Part 2: 6 Squiggly Careers Trends in 2026 – Redundancy, Accountability & Why Learning Matters More Than Promotions

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a show where we talk about the ins, outs, ups and downs in work and give you some insights, ideas and tools to help you take control of your career development. And this is our very last episode of 2025. How are you feeling, Sarah, towards the end of the year, in a word? Well, it's not one word, but I think I said to you, on the edge. And then I started singing that song. You did. What is that song? I'm on the edge is that from like I feel like it's a Lady Gaga thing maybe but yes that's how I would describe how I am feeling but we are recording we are recording part one and part two of this podcast together and I always feel better after a podcast recording sometimes I feel worse is it my singing is it that no I mean the last episode we did have some quite funny interruptions that made me like laughing is always quite good and it's funny I often find when we record our podcast together that I will feel worse at the start, you know, because you and I are like, oh, my God, we've not done all these things.

1:05And, yeah, I don't know, we you have to vent and like you and I will share, I don't know, some frustrations or things that we're finding hard. And then you sort of do the podcast and then you're like, I think I always just feel better after doing it. Me too. I hope people feel better after listening as well. I hope that kind of people get to the end and they're like, ah, I'm having a nightmare day or I don't know what to do about that. and then they get to the end of an episode they're like okay well at least i've spent 30 minutes and i feel a bit clearer and you know maybe i wonder if anyone um i'd love to know email us if you do um helensara squiggly careers.com i wonder if anyone uses these episodes as like an excuse to escape over christmas you know when you're like the christmas escape the christmas escape as in i just need to go for a walk or um and they put this podcast on as just like a bit of i mean light relief i'm not sure if it's light relief but you know just like something different that's not I don't know all the logistics and interesting vibes that can come from family family vibes family vibes let us know yeah if you use us for an escape uh during your Christmas your Christmas period you know what I volunteered to do today um I'm going to write over kind of Christmas New Year which makes me sound like I'm really committed to work but I'm definitely doing it for different reasons I was like oh yeah I'll write a book club guide for learn like a lobster because I was just like perfect that just gives me you know if you just need a bit of time to be like I just need to spend an hour that's really important I write this ready for the book coming out now does that theoretically need to be done over Christmas New Year probably not but but will that become important I think so I have exactly the same thing with my vision board because it's also because everyone's seen me collect everything at home I'm like I need just a couple of hours on my own in my office just to pull that together is you know it's really important for the rest of the year all of which is true but it's very intentional so that I can just leave me alone everybody just for a few hours.

2:58That makes it sound horrendous doesn't it? I know I know please keep listening. Please keep listening we're not as bad as we sound and we have some useful insights to share with you because this is part two of our trends slash themes for 2026 so we have talked about six different themes which we think are going to have an impact on you and your career in the new year and our intention is to talk about what the theme is why it matters and what you can do about it so that you are able to respond and feel kind of clear about how you can respond and confident about what you're doing and ultimately a bit more in control so you feel less surprised by this stuff as i said this is part two so in the first one if you haven't listened to that we talked about ai agents we talked about connection and disconnection and we talked about employee influences as three trends and we've got three more to talk about today um do you want to kick us off with the first one Sarah?

3:50You give me the hard one. Sorry. So we did think about whether to include this or not because it doesn't feel super cheery to talk about but we also decided it is the reality and I think everybody will experience this more than once and that is restructures and redundancies. And they're also on the rise I think that's the point for next year like everyone's going to experience more than once in their career and next year all the stats are showing that this is happening more more frequently partly because of ai and potentially there is a bit of a some people using ai as an excuse for it but there's definitely more chat and uncertainty around it and i think what is important to remember with this and like helen and i have both been through this multiple times ourselves is no job industry organization is so stable and secure that you are immune to this so I think just remembering that like everybody knowing that thinking even if you're like well my company is growing or it seems to be doing really well even if that's true they might need to make some shifts they might need to change team structures they might need some different skills and it it could just be that what you bring isn't what that organization needs in the same way or that team or the focus of that just might just might change and so I almost think if you if you almost accept oh yeah that that could happen at any point because there is that change in uncertainty I think you have a very different relationship with it and I think you can be proactive about actions now that you don't want to take in these moments because there is nothing there is nothing you can do about when it does then happen I think it's confusing that it's really complicated there's lots of emotions to deal with and so I was thinking I was talking to BBC about this yesterday uh for an article for the new year also cheery so I was like oh well maybe at least we're along along the right lines I was saying you know the moment this this conversation happens you're never expecting it like that day typically you might have got some signs but typically you don't know it's coming and then your first thought is not usually I need to update my LinkedIn profile you know you're like that doesn't feel like the right moment to sort your LinkedIn profile out.

