Way back in 2013, I started a contract for the University of NSW, one of the best employers I’ve ever worked with. Great boss, interesting projects, fun team, and excellent conditions. 

After spending a million years in agencies and corporations, I needed a change, a breather from the politics, and the Uni offered me all of that and more. 

I loved that job! It was incredibly challenging, with big KPIs in marketing, and I held a senior role within the organisation, enabling me to impact strategy even outside my department. 

I managed a fantastic, talented team, and I worked with knowledgeable, purpose-driven people. I was contracted for four long days each week and I had the privilege of enjoying my own passion projects on my day off. 

#JobGoals

Then, just three years later, it all fell apart. 

The Government, which largely sponsored this particular UNSW business, decided to consolidate much-needed services like that one, and a long list of organisations were defunded all at once. 

#HeartBreaking

But despite the intro you’ve just read, the point of this story isn’t about the job that got away, it’s about something so much more important: what came next for the employees of that business. 

A lesson in what to do

Personally, being a contractor, I was lucky, I had a new opportunity in the works within a few days. 

For employees, this situation was scary and destabilising; some of them had been working there a long time, others just loved it as much as I did.

And this is where the Uni really shone. 

In addition to a fair redundancy payment, UNSW gave its employees access to a range of resources to help empower them through this transition. 

Firstly, it gave them, from memory, at least two months’ notice, which at that time, was plenty to get a new job. Our Director regularly met with us, kept us informed, had other people come speak to us and offered us support. And for those who couldn’t move elsewhere in the Uni, it provided access to recruiters and experts to help with their resumes and build their options. 

We’d hit a speed bump, but they were making sure that didn’t stop any of us from getting to the career destination we envisioned for ourselves. 

A lesson in what not to do

In contrast to my Uni experience, in recent news we have all read about the numerous companies rolling out redundancies as AI and new technology take over traditional roles. 

One example was a prominent company that sacked more than 100 staff, allegedly with a recorded message, in order to embed AI-driven services in place of specific teams. 

For years, this company had been known and celebrated for its values, its culture, and the almost religious way its people revered its brand and the opportunity to work with it. 

People lined up around the block (figuratively) just to get a look in for a job there.

Now, not so much. 

Now, employee review sites don’t smile as fondly on this brand as they once did. 

Perhaps if this had been the first time the business had done something that contrasted notably with its values, it could have been forgiven; it could have been seen as just an oversight under difficult circumstances. Unfortunately it wasn’t the first time, nor does it seem, was it an oversight.

So, if we approach this change, and business in general with a 3P mentality, how could they have done better?

It starts with humanity

Chatting about this situation afterwards, someone mentioned to me that these hundred or so people made up only about 1% of the business’s workforce, so, in the scheme of mass redundancies, that number was actually quite conservative. 

But that 100+ employees are people with utility bills, insurances, maybe mortgages or rent, they may have kids who need school shoes. 

They’re also people who have suddenly learned that overnight, they have become obsolete. That right now, they have no choice but to immediately retrain in a different career path or risk not working at all.

At this point, most of us are aware we’ll all be replaced by the ‘terminators’ eventually (Goldman Sachs predicts 300 million jobs could be lost by 2030), but according to reports, these people were blind-sided with minimal time to prepare, and suddenly became vividly aware that their jobs likely have no relevance going forward. 

The fact is, this is inevitable. It will happen to a lot more people over the coming years. 

But it can happen better.

As leaders, these are confronting and challenging situations, there’s no doubt about that, but it starts with approaching your people with humanity and empathy. As a leader, it begins with simply putting yourself in those people’s shoes and asking:

• How can I give as much warning as possible, obviously without betraying commercial-in-confidence information?
• How can I approach this with compassion and empathy?
• How, within reason, can I make this easier for them?
• Is this an opportunity that can benefit and/or grow our business to a new level?

It continues with support

One of the major contrasting points in these two stories described above is how the businesses shared the news and what they did after that.

To be fair, few of us were in the second business so we don’t know what really happened. But in an ideal world, the steps taken in a situation like this would be a lot more like those of the Uni, especially in a time and place where mass redundancies will likely become an increasingly common occurrence. 

In reality, AI and automation, along with other technologies most of us can’t even imagine yet, will continue to change business in fundamental ways. What we see and experience now will undoubtedly be vastly different from the workplaces of the future, and many of our jobs will be affected by this transformation. 

So one of the best moves big employers (or any employer) can make is to support that transition better. It will benefit their employees, and it can also very much benefit their business too, if done well.

As an example, what this business could have done was identify early, perhaps even six months out, that these positions would become redundant. Let’s be realistic, they probably knew.

It could have tasked its HR team with creating a new in-house initiative, an upskilling or retraining centre within its business, and it could have become a pioneer in rapidly changing times. 

This would have created new careers within its own business for people who had loyally served it, helping them transition more seamlessly into this brave new world. 

For those it couldn’t keep, it could have developed a reputation as the cultivator of next-gen AI or automation experts, sending them out to other businesses who need them. Perhaps not a bad idea (and quite a lucrative one) given the World Economic Forum predicts 170 million new jobs (that will require newly-skilled employees) will be created as a result of the technology evolution. 

The single bottom line here is this business could have been the leader so many people had hoped it was. 

And maybe that’s the real lesson…

AI isn’t the villain (at least not yet) and people aren’t disposable. 

The choice sits squarely with today’s and tomorrow’s leaders: to let disruption diminish and discard people, or to rise to the occasion and help them become something greater, and in doing so strengthen their business and brand. 

In the end, the way we see it, one way or another, the companies that win, those that build sustainable, lasting success, won’t be the ones that race to replace people the fastest (because what’s the endgame there?!). They’ll be the ones that prove, when it matters most, that technology and humanity can advance together.

At Write Way Up, we focus on building strategies that help businesses grow — and keep growing — sustainably, no matter what this ever-evolving world throws at them. Research and experience tell us that the way a business engages with and impacts the people and places around it is directly tied to its success and profitability, both now and in the long run.

If you’re ready to explore how triple bottom line thinking can strengthen your growth strategy, reach out to our team.