LHH's data on 418,000 laid-off workers argues for redeploying staff before cutting them

James McIlvena, LHH's managing director for Australia, New Zealand and Singapore ^[13], told HRD that employers still assume a redundant worker will spend a short spell unemployed "and then you'll be back into a similar role" ^[15]. The firm's records cut against that. Between 56% and 58% of displaced workers in LHH's data have moved into a different occupation every year since 2022 ^[5]. The 2025 figure of 57.68% sits inside that band ^[2].

The moves cluster by job. Customer operations staff who left went most often into sales, supply chain and operations coordination ^[7]. Software developers moved less, but around 35% of the 63,000 that LHH supported over two years still changed function or industry ^[8]. McIlvena pointed to call centre roles shrinking through offshoring and automation ^[16]. For those workers, he said, the pivot "becomes essential to ending up in a new role. Otherwise, they're likely to have a really extended period of unemployment" ^[14].

A skeptic would look first at who is making the case. LHH is a career transition firm ^[13], and its pivot data comes entirely from the more than 418,000 people it supported after job losses ^[1]. Its cost claim is a survey answer: McIlvena said 73% of organisations report that rehiring costs more than redeploying existing talent ^[11]. The account of the survey does not put a dollar amount on either option. The 19% figure is skewed too ^[12]. It comes from employees entering LHH's placement programmes, people who by definition were not redeployed. The 81% of them who did not see a meaningful effort ^[17] are describing their own exits. Redeployments that worked never reach that sample.

The reason for a cut sets how much redeployment can offer. HR leaders' cited drivers for 2026 are spread across AI and automation, skills mismatches, and mergers and acquisitions ^[9]. McIlvena splits AI redundancies in two. "One is the roles that are actually replaced by automation or an agent. The other is the roles that are displaced because they're looking to save money to reinvest into adoption of AI, pay for tokens," he said ^[10]. In the second kind the employer wants the salary gone. Redeployment avoids the rehiring cost but keeps the salary on the books. A skills mismatch is closer to the problem redeployment addresses, if the company can retrain for the gap in-house.

I think the case holds more firmly on timing than on savings. A redeployment review run after the selection list is settled can offer only the vacancies left over. Run before, it shapes who is on the list. The evidence for planning it that way is uneven: placement data going back to 2022 showing most leavers change occupation ^[5], and a self-reported cost comparison passed on by the career transition firm itself ^[11].