Redundancy effects on Survivor Motivation

Redundancies are ever more prominent in today’s business environment, with the importance of understanding the consequences to surviving employees increasing, in order for businesses to reduce the negative repercussions of employing a redundancy scheme. Influential literature implies that redundancies have an adverse effect on those remaining, of which one identified factor is their motivational status. Therefore despite much research regarding motivation and redundancies, there is limited evidence regarding this impact when a voluntary redundancy is selected; consequently the aim of this research is to examine this in the context of a public sector organisation.The research method used was a qualitative approach, through the conduction of employee interviews holding a subjectivist ontology and an interpretivist epistemology stance to explore perceptions and influences of the redundancy scheme on employees.As a result of the research, findings complied with the concept of survivor syndrome in the main, however emphasising the dependency on individual attitudes and perceptions of the scheme. In particular the key themes identified in the literature review such as motivational theories and contributing factors to changes in motivation; increased job insecurity, weakened physiological contract and lack of trust with management wherein the most reinforced. However, the inconclusive results suggest that the voluntary nature does in fact have an impact and is evidenced to mitigate the negative effects to survivors and their subsequent motivation.