Notification of recruitment freeze letter

Where you’re implementing a recruitment freeze, it’s advisable to notify your staff about this.

Recruitment freeze advantages

There can be various reasons for implementing a recruitment freeze but normally it’s a cost-saving measure brought about by economic factors or a business downturn. Sometimes, it can be a useful alternative to redundancy, perhaps alongside other measures too, such as reducing or removing paid overtime or implementing a pay freeze (see our Notification of Pay Freeze Letter). The advantages of a recruitment freeze over redundancy include that it can save both the management time and financial costs involved in undertaking a redundancy programme, it may improve employee morale if you’re seen as keen to retain existing staff and you won’t lose your employees’ valuable skills and experience.

Letter purpose

Where your business is facing uncertainty, good communication with staff is key. So, the purpose of our Notification of Recruitment Freeze Letter is to explain to employees what’s going on and why you’re implementing a recruitment freeze. It also sets out how long you currently expect the freeze to last but makes this subject to ongoing monitoring. Although a total recruitment freeze normally involves not recruiting externally for new posts and not replacing any employees who may resign, retire or be dismissed (natural attrition), you need to think about whether any key or critical posts would still need to be filled if the current incumbents were to leave. So, our letter includes that caveat.

Vacant posts

A recruitment freeze can result in resourcing issues as vacant posts go unfilled. So, you may then need to ask some staff to temporarily take on additional job duties and responsibilities to cover those vacant posts. Our letter covers this aspect too. Bear in mind that you’re under a duty to keep your employees free from the risk of harm to their health and safety as far as reasonably practicable, so you must consider the potential effect of expecting them to cover vacant posts, such as the impact on mental and physical health of longer working hours. Plus, employees may object to taking on extra work without extra pay.