6:04Because I often think actually, what's more important in those times is, you know, giving yourself time to reflect and process the conversations that you're having, exploring possibilities. But your LinkedIn profile is really important because 97 % of people look at it, if they are going to recruit you. And so in my head I was starting to kind of divide our actions into like what you can do now so that actually when this does happen which it will you're not you're not doing those things that you sort of wish you'd done you know um thanking your future self what will you what could you do now where your future self will really thank you like I'll look back and go oh Sarah like well done for sorting your LinkedIn profile in January so that actually if I need it later in the year it's there or well done for updating my cv for 10 minutes every month rather than suddenly being like oh my god i've not updated my cv for five years and then it just becomes such a big task so that's where i was starting to get to in my head is like what could you do now so you're actually in a you need to be smart basically and also if you never need it is it good to have a better linkedin profile yeah uh you might need your cv for other things you're probably not going to stay in the same job forever so that those things feel like a good use of time versus there are some things that all you can do is think about once it actually kind of happens to you and those things you can't preempt in the same way I was thinking the same questions actually I was thinking what if if you knew now that you were going to be made redundant next year what would you do so I would like okay well now I would build out my LinkedIn profile my after some recommendations I've maybe prioritized three relationships I wanted to invest in put time in with those people I've maybe explore some jobs that I'd like to do so that I could do a bit of a like a bit of an assessment of what experiences or skills are they that they need that I might not have right now like that's some of the things that I would do and then I think the second question is why wouldn't you do those things anyway but there is you have nothing to lose from investing in LinkedIn profile, investing in those relationships, doing a bit of job scanning and gap filling that you won't lose.

8:22But I think it's just doing it with that intention, you know, putting the time in prioritizing those actions. And I also think not, and it's easy to say, isn't it, but not being too hard on yourself if and when this happens, because I think it's really easy to do that. You know, we talk about those pessimism, the P's of pessimism from Martin Seligman, where we personalise it like why is this always happening to me or we kind of make it quite pervasive everything's going wrong at the moment everything's a disaster or you make it really permanent and you go oh my gosh everything in my career is doomed I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of one of those responses to this kind of a situation and I think the reality is a lot of this probably won't be about you a lot of this will be about a company responding to a challenging environment and having to make some commercial decisions and you you can only do so much you know you can only do so much and you just might not be the right answer a bit like sometimes when you go for a job interview you're just not the right person it doesn't mean you're you doesn't mean you're bad it just means you're not the right person and so I think if you can retain a bit of perspective and you can create a bit more control now then if and when this doesn't happen to you I think it means you're less likely to fall into one of those sort of pessimism traps that make it all just feel so much emotionally worse.

9:46Yeah, I really like those questions. It made me think, because the way that I think about this for Amazing If is I'm probably not going to make myself redundant, but our company could go bust. Right. That's our equivalent. Right. Our company could have a really bad year. Things could go really wrong. Crikey, imagine the podcasts, you know, about that. If that's what happens, it would be dramatic if nothing else. because that is our equivalent it's slightly different to when we were in companies but that's it's exactly the same thing in terms of what would happen and I always ask myself who are five people who I think obviously outside of amazing if who either might give me a job like if if there was a job to be had or would do their best to connect me introduce me support me to to find something you know like naming those five people so I was actually going through you know that um roller deck in your head of like who would those people be for me and I could come up with two or three quite quickly and then I was like oh actually I should probably think about that a bit more so I'd like oh I've probably got a couple of gaps because then I was thinking to your point about the possibilities like oh what jobs could I actually do like probably probably need to think about that a bit as well and the other thing that's worth mentioning before we move on is we do have a free redundancy reset toolkit where you can access that at any time restructure or redundancy it's completely free um there's a video series there's tools there's loads of links to links to learn from some from us some from other people zero questions asked so even if you if you like oh i need that now because i think i'm going to get restructured um and you want to be super proactive like go and use it now it's absolutely fine it's all on the website it's just there for when people need it.

