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Developing career resilience
Developing career resilience

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3.2 Staffing changes

Even if you feel secure and supported at work, throughout your career there will often be times when valued colleagues leave or the leadership within your department or organisation changes. These can also be moments where your career resilience is tested.

You probably see your work colleagues more often than you see some of your family, so it can be a wrench if they decide to leave, especially if they have provided some of the support that has enabled you to maintain your career resilience.

Activity _unit5.4.1 Activity 5 Losing a trusted colleague

Timing: Allow about 10 minutes

Think about a time when a staffing change at work had a significant impact on you. Perhaps a close colleague was made redundant, or found a fantastic new job. Or maybe the manager you had a great relationship with moved on, and was replaced by someone you didn’t respect. Sometimes relationships that have always been good, suddenly change – perhaps because the other person is struggling with stress or other issues that have arisen.

In the box below, note how you felt about that change. What were your emotions?

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Now consider what you did to move on. How might those actions have supported your career resilience?

Discussion

You might have experienced lots of different emotions, including anger, jealousy, worry or disappointment. You may have felt those mixed feelings of being happy for them at the same time.

Career resilience is all about your ability to recover from these feelings and maybe even see the situation as an opportunity. It could be a chance to take on some new responsibilities, or learn from the knowledge and experience of a new colleague with a different perspective.

Taking action is also an important way to support your resilience – for example, inviting your new colleague for a coffee so you can get to know them better, or ensuring that you stay in touch with the person who is leaving.

The resilience of your workplace team is another important facet of your overall career resilience, and much can be done to facilitate it. Find out more in the next section.