Someone resigns on Tuesday. By Wednesday, you’re reopening the old job description and asking recruitment to find someone similar.
It feels efficient. But backfilling a role without reviewing the work can preserve the same overloaded scope, unclear ownership and delivery problems.
Before you hire, confirm which outcomes still matter, where the work now sits and what capability the team needs next. Then decide whether to replace, redesign or remove the position. Protect immediate delivery while you make that decision, rather than treating temporary cover as the permanent answer.
The empty chair isn’t the brief.
Before committing to a recruitment search, agree who’s covering essential work and when you’ll decide the permanent requirement. Urgent cover and the next hire don’t have to solve the same problem.
Not every resignation needs a restructure. If the role is clear, properly scoped and still necessary, replacing it directly may be right. The point is to test that decision.
Review the work before backfilling the role
Responsibilities accumulate and temporary tasks become permanent. Processes change, but the job description doesn’t. A role can become a record of one person’s history rather than what the business needs next.
The uncomfortable possibility is that you’re replacing the person who made an awkward role work.
That deserves examination, not criticism of the person leaving. Speak with them and the people closest to their work before rewriting anything.
Look beyond recurring tasks. Include judgement, relationships, mentoring and problems prevented. Work that’s difficult to document can still be essential.
Use these 6 questions to guide the role redesign.
1. Which outcomes must survive?
Start with what the person genuinely owned. Which results still matter to clients, commercial performance and delivery? What would fail if nobody owned them next month?
Distinguish the result from the method used to achieve it. A recurring report isn’t the outcome. The decision it enables might be.
Agree on the essential outcomes and how you’ll recognise success. Then establish the authority, information and support needed to deliver them. Don’t make someone accountable for results they have no authority to influence.
This gives you a stronger basis for assessing candidates than a familiar title or comparable years of experience.
You’re looking for evidence that someone can deliver the required outcomes. The departing employee’s particular combination of employers, skills and career history shouldn’t become the selection criteria by default.
2. Which responsibilities should stop or move?
Ask why each responsibility sits in the role. Does it belong with the core outcomes, or did this person inherit it because they were available, capable or willing?
A senior marketer may have accumulated events, reporting, internal communications and sales material. Those responsibilities might belong together. Their history alone doesn’t prove that they should.
Check who uses the output, what depends on it and what would happen if it stopped. Remove duplication and obsolete work, while protecting coordination that keeps delivery moving.
Keep linked responsibilities together when separating them would weaken decisions or add handovers. The aim is a coherent role that someone can own and deliver well.
Apply the same discipline to technology. Jobs and Skills Australia’s 2025 Gen AI study assessed greater potential for generative AI to assist human work than replace it.
That’s a reason to examine tasks, not assume an entire role can disappear. Before counting a saving, test what the tools actually remove, what checking remains and who owns the final result.
Faster production doesn’t automatically remove the need for judgement.
3. Where does the work actually sit now?
The job description may show responsibilities that have already moved. Equally, someone else may be covering work temporarily without having the capacity to own it permanently.
Establish which situation you’re dealing with.
Map who does the work, who makes the decisions and who remains accountable. Resolve overlaps before putting the role into the market.
A new hire shouldn’t have to negotiate ownership that the business hasn’t settled. If existing team members expect to retain decisions the new role is supposed to own, resolve that before promising the candidate autonomy.
If someone’s ready for broader ownership, consider it properly. Confirm their interest, support and workload, then recruit around the remaining gap. Don’t mistake their willingness to help for unlimited capacity.
4. What capability will matter next?
Replacement hiring should support the next 12 to 24 months, not preserve the work of 3 years ago.
What’s actually changing in the business? Which decisions will become harder, and where will the team need stronger capability?
Connect the answer to approved plans, credible demand and a realistic budget. Don’t build a wish list around growth that hasn’t been agreed.
For agencies, studios and marketing teams, be explicit about whether you need strategic direction, hands on delivery or both. If both, check that the workload leaves room for both and decide which takes priority when delivery gets busy.
Separate what the person must bring on day 1 from what they can develop with support. A role can have room to grow without making 1 person responsible for every weakness in the business.
5. What level, title and salary fit the work?
Determine seniority from the decisions, complexity, accountability and support required. Don’t simply inherit the departing person’s title.
A senior departure may expose a need for better junior support rather than another senior person carrying routine execution. A mid level departure may reveal that the business now needs genuine leadership.
Salary savings alone shouldn’t decide the level. If you reduce it, be clear about who’ll provide direction, make difficult decisions and carry the risk. If you increase it, provide the authority and resources to match.
Title should describe the work honestly. Salary should reflect the revised scope and the relevant market, not just the previous employee’s pay.
If the budget won’t support the requirement, change the scope or the structure. A broader job description won’t make the mismatch disappear.
6. Should this be a separate role at all?
The answer may be no. The work might suit internal progression, freelance and contract support or a redesigned team.
But keeping delivery moving during a vacancy doesn’t prove the team can sustain that arrangement.
Safe Work Australia’s guidance on job demands recommends enough skilled people for the work, realistic timeframes and additional support where needed.
Before redistributing responsibilities, establish what the receiving person will stop doing. Include management time, lost focus and delivery risk in the decision, not just the salary removed.
If the saving depends on everyone quietly working longer, the work hasn’t been redesigned.
Ask whether you’d create this position in its current form today. If not, change it before recruiting. Set a review date for the new arrangement so temporary compromises don’t quietly become permanent.
Build the brief before you compare candidates
Put the decisions into a recruitment brief: purpose, outcomes, ownership, authority, essential capability and measures of success. Confirm salary, location and work model, then translate the agreed requirement into a clear job description.
Get the decision makers aligned before anyone approaches candidates. If the scope changes halfway through the search, the original shortlist is being judged against a different job. You can reject suitable people because the business hadn’t decided what was essential when they were approached.
Market feedback may justify changing the brief. When it does, make the change explicit and reset the assessment criteria.
Before asking who’s available, agree what you’re hiring them to deliver.
The empty chair isn’t the brief. The work is.