11:30Yes. So this is the fifth one in our little six parter. This one is about autonomy times accountability. And the reason this is a theme is because it is something that we are hearing in the conversations with people that we work with. So there are sort of two sides to this. The first is autonomy. So people wanting to have freedom and control over how they work, what they work on, when they work. We are seeing a lot of that in the sessions that we are in, that that is something that people expect and value from their employer. But on the flip side, from the employers that we work with, we are also hearing a greater desire for accountability.

12:10So this is feeling like there's a lack of clarity about who is doing what when and a desire for more people to take accountability for their actions. And we think it's a really, I don't think it needs to feel like attention. I actually think it's a really interesting opportunity. Like the ideal is that people feel like they've got autonomy and organisations feel like there's a great sense of accountability. That's the ideal. But at the moment, I think there is a little bit of tension between what people want, what companies need, and that it doesn't feel like that we've reached this kind of equilibrium or balance with the two.

12:46What are your thoughts? Well, I think we know from, I really remember this research, I think it was from Tammy Erickson at a business school where she said an organization's job is actually to be very clear on the what which is actually that that helps with accountability what needs to get done what are the outcomes that matter most what do we need to prioritize and when you say organization it's funny isn't it because you're like well what is an organization it's just people um so actually let's say for us for our team that's really important that we help everybody with that like what what is most important what needs to get done what the outcomes that matter most and then she said and if you do that really well then you can give loads of autonomy on the how how do you reach those outcomes how do you do your work how do you make that happen you don't need to micromanage that because then the accountability and the autonomy can go hand in hand and so one of the I think one of the questions you have to ask yourself so if you're a manager or a leader listening to this and I think we hear this from a lot of people like we need more accountability we need more ownership in in our teams I think you have to also be quite critical of yourself and go what have I created the clarity that people need to be able to do that because that even that word accountability is not it's not a super friendly word.

14:13I don't think people always know what accountability looks like. Often when we're working with companies, I use a lot of what does this look like? What does this sound like? You know, to like as examples to really bring this to life. And so I think if you want people to be more accountable, and if you like you all as a team want to be more accountable, you have to have something that you can point to that goes, well, this helps us to be accountable. and then sometimes you know opposites can be helpful maybe describing well what does it mean to not be accountable because then you're you're sort of playing with the word so one of things that we've done this year actually only in the last sort of couple of months that has really helped us with this is we've done clarity creators and it's funny every time i mention this to organizations all across the world who are incredible and doing very good work they're like can we use that yeah I mean you can you can but like Helen and I created it on Canva and I think we had like one inspirational walk where we were going back and forth and being like what would go on this Clarity Creator and then you just sort of wrote it all down and we were like like something like this give it a go but it's actually really stuck it's really stuck for us and it's really stuck for our team and it is just a one page on uh you know what is somebody's job in a kind of short sentence you know kind of a summary like what what is that job uh what are the priorities we use now versus not for now we're really clear on like what they what people don't need to do yet and we might come back to it and then we also link to our behaviors and what that means for that role and so I suppose now when I'm thinking about accountability before in our team it would have been vague no one could there's nothing written down there was nothing you could point to whereas now I think I would have a sense of people's levels of accountability because I would have something that would help me as a starting point but also more importantly I think our team have something that helps them so they can sort of question am I spending time in the right areas how do I want to get this work done that I've kind of agreed together and I think the last build on that in case it's useful for people is the process of making those clarity creators we've had really good feedback from our team on and it's not like our team always say this So, you know, they're very happy to tell us where things are not working as well.

16:34But we created the template. We actually had one person in our team who was essentially our guinea pig. And that actually did work well. Like one person volunteering to kind of go first. And they worked with you like quite hard to get that to a kind of a good place. So that then everybody had like a, again, an example to look at, even though her job is very different to everybody else's. And then the way that we've done it is everyone has written their own first version. So it's not like we have kind of, you know, like the tell, oh, here is your job. It's like, well, who knows their job the best?

