles. The only way you could cut costs further was to consolidate at managerial level.

At the time I was quite positive. I was looking forward to a new opportunity. If you believe enough in your own abilities you will be able to find something.

The most important thing is the building of networks beforehand. There is still a market for good quality people. Keeping in touch with people is so important in terms of knowing what’s going on. Had I not picked up things from my network I would have been in trouble. After two months of consulting, I was offered a chief operating officers role at an IT managed services company that I had consulted for. The job that I’m doing now came about from contacts telling me about opportunities.

I probably do miss retail. It has been a learning curve, but I have been in retail a long time and technology transfers. It’s all about communication. I was fortunate that this role came along quite quickly.