Bright spots
Layoffs look like the fast answer. They are usually the most expensive one. Here is exactly where redeployment wins — and the numbers that prove it.
Laying off and rehiring is not one cost — it is four stacked on top of each other, and most of them are invisible on the day the decision is made:
Add it up and one layoff-and-rehire cycle costs roughly DKK 553k per person. One internal redeployment — the match, the conversation, the onboarding — costs about DKK 45k. The other ~DKK 508k stays in the business.
An external hire starts with a search that takes months. A redeployment starts with a person who already knows the company, the systems and the patient. The posting is already on the wall — the question is only who. That is what the engine answers in seconds, with a shortlist and a reason. Weeks, not quarters.
Every departure is a small leak of institutional knowledge: process history, audit lore, the name of the person who actually knows how the batch record system works. Redeployment keeps the person and moves the context with them. The ramp-up problem does not disappear — but it happens inside the organisation, with a colleague who can be productive from week one, not month seven.
Redeployment decisions attract scrutiny: works councils, unions, employee representatives, auditors. The usual answer — "the manager felt she was the right fit" — does not survive that room. A deterministic rulebook does. Every assignment is the output of published constraints and weights, every decision can be replayed to the byte, and every person receives the written reason. Bias claims die on the second run: same input, same answer, no exceptions except the logged ones.
The team that stays watches how the team that leaves is treated. A visible, structured redeployment programme says the company invests in its people instead of discarding them at the first reorganisation. Internal mobility is one of the strongest retention signals there is — and it costs a fraction of the recruitment machine it replaces.
Informal redeployments go to whoever the manager happens to know. The engine matches on capability, sub-family, location and documented skill profile — the same evidence for everyone. That is fairer for employees, and it surfaces talent the grapevine would never have found.
Every run leaves behind a structured picture of the talent pool: who is moveable, where, and at what score. After two or three runs, leadership has a living map of internal mobility instead of a folder of anecdotes — which is exactly what a restructuring conversation with the board needs.
Headcount, spots, salary level — see the savings for your scenario in real time.