How Corporate Outplacement Can Boost Your Business

When it comes to corporate outplacement, many tend to focus solely on what the service can do for outgoing employees, but what does it do for your brand and public image?

Quite a bit, actually.

By the way, before we get into it, if you’re thinking about buying outplacement, you can see how much you can save by using this simple calculator here:

Now, how can corporate outplacement benefit you and your company? Let’s break it down.

Brand Protection

When it comes time to layoff employees or perform other reductions in force (RIF), your brand’s reputation is out on the line. Reputations take ages to build and seconds to crumble, putting a lot of weight on how you handle letting people go.

Think about it. A layoff sends a message to the general public saying that something wrong has happened internally even if the event was done preemptively as a workforce planning effort. If the outgoing employees are also resentful, your brand can take a major hit.

This is why corporate outplacement is a mandatory part of any severance package. Not only is it the right thing to do – you should, after all, want your employees to succeed even if they are exiting your company – you also don’t want them to turn on your business, possibly ruining a hard-earned brand image.

Send the Right Message to Your ‘Survivors’

Layoffs don’t just affect the people leaving the company. They also greatly impact those who are staying after the event. These individuals are ominously called ‘survivors’ and layoffs can cause them an immense amount of stress.

Like we said above, it’s hard to show the importance of a layoff to those who may be impacted by it or those outside of the business itself.

However, just like providing corporate outplacement to those that are outgoing can reduce the amounts of stress they feel when looking for a new job, the service also showcases how much you care about your remaining staff, too.

This helps those who have survived a layoff understand that – if it should happen to them – they will be in good hands with a support system behind them.

Also, it’s important to note that you – the HR leader – are also a survivor of the layoff. Sure, you are the one tasked with notifying and processing the event, but you also know that you are doing everything in your power to make this stressful transition easier to manage.

In short, corporate outplacement can help reduce the amount of stress across the board from the exiting employee to those who are remaining and even the management that had to make the tough call.

Strong Strategic Partnerships

One of the best benefits corporate outplacement can provide a company is a strong strategic partnership for the future.

No one wants to perform a layoff. That’s a fact. However, they are a fact of life in the business world, too, and they can pop up from time to time.

For those moments, it’s a really good idea to be prepared. This means having a corporate outplacement firm on retainer who can seamlessly provide services when needed.

By doing so, you reduce the amount of time spent on each layoff event and also have a strong system in place that your employees will already know about.

The sense of confusion your staff may feel during a layoff is reduced when everyone onboard knows that outplacement is available for them (alongside other outgoing benefits like continued healthcare/paychecks from a period of time).

Conclusion

All in all, corporate outplacement can act as a shield for your business. It shows that you care about outgoing employees and want them to succeed even if they can no longer work at your organization.

By doing so, your exiting staff will be less likely to resent you for letting them go, making them less likely to drag your brand through the mud. At the same time, your surviving staff will know that – even if a layoff should pop up – they will receive the best treatment possible.

This reduction in stress will keep you and your business on track over the long run, allowing for workforce planning strategies that make layoffs mandatory.

If you are shopping for outplacement, make sure to check out our easy-to-follow buyer’s guide to make sure you pick the right firm for your needs.

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.