What To Do When You Get Laid Off

This is a horror and anyone who tells you it is a nothing event, doesn’t know what they are talking about. When things are done to us, they cause us pain – or at least, grief – and as a result, we should understand that we will all journey through an emotional cycle of five phases: Shock, Anger, Rejection, Acceptance, Healing. This is what’s more commonly called The SARAH Curve.

We will all go through the five phases sequentially. Shock at the event happening, Anger because of what was done to you, psychological Rejection of the news and event, Acceptance of the inevitability of the circumstance and then finally, Healing.

There are two important points to note: first, while the journey through the emotional phases is sequential (and thus, SARAH in that order), one can suddenly go backwards in reverse, if even for a moment, so that you Accept then go back to Rejecting. The second issue is that there is no set amount of time that one spends in any of the five stages. Getting from Shock to Healing may take some thirty minutes, others thirty days, or thirty weeks or some, possibly even thirty years. Whatever the case, knowing that these are the mandatory and inevitable phases in your emotional journey allows you some certainty as to what lies ahead.

The management of the Shock, Anger and Rejection is vital if one is to move on. It is impossible to make progress with any preparation for your next stage of life unless you have these emotions somewhat in check. You can try and force yourself but most likely, you will just compartmentalise or hide away those emotions.

For purposes of urgency, if compartmentalising or suppressing emotions allows you to move on, then that is what has to be. But you should know that at some point later, those emotions will emerge again because they were never properly managed the first time around.

The next thing you need to take stock of, most critically, is of course, your finances. Very likely, you would have received some sort of compensatory payment as part of your redundancy process.

Together with your last salary amount, you will need to determine how long that money will last you. You need to make a monthly budget, listing only the most critical monthly expenses with no room for discretionary spending for leisure or entertainment. Divide your total compensation and last salary by the budget you just worked out and you will have a time period which your cash-in-hand will last you. Now take half of that time period, and that is how much time you have to get into a new, active source of income. It could be a job, it could be an on-demand or gig piece of work, but it has to bring in income.

For example, your compensation payment plus last salary totals RM25,000. Your estimated, no leisure, monthly budget is RM2500. This means that RM25,000 divided by RM2,500 is 10 months available cash in hand. However, to be safe, you have only five months to get a new, comparable source of income via job, gig work or otherwise.

(Compensation Payment + Last Salary) divide by Monthly Expenses

= number of months that can support you without income

Take the number of months and divide it into half

= suggested number of months to get a new job

Realistically, finding a full time job can take 6-8 months even at the best of times, so you need to start immediately. Finding gig work should be faster, but you will need to allocate at least half your day, perhaps every morning, to job seeking and then take afternoons and evenings to work gigs if you intend to go that route.

It will be a busy and stressful time. Keep track of where you are on the SARAH Curve, and apply yourself fully to the task of income seeking. It’s the only way to get through the challenges of this time.