Trust Your Wings, Not the Branch: The Big Sis Redundancy Toolkit
On redundancy season, loyalty whiplash and running your career like a business even when someone else signs your payslip.
On Friday night I was in a stand-up comedy club in New York, sitting a sensible distance from the stage because I know exactly how crowd work goes.
The comedian was working the front rows, asking people where they worked. The brave souls who had chosen those seats offered up banks, agencies, a start-up and a hospital.
Then someone said they worked for themselves. Barely breaking stride, the comedian tossed off a line to the effect that working for yourself is the only job you can actually trust these days, adding that we will all be working for ourselves soon enough.
It got a laugh but it also landed somewhere a little deeper for me, the way the best jokes do. It was funny precisely because it was true.
A small confession before we start
When I sat down to publish this, I found a draft sitting in my folder from 22 September with exactly the same title. I had written it, filed it and completely forgotten about it, then written it all over again a month later from the other side of the world with a comedian as my way in.
I am choosing to read that as a sign rather than a memory problem, okay?
These ideas have clearly been circulating in me for a few months now, so I have pulled both versions together into one. Consider it the director's cut.
The feed that feels like the whole market
Another week, another round of redundancies doing the rounds online and big law has been in the headlines too. If it was ever the safe option, nobody is marketing it that way now.
Before I flew out of New York, I had been scrolling The Aussie Corporate Instagram page, the anonymous account where people send in what is happening behind the meeting room doors.
If you have looked recently you will know the vibe. Post after post opens with "Anon please" and goes on to describe hiring freezes, roles moved offshore, strategic reviews dressed up in very calm language, transformation teams halved, PIPs threatened over hybrid attendance and announcements timed beautifully for Christmas.
Scroll for long enough and it honestly starts to feel like the entire country is being restructured at once!
But it is not the entire country.
A feed is built to concentrate and an account that exists to surface bad news will reliably surface bad news. Plenty of people are being hired, promoted and poached this week too, they just do not tend to send it in anonymously. It's not very clickable.
Is some of the noise fear mongering? Probably. Taking it seriously is never a bad idea either way, so let's look at what the numbers actually say.
What the numbers actually say
Law firms. MinterEllison, Australia's largest firm by headcount, confirmed in September that it had reduced some roles in its business operations function following a review, with Capital Brief reporting the number at somewhere between 70 and 100. That followed reports that Clayton Utz reduced its headcount by more than 50 at the start of the financial year. Both firms say the cuts have nothing to do with AI and both dispute the numbers being circulated.
Banking. ANZ announced last year that about 3,500 roles would go by September 2026, with the Finance Sector Union saying staff learnt about it from the news. In September the Australian Services Union said Bendigo and Adelaide Bank was proposing to cut 137 roles, which the bank says are not yet finalised.
The wider market. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 4.7 per cent in September 2026, having crept up from 4.5 per cent in July (ABS).
Retrenchment. The ABS put the annual retrenchment rate at 1.8 per cent in the year to February 2026, a touch lower than 1.9 per cent the year before.
A more honest read is that the headlines are louder than the macro numbers, which are softening rather than collapsing.
I fully realise that this is cold comfort if you are the one getting a calendar invite with no agenda, because redundancy is never just a statistic when it is your name on the list.
Both things can be true at once though.
It would also be delusional of us to pretend nothing is moving. The direction of travel is turbulent, I do not expect 2027 to settle it and if you are feeling unsettled, you are reading the room correctly.
My goal here is not to talk you out of that feeling. My goal is to make sure the feeling has somewhere useful to go.
The view from the other side of the table
I have never had a position made redundant but I have, however, been in the room for multiple rounds as a corporate lawyer and each round sat a little heavier than the last until the process made me genuinely sick to my stomach.
Legally, a restructure can be fairly straightforward. Emotionally, for an empath, it is brutal.
You know these people. You know who is saving for a house deposit, whose partner just went back to uni, who told you at the Christmas party about the promotion they were quietly working towards.
Then you sit on the other side of a process that has to treat all of it as a line in a spreadsheet, because it is. That is where corporate lawyer boundaries stop being a nice idea and become the thing that gets you home in one piece. You can hold real compassion for the people while still doing the job the business needs from you, but only if you have decided in advance where you end and your employer begins.
The closest I came personally is a conversation I still think about. Not long after I resigned from one role, a manager shared that I had gone just in time and that they were glad, because it meant they didn't have to make my position redundant.
I wasn't surprised. I had seen the writing on the wall and I had acted on it, which is really the whole point of this briefing.
