Over the weekend, the doors finally closed on the last remaining BHS stores, following several weeks of closures as well as plenty of controversy.
For the thousands of staff who have lost their jobs, it is a particularly difficult time; not only in the need to find new employment but also with the uncertainty they face for their future pensions. Fingers crossed the talks between the Sir Philip Green and the pension’s regulator brings them a positive outcome.
The real discussion point in the BHS story is that this is not a unique situation and therefore it is highly likely that employees will continue to experience situations similar to this regardless of the company history.
The retail world is a great example of an evolving landscape, being influenced by new technology as well as global trade. The traditional High Street is not usually the first choice of the big retailers who more often than not choose to set up in out-of-town retail parks to showcase their product ranges, leaving, if anything, a much smaller store in the town centre as a reminder of the brand. And then there is the internet which for any retailer is the go-to platform for getting new and exciting messages out to customers as well as being a key mechanism for the sales and marketing teams.
The growth of online business has undoubtedly created new jobs for many companies and new types of jobs have been created, which in turns sees some types of job redundant and companies change the face in which they do business.
So, how can employees ensure that they keep pace with change in the 21st Century and make sure doors continue to open for them? The answer is to continue to self-develop, invest in your own personal learning and take the attitude that you are never too old to learn something new. The things we learnt 5, 10 or even 20 years ago are a great foundation for where we are today but often not enough to take us to the next level. We need to keep learning to keep up and then when we are faced with a difficult situation we open up some many more possibilities and options to make challenges work to our advantage.
If someone you know is facing a situation where job uncertainty or lack of learning are happening, give them our contact details so we can help them to work through the challenges and to identify new areas for learning and development and the best pathway to take to get there.