A compassionate, coaching-style workshop for librarians and information professionals living through closures, cuts, restructures and professional change.

When a library changes, something real can be lost.

A branch may close. A specialist post may be replaced by a generic customer-service role. A team may be merged, reduced or dispersed. Familiar responsibilities may be automated or removed. Colleagues may leave through redundancy while those who remain are expected to absorb the work and carry on.

These changes are usually presented through the language of modernisation, efficiency, transformation or financial necessity.

What is less often acknowledged is the human loss beneath that language.

People may lose professional identity, specialist knowledge, trusted relationships, autonomy, status, belonging and a sense of purpose. Those losses do not disappear simply because an organisational decision was necessary or has already been implemented.

They deserve to be named.

What is organisational grief?

Organisational grief is the emotional, psychological and social response to loss at work.

It can arise after redundancy, retirement, branch closure or the ending of a service. It can also occur when a role still exists but has been changed so substantially that it no longer feels like the same job.

You might recognise:

Sadness, anger or disbelief
Anxiety about further change
Guilt about leaving or remaining
Exhaustion and difficulty concentrating
Cynicism about new initiatives
Disconnection from colleagues or the organisation
Loss of confidence or professional identity
Longing for a previous team, role or version of the service

These responses are not necessarily oversensitivity or resistance to change. They may be understandable responses to losing something that mattered.

This workshop gives you language for that experience and practical ways to carry it differently.

Why this matters in the library sector

Libraries have absorbed repeated waves of change: local authority cuts, branch closures, staffing reviews, restructures, service consolidations and the erosion of specialist posts.

For many library workers, this is not one isolated ending. It is an accumulation of losses experienced while continuing to welcome the public, reassure colleagues and deliver services with warmth and professionalism.

Over time, unacknowledged loss can contribute to:

Burnout and change fatigue
Reduced trust
Emotional withdrawal
Difficulty investing in new initiatives
Survivor guilt
Cynicism about the profession
The departure of experienced staff
A sense that years of knowledge and commitment have been disregarded

Naming organisational grief does not excuse poor decisions or unfair processes. It helps us understand why apparently operational changes can have such a lasting personal and professional effect.

What the workshop explores

During this 90-minute recorded session, we explore:

What organisational grief is and how it can appear
Why redundancy and role loss can trigger grief
The difference between external change and internal transition
William Bridges’ transition model
Why grief and adjustment are not linear
The Dual Process Model and movement between loss and restoration
Ambiguous loss when there is no clear ending
Cumulative loss after repeated rounds of restructuring
Professional identity loss
Survivor grief and guilt among those who remain
The hidden emotional labour of organisational change
Vocational awe and its effect on boundaries and wellbeing
Practical approaches to personal and team closure
Ways to protect your values without sacrificing yourself

Understanding change without forcing a timetable

Many people have encountered a “change curve” suggesting that everyone moves through predictable emotional stages before reaching acceptance.

Real experiences are usually more complicated.

You may feel hopeful one day and angry the next. A new announcement may reactivate feelings about an earlier closure. You may be managing practical demands while still mourning what has gone.

This workshop introduces models as lenses rather than rules. They can help you ask better questions, but they should never be used to judge whether you or your colleagues are adapting quickly enough.

Professional identity and role loss

For many librarians and information professionals, work is closely connected to identity.

You may have spent years developing specialist knowledge, building community relationships and learning to exercise professional judgement. When that work is deskilled, renamed or absorbed into a generic role, the impact may extend far beyond a revised job description.

The workshop helps you consider:

What your role represented
Which parts of your identity feel threatened
What knowledge is no longer being recognised
Which skills and values remain yours
What you want to carry forward
What you need permission to release

An organisation may remove a role. It cannot remove the experience, knowledge and values you developed through doing it.

Vocational awe in libraries

Fobazi Ettarh coined the term vocational awe to describe the belief that libraries are inherently good or sacred and that library work is a calling.

A strong belief in the value of libraries can be deeply sustaining. However, it can also make it harder to question harmful conditions.

Vocational awe may encourage library workers to accept low pay, chronic understaffing, emotional overload or work beyond their contracted hours because the service and its users matter so much.

It can also create guilt when someone needs to set a boundary, challenge an institution or leave the profession.

This workshop creates space to separate:

Your values
The institution
Your present role
Your worth as a person

You can believe in the importance of libraries without believing that every institutional decision is good.

Commitment does not require self-erasure.

