A years salary from a retail redundancy wow! That's about as generous as you can get. That certainly buys you a lot of time (especially if some is tax free) to make some decisions, to get some experience and to stay in HR

Only you can make this decision however. No one can or should tell you what to do.

If you are at the admin end of the HR spectrum and are reasonably flexible then I would have thought there would be temporary openings in HR along the way.

Whats your passion? What is your key motivator? Working in HR or job security?

In reply to Keith:

Hi Keith

Thank you for the reply.
I feel my motivator is people development, which does flick my switch. However I’ve been with the same company for 28 years, and maybe feel it’s time for a change. It is just the risk of doing this does not make me feel great. I am 44 and in the middle of my career, and want to make the best decision for me.

I am in a similar situation and will be made redundant in June with a year's salary after 14 years. I am looking on it as an opportunity to try new things with another company. It is actually quite exciting.

In reply to Rosemary:

Hi Rosemary, I think I need to do some further training, such as employment law etc. I feel I should take small steps to a career change, rather than one giant leap.