17:05The person who does it today. So everybody, it starts always with the individual. They write their first version. They send it to Helen and I. We might write some comments on the Canva like, oh, I changed that around or that. Yeah, that sounds really good or brilliant. And then they always have a follow up clarity, create a conversation, typically with Helen, actually, because Helen is a natural clarity creator. Like that's the skill that she's got. So we recognized, let's use that super strength. And then people are coming away from those conversations. And I think people feel more motivated.

17:37They, like the wooliness of things have gone. It's made it easier for people to say no. And they have something to point back to, to say, oh, that's in my not for now list. And then you go, yeah, fair enough. Like there's that. Or you have a conversation and you make some changes. It's not that it's not flexible, but it has been, it sounds like a small action, but I think it's started to make a real difference for us around that we already have quite a lot of autonomy in our team it's just the way that we are set up but I if I was giving us scores out of 10 and I always find this helpful I would say in our team generally if I was scoring the team as a whole we have like 9 out of 10 autonomy but perhaps we would have been a 5 or a 6 out of 10 for accountability which doesn't mean that people don't care or they're not trying hard or they're not doing their jobs but i think it's asking yourself where are you on those scales um because your autonomy might be lower it might not be that way around and then what are the actions that would increase up that scale because i think the higher up that scale you go as a team the more impact everybody has and the more satisfied people are at work so just a couple of things we'll share that template i think we'll obviously a blank version of it without here's my clarity creator yeah and we'll put our behaviors on there so you can see because i think we have our behaviors and then people personalize them to their position but um so we'll put that on in the show notes we'll also post it at amazing if on linkedin so if that's useful for you check that out um and then the other thing that i would say is that the word clarity i think is more appealing to an individual than accountability like if i had the accountability audit um it doesn't sound appealing it sounds like it's being done to me because to your point accountability can sometimes feel like a slightly negative word whereas I think most people want more clarity so a clarity creator it it benefits both the manager and the individual I think it's just it's just you know we always say how important getting the language right is and I think like if you want people to engage in a behavior or a conversation or take an action getting the language right is useful and clarity creator seems to be working well that was the other thing that I was going to say the other thing I think clarity creators are a foundation for driving higher performance so I think where Sarah and I actually started from was we want our team to be this amazingly high performing team and we don't think that we can really look at what that means and potentially make changes that would drive that unless we've got a foundation of clarity so for us this is sort of part one of us really looking at what is what is us becoming the highest performing team we can be and what does it mean so just a kind of a few bills but we'll put the link for the clarity character in the show notes last but not least what is our final theme well I feel like you'll talk about this because I feel like you're just determined to make this happen um because you've you've suggested this to me a few times with some interesting ideas I was trying to find the right word there um back to words that matter so our final theme is learning that gets recognized and rewarded so Helen bring to life for us uh what this could look like well let me take uh literally a step back to the ladder-like world of career development which is where I think we celebrate and recognize people who have climbed the ladder like I mean I literally when I used to work and this is nothing against Capital One I love Capital One I had a brilliant time at Capital One but I remember in Nottingham in Capital One people got put on billboards or whatever the British word for a billboard is what's it's called billboard isn't it what's it called giant posters by the road the giant posters by the road the billboard um people got put on a billboard because they'd got promoted and i remember that was a real moment of pride and it was and i'm not taking anything away from those people but that is what we visibly reward and recognize is like this you know you've got promoted and i think that in a squiggly career where learning is much more important than the level because i think learning is going to feed your career development for much longer and actually has much more dividends in the long term anyway i think we should be celebrating and rewarding and recognizing learners and i think there are i mean there are lots of ways that you can do that i think there are sort of gamified ways that you can do it so for example you know we do this a little bit so super sprinters we send different emails so we've had 30 000 people now who have been part of our squiggly career sprints um also sign up for one that's happening in january everybody go to squiggly sprint.com but we've had 30 000 people who have sprinted with us people that have sprinted more than once get different emails from us.

