When redundancies make the headlines it is often because employers have sacked their staff in a spectacularly inappropriate way – by text message, for example. Such incidents are bad for the image of a company and are likely to leave it facing an employment tribunal.

Increasingly, however, businesses are looking to do more than simply tick the legal boxes when making staff redundant. Instead of totting up people’s payoffs and handing them their P45s, companies are offering “outplacement” services – everything from assistance updating CVs to career counselling, mock interviews and even job search assistance.

The outplacement idea was imported from America in the 1970s and was originally offered only to very senior executives, but is now coming to be accepted as the right thing to offer staff at all levels, said Owen Morgan, head of commercial operations for career transition at Penna, an HR consultancy. “The older generations [of workers] may not expect it but the younger ones do,” he said.

Managing expectations is all very well but the first and most obvious benefit for businesses is a smooth, straightforward redundancy process, said Robin Wood, managing director of Career Management Consult-ants, which provides outplacement services. “The reason to keep redundant employees happy is that you want them to leave quietly, quickly and with their dignity intact,” he said. “The alternative could be that they will take you to an employment tribunal, so it is in the company’s interest that everyone should leave feeling they have been treated properly.”

Outplacement can also make it easier to manage situations where the need for redundancies is known but staff are required to stay on to manage the transition. For example, when Royal & Sun Alliance consolidated its broker business it gave staff more than a year’s notice that the decision would mean 270 job losses. It used outplacement from Wood’s team to keep employees motivated throughout this period by reassuring them that they would be given help to find new work after the consolidation was complete. Ultimately, more than 90% were settled into new jobs within a month of finishing their old ones.

Keeping leavers happy also offers significant benefits for the company’s reputation: if it is known as an organisation that treats people well, it will find it easier to recruit when business picks up again. “If you look after your staff [when] you make them redundant, you will be seen as an employer of choice,” said Wolfgang Seidl, a medical psychologist and executive director of Validium, an employee assistance company. “Not factoring that in would mean that you have a PR disaster on top of a human crisis.”

Hurt former workers who tell family, friends and possibly the press that they were treated badly could also damage the company’s reputation with customers as well as potential recruits. On the other hand, Dominic Wilson, now transformation director at CSC, a systems integration company, still talks warmly about Royal Mail, which provided him with outplacement assistance when it made him redundant this year. “I would recommend Royal Mail to anyone as an employer,” he said.

Then there are the survivors to think about – the employees who are staying on but have seen colleagues made redundant. They may be depressed or afraid for their own future – just when the business needs them to be performing well. “If people are not given outplacement and just shown the door that has a very negative impact on those who remain, who will be thinking ‘is it me next?’,” said Morgan. “If they see their colleagues being treated well they will take comfort.”

The type of services that need to be offered as part of outplacement will vary according to the people being made redundant. “Those [companies] that invest in career development may not need to invest as heavily because people are more aware of how to manage their careers already,” said Morgan.

In other cases, employees who have spent many years or even decades with one employer may not really know where to start the search for a new job. Wilson said: “I had my head down, the work was interesting and I had not given much thought to [what happens next] for 18 years because my work was absorbing.” In his case, Career Management Con-sultants tailored a package that included coaching, updating his CV and mock interviews with headhunters to help him work out which of his skills most appealed to the market.

Outplacement did not help Elaine Smyth to find a new job after she was made redundant from a senior position at a big retailer; instead, it gave her the confidence to start Toffee Moon, her own babywear business. “Chiumento [the outplacement provider] encouraged me to delve into what I wanted to do. They kept telling me there was a different world out there.”

Finally, a word of warning. Seidl is a firm supporter of using specialist outplacement services – postredundancy assistance needs experts, not an unqualified manager’s best efforts at counselling, he said – but he is adamant that they should only be used for delivery, not leadership. It is up to senior executives to explain what is happening, and why. “Do not delegate responsibility to an outsider,” he said. “The organisation needs to show its own caring face.”

Times Recommends

• Inspirational leadership
• How to get a new job
• The reluctant CEO