Redundancy support · published pricing
See pricing
Founding client rate Our first cohorts are discounted for a named case study
For employers · redundancy support

Most outplacement teaches your people to job-hunt.
We do it for them.

Six months of their search, run by us. Roles found, applications tailored and actually submitted, and a dashboard showing you the interviews. Not a portal and a couple of coaching calls.

450 applications each, submitted
Published pricing, no minimum
Aggregate reporting only
secondwind.careers / cohort · Northgate Retail
Cohort dashboard · October intake
30 enrolled · updated 07:00 today
28
TAKE-UP
4,180
APPLICATIONS
312
RESPONSES
64
INTERVIEWS
Median days to first interview19
This month
Offers accepted · 7 people placed7
Still active · drawing from the pool21
Not engaged · contacted 3×, reported honestly2
Aggregate only. You never see an individual's applications — and we tell them so on day one.
The market your leavers are walking into

It is harder out there than the last time you ran this

280
applications per role, up from 125 in 2022
2.5
unemployed people per vacancy
3–4
months, the average UK professional search
180
days’ pay — the maximum protective award since April 2026

Which is why six weeks of coaching calls does not move the number that matters.

Four minutes

The whole thing, explained properly

What outplacement usually buys you, what it doesn’t, and what changes when somebody actually does the applying. Worth watching before you take this to your board — or send them the link instead.

Outplacement support, explained
What it usually buys — and what it should
3:56

Sound on. Nothing plays until you press it.

The choice

There are three things you can buy

Only one of them changes what actually happens after your people walk out of the building.

Traditional outplacement

Coaches them to apply

A portal, a CV review, a few calls

They still do all the applying themselves, at 11pm, while demoralised. Take-up collapses after week two and nobody reports it to you.

AI auto-appliers

Fires off applications

Volume, with no judgement

Wrong roles, wrong level, sometimes the wrong country. Employers can tell, and it is your leaver’s name on every one of them.

Second Wind

Actually does the applying

A person chooses. A person checks. Every time.

450 applications each, genuinely submitted, written against their real experience and checked before they go. Interviews you can see on a dashboard.

The distinction that matters

By the industry’s own definition, outplacement providers coach people to apply — they do not apply on anyone’s behalf. We do. That is the whole difference, and it is why we can be funded for a cohort rather than bought as a workshop.

For your people

Six months of their search, handled

  • First applications usually out within a couple of working days — we start the moment they’re onboarded
  • Roles chosen by a person, matched to what they can genuinely win
  • CV and LinkedIn rebuilt for the roles they’re actually going for
  • Written against their real experience and checked by a person before submission
  • A coach-grade interview playbook every time an interview lands
  • A named human, not a shared inbox
  • Their own dashboard, refreshed every working day
  • Six months, not six weeks. We cover the real timeline
For you

The bit no other provider gives you

  • A cohort dashboard — enrolled, take-up, applications, responses, interviews, offers, median days to first interview
  • A monthly report you can take to your board
  • Honest take-up data, including when it’s low
  • A named account contact who knows your cohort
  • PO invoicing, DPAs and the security documentation procurement will ask for
  • A service charter setting out exactly what we’ve committed to
Aggregate only — and we tell them so on day one

You see how the cohort is doing. You never see an individual’s applications, which roles they went for, or who turned them down. We tell every participant that at the start, and it is precisely why they engage with it. A programme people believe is being reported back to their employer is a programme nobody uses.

The pool

Nobody’s allocation goes to waste

Most providers give each person a fixed allowance that expires. If someone is hired in week six, whatever they didn’t use is simply gone. We don’t do that.

Hired in week 6stops drawing down
~100 used
Hired in month 3a typical search
~230 used
Still searching at month 5draws on what others didn’t need
~600 used — more than their share
30 people · 13,500 applications · used where they’re neededNothing expires. Nothing is wasted.
The question this answers

“What happens to the balance if someone gets a job in month two?” Per-head allocation answers that badly — the money is spent and the applications vanish. Pooling answers it properly: that capacity goes to a colleague who is still looking. Better outcomes for your cohort, better value for you, and no other provider offers it.

Pricing

Published, because you shouldn’t have to ask

Six months per person · 450 applications each · pooled across your cohort.

How many peoplePer personPer person / monthCohort management
1–4£1,500 first, £1,200 after£200–250included
5–9£1,100£219£1,500
10–24£1,000£183£1,500
25–49£950£172£2,500
50–99£900£157£2,500
100+£850£148£4,000

The cohort management fee is per engagement, not per person — it covers your dashboard, monthly reporting, take-up data and a named account contact.

No minimum

One person is a real engagement and we’ll treat it like one. If you’re supporting a single senior exit under a settlement agreement, that is often where we do our best work — same six months, same 450 applications.

Cheaper per head than our own consumer product

From ten people upward you pay less per person per month than an individual pays for our self-serve service — £183 against £199, falling as the group grows. UK outplacement runs £200–£5,000 a head; we sit mid-range and we’re the ones actually submitting.

Founding client rate

Our first engagements are discounted in exchange for a named case study. That discount ends after our first three cohorts or our first published case study, whichever comes first — a stated trigger, not an indefinite sale. Ask what it is when we speak.