22:08Did you know that, everybody? So our super sprinters... I'm trying to work out whether I knew that. They do. I think I did know that. Super sprinters, they get different emails from us because we recognise how committed they are to their learning and they get different badges. So when people are sprinting with us, they get different coloured badges depending on are they a super sprinter? Like have they sprinted with us more than once? And that is a very simple way that I think you start to recognise people for continually investing in their career development and making sure that that is known, seen and, you know, and I'm kind of respected.

22:39And I think we just need more ways that we celebrate learning as a form of progression, not just levels as a form of promotion. That's what I would like to change. I'm sure at one point you pitched to me. What did I pitch? Learning is a currency for your career. So you wanted to create learning coins. I think you want, and I remember years ago, I feel like this was an odd, but I do think what I would like, yeah, I do think like learning credits, like how can you, learning credits, which you could redeem for holiday, maybe learners can redeem, well, they could choose what they redeem it on. Maybe they could redeem it for more learning.

23:17That's what I do. I've got learning credits. I can now spend it on more learning. But I think it's just the idea that there is a value to learning for the individual and for the organisation. And I think we should be putting learners. I think we want, you know, we've written a whole book about lobsters being the ultimate role model for learning. What I really want is for learners to be the ultimate role model for learning. I really want people learners, I want learners to be on the pedestal and they can sit next to our lobsters. But I think in order for that to happen, you know, we need to make learning cool we need to make learning rewarded we need to recognize learners in companies that's what i think yeah one of the things um i thought about i even thought about doing a post on linkedin about it but then i was like oh no i'm i'm me she must be passionate she thought about it um well i like the idea of um leaders that learn loudly um and so i think you know when you talk about role models i do think leaders and managers in organizations their behaviors have a really big ripple effect so who do we look to for signals of like what good looks like and what what does success mean here in a company in a culture it's what you see your managers and leaders doing because it doesn't matter what they say or what's on any bit of paper it's what everybody does day to day that makes the most difference and I was like oh I have probably only worked in my whole career for one leader that learned loudly.

24:50Now I think I think I was probably that to an extent but I was nowhere near as senior as she was so I did work for one leader who took learning seriously would talk about it would share what she was learning would prioritize it and I think then no surprise like I love being in that team, but also that team was a really good team to be part of. Yeah. And, but I don't think it's that common. Like, even if I was thinking about LinkedIn and, you know, like the people that you follow and stuff, you don't hear that many senior people on LinkedIn sharing like what they're learning or how they're learning or, you know, things they're really curious about.

25:25What you see them sharing is sometimes company updates, you know, like quite like my company's profitable or whatever or they might share something maybe about like work life fit or something personal which is always I'm like oh that's good that's always interesting but I don't see that many posts on learning so I was wondering whether I wonder if there is like I wonder if AI could do this for you but you know if you took like a week on LinkedIn and then you took people in certain if you just took positions as like a proxy as a starting point and then you looked for the word learning how many people use the word learning in posts on linkedin for example i don't think you see that that often and so if we are arguing oh it's it's like critical to succeed in squiggly career learning is critical i was trying to imagine what would we want to see uh read that doesn't happen today so you would want the word learning to be in every footsie 100 annual report not like is it at the moment probably not I know that it isn't some but probably not in all of them you'd want it to be really visible you'd want the word to be used a lot on LinkedIn so I'd love to see learning in annual reports in LinkedIn anywhere where people are talking about work on CVs imagine if every CV had a learning section what I've learned this year or what I want to learn more of yes learning objectives yes yeah maybe and maybe everybody in every job you know you have performance objectives you always have a learning objective as well alongside it yeah i think we could get quite carried away with this we probably could we probably could so this is our final theme everybody we want learning to be the thing that gets recognized and rewarding and whether you are a leader or just a learner make sure you are learning loudly in 2026 and don't forget to come learn with us on the sprint so sign up squiggly sprint.com so to everybody who's listened in 2025 thank you so much um i always love seeing everybody's like year wrapped where they're like oh i spent all this time listening to us and um i feel so grateful and we really appreciate you spending your time with us um if you ever have any feedback on the podcast if you have ideas if there are things you'd like us to borrow brilliance from we are just helen and sarah at squigglycareers.com but thank you again that's everything for now and we'll be back with you in 2026 see and speak to you next year everybody

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