Practical tools, not forced positivity

This is not a session about reframing every loss as an opportunity.

You will not be pressured to feel grateful, find a silver lining or arrive at acceptance by the end of the recording.

Instead, you will receive practical tools to help you:

Name what has been lost
Recognise clear and ambiguous endings
Understand your response without judging it
Separate what you can control, influence and only hold as a concern
Identify boundaries and sources of support
Create meaningful personal or team closure
Preserve professional knowledge and stories
Consider your next step without demanding complete certainty

The accompanying editable workbook allows you to explore the material privately and at your own pace.

What you will receive

Your course includes:

A 90-minute workshop recording
An editable reflective workbook
Course notes summarising the central ideas
Reflection and coaching questions
Diagrams explaining the principal models
A curated list of references and further reading
Practical exercises for personal and team use

You will leave with

Language to describe workplace loss without shame or self-blame
A clearer understanding of organisational grief
Greater awareness of your response to uncertainty and endings
Tools for navigating loss-oriented and restoration-oriented needs
Ways to support colleagues without trying to fix their feelings
Permission to grieve a role, service or professional future
A more grounded sense of what you want to carry forward
A compassionate next step, even if the full future is not yet clear

Who this workshop is for

This course is suitable for:

Librarians and library staff facing redundancy
People moving through redeployment or significant role change
Staff affected by branch closures or service reductions
Professionals whose specialist responsibilities have been removed
People who have remained while colleagues or teams have gone
Library managers supporting staff through restructuring
Information professionals questioning their future in the sector
Anyone struggling to let go of a role, service or professional identity

You do not need to have been made redundant to benefit.

For those who stayed

Remaining in an organisation after colleagues have left can bring its own form of grief.

You may feel relieved to have a job and guilty about that relief. You may miss former colleagues, feel angry about how they were treated or worry that you will be next. You may also be expected to absorb additional duties while projecting confidence to service users.

This workshop explicitly includes survivor grief and guilt. Your loss does not become invalid because you remained employed.

For managers and team leaders

The workshop can help managers understand why staff responses vary and why adjustment cannot be managed through a fixed emotional timetable.

It offers ideas for:

Acknowledging endings honestly
Communicating without minimising loss
Supporting different needs
Making space for questions and disagreement
Creating team-level closure
Recognising additional emotional labour
Avoiding the expectation that individual resilience will compensate for systemic pressure

The course does not replace meaningful consultation, fair procedures or appropriate employment advice.

Frequently asked questions

Is this counselling or therapy?

No. This is an educational and reflective CPD workshop. It helps participants understand a common workplace experience and offers tools for reflection and support. It is not a clinical or therapeutic intervention.

Is this a change-management course?

It explores theories of change and transition, but its focus is the human experience of endings. It does not teach people to suppress difficult feelings or become more compliant with organisational decisions.

I was not made redundant. Is this still for me?

Yes. The workshop addresses survivor grief, guilt, additional workload and the loss experienced when colleagues, services or branches disappear.

What if the restructure happened a long time ago?

Grief does not follow an organisational timetable. People are often too busy surviving a restructure to process it while it is happening. The course may be particularly useful once the immediate pressure has reduced.

Will this help if my role still exists but feels completely different?

Yes. The course explores ambiguous loss and professional identity loss, including situations where a job title remains but specialist duties, autonomy, relationships or meaning have changed.

Does it include vocational awe?

Yes. The workshop introduces Fobazi Ettarh’s concept of vocational awe and considers how beliefs about libraries as inherently good can affect boundaries, guilt and wellbeing.

Can managers take the course?

Yes. It is suitable for managers and team leaders who want to support staff more compassionately during restructuring. However, it should not be used as a substitute for genuine consultation or organisational responsibility.

Does this count towards CPD?

Yes. The session supports reflection on professional identity, organisational change, leadership, workplace wellbeing and ethical practice.

What is included?

You receive the 90-minute recording, an editable workbook, course notes, diagrams, reflection questions and a curated reference list.

How much does it cost?

The course is included as part of Empower Membership. Non-members can access it for £65.

Give the ending the space it deserves

Change in library services is not only operational.

It can be personal, relational and deeply connected to professional identity. Acknowledging that does not mean becoming stuck in the past. It means giving yourself enough space to recognise what mattered before deciding what comes next.

The loss deserves acknowledgement. Your pace deserves respect.

Access the workshop

Watch the 90-minute recording and work through the editable workbook in your own time.

Join a Live Empower Session