Before you need it

Or fund it as a benefit, before anyone needs it

Everything above is bought when a restructure is already happening. There is a cheaper, calmer way to do the same thing — pay for it in advance, as a benefit, and never run an emergency procurement round again.

Second Wind Standby

£5 per employee per month fixes your programme rates below published pricing, puts activation inside 24 hours with the paperwork already done, and delivers an annual readiness review plus pay benchmarking for your roles — whether or not you ever make anyone redundant.

See how the balance works →

Why companies prefer it this way

It is the benefit people actually want in this economy, it removes the guilt tax that delays hard decisions, and it fixes your price before you are negotiating under time pressure.

It is a service agreement, deliberately not insurance — and we explain exactly why that distinction matters.

Priority

When speed matters more than anything

Some people can’t wait. A senior hire burning through savings, someone whose visa clock is running, a director who needs to be back in the market before the news gets around.

Priority · £1,800 per person

  • Two specialists on their search instead of one
  • First applications within 24 hours, not 48
  • The full programme front-loaded into the first six weeks
  • Senior positioning and direct approaches to hiring managers
  • Priority review on everything that goes out

Why we can do this and they can’t

We add people to a search. Coaching-led providers are limited by how many hours one coach has in a week, and they cannot add coaches quickly.

Mix and match. Most engagements put a handful of senior people on Priority and everyone else on Standard. Tell us the levels and we’ll suggest the split.

There is also an outcome-linked option — a lower fee up front, the balance payable on placement. We’ll walk you through it once we’ve agreed what counts as a placement.

The business case

Three reasons beyond doing right by people

1

A leaver who’s hired doesn’t sue you

From 6 April 2026 the maximum protective award doubled to 180 days’ pay per employee. Anything that shortens the gap between leaving and landing is the cheapest risk reduction available to you.

Worth knowing: collective consultation, HR1 filing and the protective award apply at 20+ redundancies at one establishment within 90 days. Below that threshold this argument doesn’t apply — and we’d rather tell you that than let you take a weak case to your finance director.

2

The people who stay are watching

How you treat leavers is the clearest signal your remaining team gets about what this place is. Replacing a good person who quietly starts looking costs far more than supporting the one who left.

3

Every one of them has a LinkedIn account

Support that visibly works generates the opposite of bad press. People post about being looked after. They also post about not being.

A note on settlement agreements

Outplacement is routinely written into settlement agreements as a non-cash sweetener, usually suggested by the employment solicitor, and those clauses commonly state the employer will not pay cash in lieu. So the “why not just give them the money” objection tends not to arise. If you’re drafting one, we can give you wording.

HR FAQ

The questions procurement will ask

Yes, and we're specific about how. Every participant opts in and sets the specification we work to. Every application is logged to their dashboard with the exact CV we sent, so they always know what an employer is holding before an interview. Nothing is invented — everything is something they could defend in an interview. We apply as them, with their consent, never misrepresenting who we are, and we respect each site's terms. Our full standard is published at how we work.
Both, and we're straight about which does what. A person chooses every role. AI drafts against the participant's real CV and history, which is what lets us do this at volume and at this price. A person checks it before it goes out. We never let AI apply on its own.
Everything is set out at security: what we collect, where it sits, who can see it, how long we keep it and who our sub-processors are. We'll sign your DPA or provide ours, and we can complete a supplier security questionnaire.
Some won't, and we'll tell you. We report take-up honestly, including when it's poor, and we follow up with them — but we don't pretend a cohort is going well when it isn't. Because the allocation is pooled, someone who disengages doesn't waste the budget.
Six months covers the average UK search with room either side, but no honest provider can guarantee a job. What we commit to is the work set out in your engagement letter. If you'd rather share the risk, ask about our outcome-linked option — a lower fee up front and the balance payable only on placement.
No. Single exits and small groups are some of the best work we do — the same six months and the same 450 applications each, with a simple monthly summary instead of a cohort dashboard. Plenty of engagements start with one person under a settlement agreement.
It doesn't, on the measure that matters. From ten people upward you're paying less per person per month than an individual pays for our self-serve product — £183 against £199, falling as the group gets larger. The application allowance differs because yours is pooled: someone hired in month two stops drawing down and that capacity goes to a colleague who's still looking. In practice an active participant draws well more than the headline number.
Yes — with a different method. Executive searches are targeted rather than volume-led, with senior-level positioning and direct approaches to hiring managers. Quoted separately.
This week. First applications go out usually within a couple of working days of a participant being onboarded.
Please do. Split the cohort, give us fifteen of the thirty, and compare the interview counts at day 45. It's the fastest way to find out whether we're better, and we're comfortable being measured that way.
Very little. An introduction to the cohort, and someone we can send the monthly report to. We handle the rest.
You'd be among our first employer clients — which is exactly why our first cohorts are discounted in exchange for a named case study, and why you get the dashboard from day one so you can see it working, or not, in real time. We'd rather say that plainly than dress up a thin track record.

Fifteen minutes

Tell us how many people, what levels, and what your timeline is. We’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right fit — and if we’re not, we’ll say so.