When to Recruit After Making Someone Redundant
Understanding when to recruit after making someone redundant starts with one key principle in NZ law: redundancy removes the role, not the person.
A disestablished position no longer exists in your structure, which means you can’t simply refill it unless the role itself has genuinely changed or the business need has shifted.
An employee only exits the business when there is no suitable redeployment option available at that time. While there is no legal requirement to hold roles for six months, best-practice HR guidance recommends offering any upcoming suitable positions for a reasonable period to demonstrate good faith and reduce the risk of a personal grievance.
This is why understanding when to recruit after redundancy is essential. Rehiring into the same or very similar role too soon can increase the risk of a claim that the redundancy was not genuine.
Practically speaking, you can only recruit after redundancy when there is a genuinely new or materially different business need. If the role looks substantially the same as the one disestablished, it may be viewed as recreating the same job, even if the title has changed.
It must be clear and defensible that your new position reflects real changes in duties, structure, or business requirements.
If you’re working through redundancy or restructuring and want to check that your HR foundations are solid, our free HR audit | People Inc Scorecard gives you instant clarity.
When to recruit after making someone redundant: what the law allows
Understanding when to recruit after making someone redundant means also understanding what must happen first. The restructure process has to be transparent, fair, and based on genuine business needs and not performance issues or convenience. Skipping steps or rushing the process is the most common reason employers end up facing personal grievances.
Following a compliant restructure significantly reduces the risk of a grievance. The moment redundancy feels personal, rushed, or poorly communicated, employers lose trust and credibility fast. A clear, fair process protects both your people and your business.
See Employment NZ’s redundancy guidance for additional context.
Restructuring process
When can you recruit after making someone redundant? After the business planning and structure revisions are considered at management level – based on business requirements, the initial stage of restructuring is one of consultation and soliciting feedback from the employees. Anyone potentially impacted by a change in the structure must be consulted – and there is a strict sequence of events to be followed to ensure this process is compliant. We are not listing that information here, simply because compliance requirements can change from time to time.
Employees should be invited to have a support person attend meetings with them (but are not required to do so) – meaning that enough time to allow people to contact their support person and enough time to consider the situation to hand must be allowed for in the process – but not so much time that they begin to become anxious. A couple of days are generally enough.
Most employers getting into difficulty with grievances have skipped this step and presumed that they have the right to make changes that impact on employees without a consultation process.
Following consultation, the employer is required to take time to consider feedback before moving forward.
In the case of a team where all employees have the same position and one or more positions are to be disestablished, in the absence of a company policy stating the redundancy structure when restructuring occurs (which we recommend for all businesses), each team member must be individually met with an interviewed for the remaining positions.
In this instance, a selection process is required. That process must also be transparent and laid out at the initial consultation so that everyone knows what to expect.
Following your reconsideration, another meeting must be held.
Positive side effects of managing a restructure and redundancy process correctly are as follows:
Firstly, you have taken time to consider the restructure from a business point of view and you have a business based reason for the moves at play. This ensures no personality or performance related issues are able to be connected to your decisions.
Secondly, because the team has been informed from the outset, had the opportunity to input and to consider what the business needs, they will adjust much more easily to losing a job or a teammate.
Employers acting in good faith putting business needs at the fore will generally manage this process without it feeling personal for the employees, which means less risk and less grief due to a team member’s job and thus a team member being removed.
Need assistance or guidance with this process? Our team of HR experts are here to help or to manage the process for you. Often that is easier for all concerned. Please contact if you feel that this would be helpful for you.
If you’re unsure whether your restructure is compliant, or when it’s safe to recruit again, our free HR Audit is a simple place to start. It gives you a quick read on your HR systems, risks, and next steps so you can move forward with confidence.