Redeployment and external recruitment needed the same vacancy view

The framework for wider protection

The 2023 Act allowed existing redundancy protections associated with maternity, adoption and shared parental leave to be extended, including to pregnancy and a period after leave. The Act’s passage was a legislative milestone. It should not be described as if every later protected period had already commenced on that day.

This article considers the process lesson from that milestone rather than advising on an individual redundancy. Deciding whether someone has priority for a suitable alternative vacancy requires employer-led assessment. An external recruiter should not decide that a vacancy is available for unrestricted external hiring merely because it appears in an applicant-tracking system.

Where a vacancy can lose its HR context

Redeployment and recruitment sometimes sit in different workflows. HR may be reviewing affected employees while a hiring manager requests an advert through a routine approval path. Without a shared checkpoint, a search can progress before the employer has considered who should be offered an alternative role or whether external activity should pause.

A practical control is an approval field confirming that relevant internal checks have been completed, with a named owner rather than a vague tick box. Recruiters usually need the outcome and any restrictions, not a broad list of employees’ family circumstances. That distinction helps preserve confidentiality while making the vacancy’s status visible.

Keep recruitment inside the approved sequence

Key Med Solutions can help maintain a vacancy register that distinguishes requested, internally reviewed, authorised for external search and paused roles. Those statuses can be agreed with a client’s HR team and used consistently by sourcing and interview coordinators. The register records decisions; it does not replace the legal assessment behind them.

Where a role is paused, administrative support can prevent automated candidate chasing or new interview invitations from continuing by mistake. Where external recruitment is authorised, the approval date and responsible contact can travel with the brief. The benefit is a clearer sequence of work, rather than a claim that software alone ensures compliance.

The historical lesson is that family-leave protections and external hiring cannot be managed in isolation. A well-designed recruitment handover gives the employer time and information to make its decisions. Key Med can provide research, tracking and communication support within that handover, while employment advice and redundancy decisions remain with the client.