There is a polite story organisations tell themselves about outplacement.
It goes something like this: “We are making difficult decisions, but we care deeply about our people, so we are providing support to help them transition into their next opportunity.”
It sounds responsible. It sounds compassionate. It sounds like leadership.
But in many cases, it is not really true.
The more uncomfortable reality is that fewer organisations now offer meaningful outplacement at all. When they do, the decision is often driven less by care and more by cost, risk management and optics. The question is rarely, “What do these people genuinely need in order to rebuild their confidence and careers?” It is more often, “What is the cheapest acceptable thing we can offer so we can say we did something?”
That may sound harsh. But anyone close to redundancy, recruitment or career transition knows it is happening.
Outplacement has quietly been downgraded.
What was once positioned as serious, human, one-to-one support has, in too many cases, become a thin online product: a portal, a password, a few generic videos, some templated CV advice and perhaps a webinar delivered to people who are still trying to process the fact that their career has just been interrupted.
The organisation can tick the box. The provider can scale the model. Procurement can feel satisfied. HR can say support was offered.
But the person leaving the business is often left thinking: “Is this it?”
And too often, it is.
This matters because redundancy is not just an administrative process. It is a rupture. It affects identity, confidence, finances, family life and mental wellbeing. For many people, particularly those who have been loyal to an organisation for years, it can feel like personal rejection dressed up in corporate language.
Yet the support offered is often strangely impersonal.
People are sent to watch videos about CV writing when what they really need is to understand where they fit in a market that has changed beyond recognition. They are given interview tips when they are still dealing with shock, shame or anger. They are told to update LinkedIn when they have not had to actively search for work for twenty years. They are handed generic advice in a market where generic candidates disappear.
The modern job market is brutal, confusing and increasingly dehumanised.
Candidates face applicant tracking systems, AI screening, automated rejections, ghosting, overwhelmed recruiters, hidden shortlists, age bias and recruitment processes that often feel designed to exclude rather than understand. Experienced professionals can find themselves rejected for being too senior, too expensive, too broad, too specialised, too old, too traditional or simply not keyword-shaped enough for the machine.
A login to an online portal does not solve that.
A library of average videos does not solve that.
A CV template does not rebuild a bruised sense of professional worth.
And this is the central problem with much of the outplacement market: it has followed the same logic that has damaged so many other areas of HR. It has become scalable, standardised, automated and cheap — but not necessarily useful.
The industry has confused access with support.
Giving someone access to content is not the same as helping them. Giving someone a video is not the same as coaching them. Giving someone a job board is not the same as helping them create opportunity. Giving someone a webinar is not the same as sitting with them and helping them work out who they are now, what they want next, and how to go and get it.
The truth is that good career transition is deeply human work.
It requires listening. It requires challenge. It requires commercial understanding. It requires knowledge of how recruitment actually works, not how people imagine it works. It requires the ability to help someone turn a complicated career into a clear market proposition. It requires emotional intelligence, not just employability content.
And it requires the organisation buying the service to care about the outcome.
That is where the biggest failure often sits.
Too many employers treat outplacement as a reputational insurance policy rather than a genuine commitment to people. Once the redundancy process is complete and the settlement agreement is signed, the individual’s future becomes someone else’s problem. The employer moves on. The spreadsheet closes. The restructure is announced. The survivors are told to look forward.
But people do not experience redundancy as a line item.
They experience it in the quiet moments afterwards. The Sunday evening anxiety. The awkward conversations with partners. The loss of routine. The sudden disappearance of status. The unanswered applications. The recruiter who never calls back. The interview that goes nowhere. The creeping fear that maybe the market no longer has a place for them.
If organisations are going to talk about values, dignity and employee experience, this is where those words need to mean something.
Because how a company treats people on the way out is not separate from its culture. It is the culture.
The remaining employees are watching. They see whether loyalty was honoured or discarded. They see whether the organisation acted with care or simply performed concern. They see whether “people first” meant anything when it became inconvenient.
This is also an employer brand issue, although it should not need to be reduced to one. People talk. Ex-employees become customers, candidates, critics, referrers, suppliers and sometimes future leaders elsewhere. A careless exit can echo for years.
So what should change?
First, organisations need to stop pretending that minimal support is meaningful support. If the offer is mainly a portal of generic content, call it what it is: a low-cost resource library. Do not dress it up as serious career transition support.
Second, outplacement should be designed around outcomes, not access. The question should not be, “Did we provide a package?” It should be, “Are people clearer, more confident, better positioned and more able to navigate the market because of it?”
Third, support must reflect the reality of modern hiring. People need help with positioning, networking, LinkedIn visibility, AI screening, recruiter behaviour, interview strategy, confidence and career decision-making. They need to understand the hidden rules of the market, not just the visible ones.
Fourth, experienced professionals need specialist help. A 52-year-old senior manager who has not written a CV in fifteen years does not need the same support as a graduate. They may need to rethink their identity, reposition their experience, confront age bias, explore consulting, fractional work, portfolio careers or complete reinvention. That is not solved by a thirty-minute video called “How to write a great CV”.
Finally, companies need to put humanity back into the process. Not sentimentality. Not endless hand-holding. But proper human support: intelligent, practical, honest and personal.
Outplacement does not need to be fluffy. In fact, the best outplacement is the opposite. It tells people the truth about the market. It helps them make sharper choices. It gives them structure, momentum and accountability. It helps them stop applying blindly and start creating opportunity.
But it also recognises that people are not machines being transferred from one system to another.
They are human beings at a difficult point of transition.
The uncomfortable truth is that much of the current outplacement market is not good enough. It is too cheap, too generic, too passive and too detached from the real experience of job seekers.
And the organisations buying it often know that.
The future of outplacement should not be another portal, another platform or another library of mediocre videos. It should be a return to serious human support, built for the reality of today’s labour market.
Because if a company can spend years extracting value from someone’s talent, commitment and energy, the least it can do is offer something meaningful when that chapter ends.
Not a login.
Not a tick box.
Not corporate theatre.
Actual help.
