Executive Redundancy: The Situation in Early 1976
| Date | 01 January 1977 |
| Pages | 50-53 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055328 |
| Published date | 01 January 1977 |
| Author | N.H. Page |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
new
personnel
practice
Executive Redundancy: The
Situation in Early 1976
N H Page
Extra-Mural Department, University of Manchester
Introduction
In two previous papers, published in Personnel Review,
Summer 1975 and Spring 1976, the histories of students
attending courses to assist redundant executives held at the
University of Manchester have been described. The present
report describes the situation up to February 1976 and intro-
duces new data about unemployed people who are not clas-
sified as executives.
In the year up to June 1975 unemployment in Great Britain
rose from half a million to 0.87 million and by December
1975 it had reached nearly one and a quarter million people,
of which a disproportionate number were professional or
managerial grades. Estimates of the number of executive
unemployed indicate that three times as many managers were
out of work at the end of this period as at the beginning. Now
while we hope that the numbers of unemployed will shortly
start to fall, if economic recovery is achieved, in this country
as in the rest of the industrial world the ability of redundant
executives to find work during a period of high unemploy-
ment is an area of continuing concern.
In Manchester the provision of training courses to assist the
unemployed has been doubled and new forms of training
have been devised to assist those who are not classified as
executives. For the present survey we wrote to all 213 people
who attended 12 courses, two of which were the new 'Jobjolt'
courses. We received replies from 130 or
61 %
of the sample;
10 letters were returned by the Post Office and it is known
that one former student had died. It might be expected that
those who attended courses at the beginning of our prog-
ramme would be tired of replying to our enquiries, but they
continued to respond in a very gratifying way. Figure 1 gives
the total response rate per course.
Number of Former Students in Employment
The first concern of our enquiry was to find out how many of
our former students had secured stable employment in a
period of worsening unemployment; next, to find out how
many people had not been successful in finding work and, if
possible, why they were not successful. We were also con-
cerned to discover how many people had secured work which
had not lasted, how long it took people to find re-employment
and whether there was any correlation between age or emp-
loyment level before unemployment and subsequent emp-
loyment. The survey indicates that 83 (64%) of the respon-
dents were currently employed, a figure which represents a
drop of 6% and 11% from our two previous reports. Nine
other people were unemployed at the time of the survey but
had taken jobs; four of these had left voluntarily and the
remainder had been made redundant yet again. Six people
were in full-time education, one was ill, and seven had
decided not to seek work. Therefore 33 people, including the
nine mentioned above, were actively looking for work. It is
evident that the recession was making the task of rehabilita-
tion harder. Figure 2 gives details of replies by courses of
those who had found work and the average length of time
taken to do this. Also included are the national unemploy-
ment and vacancy figures as an indicator of the opposition
faced by students.
It has been mentioned that two of the courses were for people
who were not executives and for whom the changes of career
Course number
Number attending
Replies received
Percentage replied
1
15
7
47
2
19
6
32
3
12
6
50
4
17
11
65
5
19
5
26
6
22
14
64
7
24
13
54
8
25
23
92
JJ1
12
9
75
9-10
16
11
69
15
13
87
JJ2
16
12
75
Total
213
130
61%
Figure 1 Response rate for all courses
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