It is not personal
When a restructure lands on you it feels deeply personal. You gave the late nights, the weekend emails and the "happy to jump on a call" energy, you believed the town hall when it said you were "like a family here" and you went all in on the place.
Then a calendar invite arrives with no agenda, someone from HR or Legal is on the call and the mask comes off so quickly it is almost impressive.
The sense of whiplash can be unreal.
The brazenness is often the most disorienting part, but it is also the clearest reminder of something that was always true.
You are "like a family" right up until the real or perceived value of your position in the structure stops being a net positive on somebody else's spreadsheet.
It is how the machine is built. The company exists to produce shareholder value, cost is the lever it pulls and "AI transformation" is currently the most fashionable label to stick on that lever, whether or not any AI is doing your work the following Monday.
I say this all with love, as someone who spent fifteen years inside that machine as a very good and very loyal cog.
Knowing it is not personal will not make the day hurt less. What it does is put the weight back where it belongs, on the system rather than on your sense of your own worth. I wrote about the terms of that deal in What's In A Trade? and the short version still stands: the trade between your labour and their capital was always a trade, even when the culture deck called it a family.
The loyalty bargain has been renegotiated
Anna Mack made this point in an Instagram reel about safety, the loyalty bargain and the social contract between corporate and labour. The old deal went something like "give us your best years and we will look after you".
That deal has been quietly rewritten and the millennials and older know exactly what I am talking about here.
To be fair, companies do have the right to restructure. Having worked in legal roles for global companies, I can say Australia is far more employee centric and balanced than a lot of what I saw elsewhere. We have consultation obligations under awards and agreements, the National Employment Standards and a Fair Work system with teeth.
None of that feels very comforting in the moment but it is real.
We also have a floor that doesn't disappear with your security pass. It isn't universal basic income but Medicare doesn't come bundled with your employment contract. I have a penny or two of thoughts about systems that tie your healthcare to your job, but I am writing this from the United States and would quite like to keep being let in, so I will keep them to myself for now.
If it happens, slow down long enough to write things down
I am not your lawyer and nothing in this section is legal advice, so please read it as general big sis housekeeping.
Not every cut labelled a redundancy is a genuine one and some situations do give rise to legal options. In Australia, those options currently come with strict time limits. An unfair dismissal application to the Fair Work Commission, for example, generally has to be lodged within 21 days of the dismissal taking effect, counted in calendar days, including the ones you spend in shock on the couch.
Not everyone can bring one, either. Plenty of lawyers don't realise that if you earn above the high income threshold ($190,100 from 1 July 2026) and aren't covered by an award or enterprise agreement, you generally can't bring an unfair dismissal claim. That is exactly why advice on your own circumstances matters.
So in those first days, take notes.
Write down the dates, who said what in which meeting, the reasons you were given and what was put in writing compared with what was only said on a call.
Keep copies of anything you are entitled to keep, then get proper advice early from an employment lawyer, your union or the Fair Work Ombudsman.
You can always decide to do nothing with it, but you cannot get back the details or the days.
Trust your wings
There is an old line about a bird never worrying that the branch might break, because its trust was never in the branch. It was in its own wings, which it has been quietly tending to the whole time.
If you have been doing the unglamorous career asset work I bang on about all the time, a little bit each month regardless of how secure things feel, the branch snapping will still be a shock but it will not be a free fall.
That, right there, is the resilience piece.
Resilience gets talked about as though it were a personality trait you either have or lack, when most of the time it is simply preparation that has had time to compound. It is far easier to find your feet when you have already built the thing you are going to land on.
Forewarned is forearmed. None of what follows requires you to believe a redundancy is coming. It just asks you to become the kind of person that one wouldn't flatten.
The toolkit: your parachute, packed in advance
Money
Know your numbers. Know what you actually need each month and how long you could go without a pay cheque. If the answer is "a while", time off can be a genuine blessing in disguise, whether that is travel, a reset or a proper refresh before the next thing. If the answer is "not long", that is equally useful information, because it tells you the plan is to keep moving and to do it with intent rather than panic.
Build a cash buffer you can actually touch. Three to six months of essential expenses is the figure you will often hear, but one month is a perfectly good place to start if that is what is realistic right now. I know putting money aside is hard when you are starting out and the cost of living is what it is. Even a week or two of pay buys you time and takes the pressure off every decision that follows. Small amounts also compound into options faster than you would expect.
Know roughly what you would be owed. Redundancy pay under the National Employment Standards is based on your years of continuous service and your award, enterprise agreement or contract may give you more. The Fair Work Ombudsman's Notice and Redundancy Calculator is the place to start.
