Self-paced course · CHF 395
For the weeks around a redundancy, a restructure or a decision to leave. What is actually happening on the other side of the table, what is still moveable, and what to say.
I was Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse, then Head of Technology Reward at UBS. Before Corporate to Solo, that was the work: advising senior executives through exits and other high-stakes career decisions.
This course was built out of that work. It still holds up, so it stays here, a little in the background, for anyone who still needs it.
The meeting where you find out is not the meeting where it was decided. The formal process that follows is largely the documentation of something that was socially agreed some time earlier. That is simply how large organisations work, and it has one consequence that matters enormously to you.
The window where your position can still move opens long before anybody tells you it exists.
Then the offer arrives, and almost everyone fights the wrong thing.
At a large institution the severance number is close to a formula. It runs on tenure, it is capped, and it is standardised precisely because the company is big. It is the number everybody argues about and it is the number least likely to move. What moved was everything around it. The length of garden leave. The support on the way out. The reference.
The reference follows you for years. It is on the negotiable list. Almost nobody asks.
I was Head of Technology HR at Credit Suisse. Then technology reward at UBS, during the integration. Which meant the redundancy consultations, the calibration meetings, the reward decisions when the budget was under pressure, and the structure-matching exercise when two organisations became one.
I want to be precise about that, because the temptation is to overstate it. I did not place people and I did not own those decisions. I advised, I was in the room, and I watched it happen from the inside. That is a narrower claim than it sounds, and it is the one that explains why I know which parts of this are theatre and which parts are real.
Every item here is recoverable while the process is running and gone once it is not.
It starts with a sixty-second entry check, because a few situations need a specialist before you do anything at all, and they are the ones that cannot be fixed later. Then it splits, because two quite different people arrive here.
Route A
Reading the signals in the weeks before an announcement. The first seventy-two hours, and what to say in the meeting itself. What is actually on the table, term by term, and which parts of it carry discretion.
Then positioning inside the process while it is still running, what to do when the outcome becomes clear, and the different problem you have if you are retained and the people around you are not.
Route B
Four questions that settle whether you are actually leaving, and four honest readings of what your answers mean. No form to fill in and nothing to wait for.
Then volunteering for a package and how that conversation is received on the other side, or resigning cleanly, with the same contractual audit Route A runs. Leaving by choice does not exempt you from the paperwork.
Both routes
The full terms review. What each clause is for, what it is likely to be protecting, and the question to ask about it rather than the position to take on it.
Then your departure narrative, the compensation anchor you are setting for the next conversation without realising it, and one departure told to several audiences who talk to each other.
Every module ends in something written down. Not reflection prompts. A filled-in position on one specific thing, so that by the end you are holding a set of decisions rather than a set of feelings about them.
She brought an independent, outside read on my experience and how it holds up in the market, a well-benchmarked perspective that's hard to get from inside your own network. She was also a sharp sounding board, pressure-testing my thinking and sharpening how I frame my work across my CV, LinkedIn, and conversations with hiring managers. Structured sessions, clear written follow-ups, and direct, practical advice throughout.
I initially connected with Lisa because her insights on the challenges of the modern workplace resonated deeply with my own experience. After decades in senior leadership, returning to the job market felt like navigating an entirely different world. Lisa's guidance has been pivotal for me. She provided the frank, honest feedback I needed to successfully re-position my executive profile…
Three people arrive here and would be better served elsewhere.
I am a chartered management accountant. I am not a lawyer, I am not a tax adviser and I am not a financial adviser. This course explains how the process works, what tends to carry discretion, and what to ask. It does not tell you what your settlement is worth, whether to sign, what the tax treatment is, or whether a clause would hold. Where your situation needs a lawyer, the course says so early and plainly, because acting late on those is the one thing you cannot negotiate your way out of afterwards.
It is written from a Swiss and general vantage point. Employment law varies enormously, and the course is careful to frame the mechanism rather than the rule.
Self-paced, yours to keep, and built to be read out of order. Most people arrive after the announcement rather than before it, so start at the first thing that has not happened yet rather than at the beginning.
Not sure it is the right thing? A Decision Call is CHF 550 for sixty minutes on your situation, with written observations afterwards. If what you have is one decision rather than a process to navigate, take the hour instead of the course. It is the better buy and I would rather say so.