Put this into practice

READ · GUIDE

Redundancy: your rights at work

Acas

Get the rights straight in week one, before the story and the job search.

What an employer must do, consultation, notice, and what counts as unfair.

READ · GUIDE

Redundancy: your rights

GOV.UK

The official position on the payments you are owed.

Statutory redundancy pay, notice periods and time off to look for work.

READ · GUIDE

Check your rights if you are made redundant

Citizens Advice

Written for people rather than for HR departments.

Plain guidance on redundancy process, pay and what to do if it has been handled badly.

LEARN · FREE TOOL

Every Mind Matters

NHS

Free, clinically grounded, and available today if something here is heavier than an exercise can hold.

NHS self help for sleep, low mood, anxiety and stress, including a short personal plan.

TRY · 12 MIN

Redundancy Reset

TAIU

The first fortnight, in four parts.

First fortnight after redundancy: money, admin, story and people.

LEARN · FREE SERVICE

National Careers Service

Department for Education

Free, impartial, and more useful than most paid career content.

Free careers advice in England, including skills assessments and a telephone adviser.

LEARN · SERVICE

Find a job

GOV.UK

Practical, and free, when the search itself is the next step.

The government job service, free to search and apply.

READ · BOOK

The Psychology of Money

Morgan Housel

Useful if you have read plenty about what to do with money and almost nothing about why you do what you already do.

Housel's argument is that financial behaviour is mostly not a maths problem. People handle money according to what they lived through, what they saw at home, and what they are frightened of. Read it for the chapters on enough and on wealth being the money you do not spend, which are the two ideas this exercise keeps running into.

READ · BOOK

Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

William Bridges

Read this if something has already ended and you are embarrassed that you still have no idea what comes next.

Bridges separates change, which is the external event, from transition, which is the slower internal business of letting go of who you were while it happens. His most useful claim is that the empty middle stretch is not a failure to move on. It is the part of the process where the next thing actually gets worked out, and rushing it usually produces a decision you reverse later.

READ · RESEARCH

The Individual Experience of Unemployment

Connie Wanberg

What actually predicts getting back to work, and how search intensity, financial pressure and self belief interact. Practical rather than consoling.

READ · RESEARCH

Unemployment Impairs Mental Health

Karsten Paul and Klaus Moser

A meta analysis of 237 studies. The effect is real, it is largely caused by unemployment rather than explained by it, and it reverses on re-employment.