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Best Outplacement Participant Experience: What You Need to Know

November 03, 2020 by Josh Hrala

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Shopping for outplacement is a tough task with many questions that need answering to ensure that your staff members are fully supported during their transition. And one of the biggest things to consider is what the best outplacement participant experience is.

After all, if the participant doesn’t have the best experience, they will likely not use the service, which wastes both time and money for all involved.

But does the best outplacement participant experience look like? How can you ensure that your departing workers will be taken care of in the best way? This is what we’ll explore in this article to give you all of the details you need to know to make an informed decision.

The Best Outplacement Participant Experience Starts With Coaching

The best outplacement processes start by matching participants with dedicated, one-on-one coaches that will unpack the participant’s needs and tailor the program to fit those needs.

With dedicated coaching, you can ensure that your departing workers get the support they need when they need it. Instead of taking a one-size-fits-all approach to outplacement, dedicated coaching allows for flexibility and personalization while also creating a meaningful relationship that will last throughout the entire outplacement journey.

Best Outplacement Participant Experiences

In the past, the outplacement participant experience was dominated by group seminars or even self-guided virtual solutions that didn’t offer coaching at all. Both of these approaches did not offer the best outplacement participant experience because they were too rigid to fit many people’s needs.

Expert coaches, resume writers, and LinkedIn optimizers will work with participants to not only make a great, personalized plan but will help participants understand that there is a real, human staff backing up their journey to a new role – and that creates trust that goes a long way.

The Best Outplacement Participant Experience Eliminates Barriers With Technology

Virtual outplacement can sometimes get a bad rep because some programs are impersonal, providing tools for the participant but limiting face-to-face coaching.

In other words, the old school virtual outplacement model created barriers by making it harder to get support instead of doing what technology should do – remove barriers.

The traditional approach to outplacement, which was mentioned above, typically saw participants physically come into an office where they either met with a coach – who likely had multiple meetings that day with many different job seekers – or attended seminars and were given access to computers to use for their job hunt.

Everything nowadays is done online. The job search is online. With the COVID-19 outbreak, many jobs are now performed solely online. The shift to a virtual working world is here. And this means that outplacement should utilize these technologies to provide the best outplacement participant experience available.

Download Our Top Outplacment Firms Guide

To ensure a good experience, virtual outplacement providers use a blended approach that relies on technology to connect participants with expert coaches while also providing them a place online to learn on their own – through eLearning tools, webinars, classes, and more – and also connect them with other job seekers going through the program.

Virtual models provide some of the best outplacement participant experiences because it meets people where they are. Can’t go into a city because you took a part-time job to fill your employment gap? No problem – coaches can meet virtually face-to-face. Can’t meet at a specific time because of child care? No problem – what time works best for you? Need to meet outside of working hours entirely? No problem – a dedicated coach is there when needed and ready to help.

The same can be said for eLearning; it provides flexibility for participants to continue the outplacement process on their own terms.

Life is messy and time is a precious resource. The best outplacement participant experience knows this and will work with participants to make a tailored process that fits their exact needs.

The Best Outplacement Participant Experience Relies on Community, Too

The job hunt is all about networking. Today, that means being on LinkedIn and also connecting with fellow participants who are also going through their own outplacement journey.

Best Outplacement Participant Experience

This is why the best providers offer some sort of social networking inside their platforms to make sure that people can connect in meaningful ways even if they are in a virtual setting. The days of thinking that you cannot connect fully online are gone.

People can find the love of their life online, they find jobs online, they meet up with friends all over the world online – everything takes place online. The outplacement process does as well, utilizing the internet to bring people together, make connections, and land jobs.

Until Placement Support Is a Must

The final ingredient to have the best outplacement participant experience is making sure the provider offers until placement support.

What is until placement?

Until placement is a term we use to describe the fact that we work with participants until they land a new role. We do not employ term limits that can cancel a participant’s support before they have successfully transitioned into a new role.

Traditional providers typically offer support for a certain number of months and then the contract is fulfilled, leaving participants high and dry to continue the search alone.

This is problematic in a few ways. First, the job search is different for everyone. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to the job hunt. For example, a C-Suite executive is going to go through a much different job search than someone who isn’t in management at all. The same can be said for various job types. A person in the higher education space will require a different path than someone in the healthcare space.

Until placement is where true flexibility lies. Any job seeker can thrive if they have support the whole way through and, in the end, that is what truly makes the best outplacement participant experience – landing a new job.

The Best Outplacement Participant Experience: The Wrap-Up

In summary, the best outplacement participant experience relies on a few things: personalized planning, a dedicated coach, a digital platform that reduces barriers and aids in the job search, the ability to connect with others, and being support until placement.

Want to learn more about our approach to outplacement? Get our pricing guide here.

Download the pricing information for our outplacement programs here.
Josh Hrala

Josh Hrala

Josh is an HR journalist and ghostwriter who's been covering outplacement and offboarding for over six years. Before pivoting to the HR world, he was a science journalist whose work can be found in Popular Science, ScienceAlert, The Huffington Post, Cracked, Modern Notion, and more.

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