Understand the tax position. Part of a genuine redundancy payment can be tax free up to a limit, which for 2026-27 is a base amount of $13,598 plus $6,801 for each completed year of service. Check the ATO's current figures before relying on them.
Paperwork
Keep your CV at the ready. Update it every quarter while the wins and the context are fresh, rather than at 11pm on the night of the announcement. Keep a running file of matters, outcomes, cost savings and the thank-you emails you would otherwise forget.
Polish up your LinkedIn, because recruiters and hiring managers will look you up before they call you back.
Keep personal copies of your own employment documents. Your contract, recent payslips, performance reviews and any bonus or incentive terms. Your own documents only.
People
Keep your network warm before you need it. Reaching out when things are fine is a coffee, reaching out the week after a cut is an ask and people can feel the difference. I made the case for being known before you need something in You Cannot Apply Your Way Out Of The Trench and it applies at every level of seniority, not only to graduates.
Know who your first recruiter call would be if it happened tomorrow and you wanted to stay in the industry. If you can't name one, fix that this month over a coffee rather than later in a panic.
Have a good employment lawyer's details saved in your phone. Not because you are planning a fight, just in case something doesn't sit right.
Positioning
Get clear on your unique value proposition. Be able to explain in two sentences what you do that the business would genuinely miss.
Stack a skill next to your practice area, whether that is commercial acumen, regulatory depth, technology or project management. The lawyer who can talk to the business is harder to cut.
Keep a small plan B warm, such as a fractional arrangement, teaching, writing or a side project. Not so you can leave, just so you know you could if you needed to.
Options
Have a plan, even a rough one. Know what your first week would look like, who you would call first and which roles or paths you would point yourself at. A plan written on a calm Sunday is a much better document than one written in a panic.
Remember it doesn't have to mean the identical job immediately. A payout can buy you time to take a sabbatical, reassess and return to the market on your own terms.
If you are the one facilitating the round, look after yourself too. Debrief with someone outside the organisation and decide where your boundaries sit before the first meeting rather than after the fifth.
Some people are genuinely comfortable flying by the seat of their pants and seeing what happens. Good for them, truly.
But if you are anything like me or most of the lawyers I know, you are simply not wired that way. We like a plan, a precedent and a contingency, so give yourself the same courtesy you would give any client.
Be a business of one, even with a payslip
The shape of our careers is being pulled around by large macro forces and the trade between capital and labour is being repriced.
So the smartest career advice I can give is to think of yourself as a solopreneur, even while you are employed.
Your employer is your biggest client, quite possibly your only one, so serve them brilliantly.
A sensible business also knows its value, keeps its pipeline warm, watches its cash and never lets one client become its entire identity. Your reputation, your relationships, your skills and what people associate with your name are assets that travel with you. No restructure can claw those back.
This is also why fractional GC work, portfolio careers and skill stacking feel less like trends to me and more like an obvious evolution. When a single employer can't promise permanence, spreading your value across more than one skill set, network or income stream is not disloyalty.
It is pure risk management, which lawyers are meant to be rather good at. If you want the longer version of why the non linear path is a legitimate one, The Scenic Route Is Still a Route is a good companion read.
None of this is an argument for resigning tomorrow either. I built Counsel Media on a long runway, with six years of side hustle before going full-time.
Even so, I would never suggest treating a frightening social media feed as a resignation letter. It is an argument for holding your job a little more lightly and your career a lot more tightly.
I really do think the comedian was right that we will all be working for ourselves soon. If we are honest with ourselves, most of us already are, we just have not updated the job title yet.
A forcing function?
Most people would not choose a redundancy and I am not going to pretend it is always a gift.
It can, though, become a forcing function, the push to stop and ask what you actually want your working life to look like and whether your job was still serving your values or just your mortgage. The people who come through it best tend to be the ones who had already done some of that thinking before anyone forced the question.
What to do this month
Write your one-page plan. First week, first five calls, first three paths. Keep it somewhere you can find it without logging into a work laptop.
Do the numbers. Monthly essentials, current buffer and how many weeks that buffer buys you. Then pick a small, automatic amount to add to it each pay.
Refresh your CV and LinkedIn. Add the last three wins while you still remember the details, then set a quarterly reminder.
Warm up three relationships. Not an ask, just a hello, a congratulations or a coffee.
Keep a running work log. A private note of achievements, feedback and key decisions, stored somewhere that is yours. It is useful at review time and invaluable if you ever need it for anything else.
If you want help building the plan with someone in your corner, that is exactly what a 1:1 session with me is for.
You can't control the branch, but you can absolutely build the wings. They were always yours.
Mel
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