It’s not your imagination: redundancies are widespread

If you’ve spent even a bit of time on LinkedIn this year, you’ll have noticed a concerning trend: people sharing with their network that they’ve been laid off from their jobs and are now “open to work.” The headlines tell a similar story, and announcements of fresh job cuts, often numbering in the tens of thousands of employees, feel like a daily occurrence.

In fact, it’s more than just a feeling: in 2023, redundancies have been, and continue to be, both widespread and deep. That’s what we found when we surveyed more than 2,500 HR leaders from companies with 500+ employees, as well as 7,000 white-collar workers, in Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the United States. Our goal was to learn more about their expectations, hopes, and fears about redundancies this year and beyond.

Almost half (47%) of the HR leaders said their organisation is planning or has already carried out redundancies in 2023; 30% said their organisation is considering downsizing. This means that 77% of the organisations we surveyed are either undertaking or contemplating redundancies. The most common reasons given to explain these redundancies were that companies over-hired in previous years (41%), that they were looking to reduce costs (40%) or restructure (39%), or that their businesses had underperformed (38%).

What sets this wave of redundancies apart from anything seen in recent years is not just how widespread they are, but how deep they run. Surveyed HR leaders expect layoffs to affect around a fifth of their workforces. Redundancies of such a scale can bring both business and reputational risks, and need to be handled with care to avoid blowback.

The anxiety factor

For employees, even the threat of redundancies can be anxiety-inducing. Over one-third (36%) of the workers we spoke to were worried about being laid off by their current employer, while 45% expressed fears that redundancies in their industry might affect their future career prospects.

Even for those people who have managed to hold onto their jobs, the instability has had a negative impact, and the workers we surveyed reported feeling stretched to the point of burnout, as they scramble to absorb the work once done by their laid-off colleagues. A majority (56%) of workers said their team, unit or division had been reduced as a result of redundancies in the past 12 months, and 72% said their team has been burned out in the past year due to uncertainty and increased workloads.

The result? Less engaged workers who are polishing up their CVs or resumes. Almost one-fifth (18%) of workers said they were less engaged at work because of the planned or executed redundancies; the same proportion said they were considering leaving their employer.

This hasn’t gone unnoticed by HR leaders. Of those we surveyed, 35% said they were concerned redundancies would lead their remaining workforce to become disengaged, and 34% said they were worried people they wanted to retain would resign. In fact, less than 1% of HR leaders said they had no concerns about knock-on effects on the broader business from redundancies, suggesting that the consequences of this year’s reduction in workforces could be felt for a long time to come.

To learn more about redundancy trends, and how business leaders should respond, download the full research.