You've been made redundant, now what?

Published Wednesday 29 August 2026

For a lot of people, redundancy still carries a quiet sense of shame, something to explain away rather than talk about. Our latest guest, Emy Crago, co-founder of Ori, a new platform rethinking how people understand themselves, navigate their careers, and communicate their value, makes the case for flipping that entirely. After redundancy prompted her own career rethink, Emy is now building the tool she wishes she'd had.

Emy was made redundant just before Christmas, on a work-from-home day, news that arrived, in her words, "out of the blue." She'd already been feeling unmoored in her role, so the shock wasn't the loss of the job so much as the confirmation that a chapter was closing.

"I had amazing people around me saying to me, okay, you've just received really scary, anxiety-inducing news. Just literally pause, take a breath, don't think about what's next straight away."

The guidance gap nobody prepared us for

Eight years into a marketing career, Emy found herself asking questions no school, university or careers advisor had ever really asked her: what are you actually good at, and why? She's blunt about how thin that support was, even at well-resourced universities, and about how outdated the traditional path of school, degree, graduate scheme, first job has become. As she puts it, the career ladder has become a career lattice, and most people are navigating it without a map.

Mentors, coaches, and the one nobody talks about

The conversation maps out three kinds of guidance Emy thinks everyone should understand: mentors, who share lived experience; career coaches, who help you find your own answers rather than handing you theirs; and sponsors, people who believe in you enough to open doors you couldn't open yourself. It's the third one, she says, that changed how she thinks about getting ahead.

Redundancy as a reset, not a failure

Emy is direct about the scale of the shift underway: six million UK workers currently report feeling insecure in their jobs, and AI is lowering the barrier to reinventing yourself entirely, whether that's building a platform with no engineering background or starting the business you'd always parked. Her advice for anyone newly out of work: pause before you chase the next thing, then get out, say yes to more, and lean on your network rather than a recruiter.

"I almost think that people who are being made redundant now or in the next year or so are actually quite fortunate."

Building the tool she needed

Out of that experience came Ori, an AI careers intelligence platform matching people to roles, mentors and skills gaps based on who they actually are, not just their CV. It launches in beta this August.

Find out more and join the waitlist at ori.careers, or follow Emy on TikTok at @emmy.craigo.