Pink Slip Survival Guide

Image by: Dina Goldstein

As the economy continues to flounder, a growing number of British Columbians are joining the ranks of Canada’s unemployed. Vicki O’Brien talks to four people who were pink-slipped and not only survived but thrived.

Whether you’re escorted from the workplace by security or forced to spend weeks toiling alongside shell-shocked co-workers before making your final exit, the pain of being laid off is like no other. In one brief moment, the familiar blanket of financial security and comfortable routine is ripped away, replaced by what feels like a leaden shroud of panic, fear and self-doubt.

In its 2009 economic outlook, issued last December, the Business Council of B.C. expected our province to weather the current global economic crisis better than most jurisdictions, with a contraction of between one and two per cent. Still, it predicted our unemployment rate would rise to an average of six per cent this year. Less than a month later, respected Central 1 Credit Union chief economist Helmut Pastrick told a Vancouver Board of Trade audience that more than 42,500 British Columbians could lose their jobs in 2009, with another 6,500 losses projected in 2010 before employment recovers to 2008 levels in 2011. While such job losses represent less than two per cent of our total provincial workforce, it’s cold comfort for those receiving pink slips who now need to figure out how to pay their mortgage and put food on the table.

Tips: Shrugging off that survivor guilt

Susan Fugman saw the writing on the wall long before she was let go by a North Vancouver-based financial services firm in November 2007. “I was manager of mortgage development and I had seen the money drying up. But even when you know it’s a possibility, when it happens, it’s very emotional. I worried I might never work again.” At age 47, single and suddenly unemployed, Fugman says, she was determined to “make lemonade out of lemons.”

With support from friends and family and a career transitions counsellor (whose services came with her severance package), she decided to build on a long list of skills accumulated over a 20-year career in banking and financial planning. “I was someone who should probably have moved on years ago; I needed to do something completely different,” she says. “I started visualizing what my next job would look like and decided to focus on the non-profit sector to see if I could get paid to give back.” While her search for the perfect new role took close to a year, it also enabled her to spend time with her ailing father and to travel. Fugman rejected her first post-layoff job offer, eventually settling on a position as business advisor in the YMCA’s New Venture program (which offers training, mentoring and support for would-be entrepreneurs).

“It was worth the wait,” she says. “Now I look forward to going to work every day. This job is much more aligned with my values and goals, enables me to apply my years of experience and, most importantly, we laugh a lot. I would encourage anyone who loses their job to use it as an opportunity to find something they care passionately about.” Given the depth of this recession, it’s hard to imagine how getting turfed could be the opportunity of a lifetime. Yet Gregg Taylor, president of Vancouver’s Transitions Career and Business Consultants, says British Columbians such as Fugman are living proof that it often can be. Most pink slips have little to do with individual performance, he says, so should not be viewed as career ending. Instead, he adds, we should see our layoff as a roadblock – one that gives us an opportunity to reconsider our career path and rethink goals and priorities.

This sort of self-examination is a rare luxury for busy workers caught up in the nine-to-five grind. Taylor says that after a period of soul searching, many layoff victims report (anecdotally, at least) finding new work that is more fulfilling, more lucrative or both. Sometimes the change can be quite extreme, he adds, as in the case of a former stockbroker client, in his 30s, who after getting laid off decided to go into commercial plumbing. “When he went through the self-evaluation process, he realized he enjoyed working with his hands and liked the sense of accomplishment that came from completing a project. He later described how he was out on a job one day when he heard a phone ring.

It sounded just like the one he had when he worked for a financial services firm, and it immediately brought back all his old physical feelings of stress. It reminded him that he’d made the right career choice.”

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