Questions we answer Hiring and headcount

Should I replace someone who left?

A departure is the cheapest chance you will get to ask whether the role should exist in the shape it did. Replacing like for like is a decision, not a default.

Start from this question

Free · a few minutes · starts from “I think we need another person”

The short answer

Not automatically. A departure is the one moment when the cost of rethinking a role is close to zero, and replacing like for like spends that moment. Establish what the person actually did, as opposed to what the job description said: often part of it has become unnecessary, part belongs with someone else, and part is a genuine role. Replace when what is left is durable, owned and central. Reshape when the leaver had accumulated a collection of tasks nobody would design together today.

Replacing a leaver feels like the neutral option — you had the headcount, you are simply refilling it. It is not neutral. It commits the next year or two of that budget to the shape the role happened to have when someone resigned.

Most long-held roles drift. They accumulate the things nobody else wanted, lose the things that got automated, and end up as a collection that made sense one task at a time and none at all as a whole.

Is it really this?

Worth checking before you spend anything. These are the signals that tend to tell the two apart.

Signs it is

The work stopped and its absence is being felt by customers or colleagues.
You can describe the role in a sentence without listing the leaver's personal habits.
Someone was already covering it temporarily and it is clearly too much for them.

Signs it's something else

Several weeks on, nobody can say precisely what has stopped happening.
The role is described mostly as "what they used to do" rather than as outcomes.
Half of what they did was work created by a process that could be changed.

What's usually behind it

Immediate pressure — work the leaver was doing is now not getting done, visibly.
A role that has quietly changed shape over several years without the description changing.
Anxiety about losing headcount if the vacancy is not filled promptly.

What people usually get wrong

Reposting the old job description because it is already written.
Filling quickly to protect the headcount, then discovering the role no longer fits the team.
Missing that the leaver was the only person who knew something, and hiring before writing it down.

The options, and when each one fits

In no particular order. Which of these fits depends on your situation, not on the question you typed.

Replace the role as it was
The work is durable, central and still coherent as one job.
Reshape and then recruit
Part of the work belongs elsewhere or should not exist; what is left is still a role.
Redistribute permanently
The work has already spread and is being absorbed without visible strain.
Cover temporarily while you decide
The work cannot stop but you are not ready to commit to a shape.

When doing nothing is the right call

A few weeks of deliberately not replacing is the cheapest experiment available. What genuinely breaks tells you what the role is; what nobody misses tells you what it was not. The one thing to do immediately is capture whatever only the leaver knew, because that window closes fast.

What the diagnostic asks

What a new person would mainly add: capacity, a missing skill, or both.
Who owns the work now, and whether someone could grow into it.
Whether the need is growing, steady or easing.
Whether a permanent hire is realistically fundable.

“I don't know” is always an answer. Nothing is assumed on your behalf.

The routes it weighs

Every diagnostic weighs all ten routes. These are the ones that tend to matter for this question — a description of the rules, not a promise about your answer.

Recruit
Recruit a new person for a durable, sizeable need that is central to the team.
Redistribute
Move ownership of the work to where it fits, and make that explicit.
Process improvement
Change how the work flows — remove steps, name an owner, fix the hand-offs.
Develop
Build the capability in someone already in the team, with time and support.
Outsource
Hand a defined, ongoing scope of work to an external provider.
Do nothing yet
Record the issue, set a revisit date, and decide what would change your mind.

What changes the answer

Work that is central, durable and clearly owned supports replacing.
Work that has scattered across three people since the departure, with nobody complaining, suggests it should stay scattered.
An internal candidate who has been doing part of it already changes the shape of the hire.

Get your own read

A handful of short questions, then the strongest route for your situation, what's also credible, what we still don't know and what would change our view. No account, no setup.