How to optimise shifts during a hiring freeze

What is a hiring freeze?

A hiring freeze refers to a temporary halt in recruiting new staff. Often used in response to budget pressures or restructuring, it's sometimes labelled a recruitment freeze, job freeze, hiring ban, or even a hiring moratorium.

In some cases, it may not be officially announced at all - instead emerging as a quiet pause in approvals, delayed backfills, or long-term vacancy holds.

What’s the impact of a hiring freeze on frontline workers?

In healthcare, these freezes hit differently. Patient demand doesn’t pause, and vacancies left unfilled often push the pressure directly onto frontline teams, increasing workload, stretching rosters, and placing safe staffing at risk.

According to NZNO, many nursing vacancies remain unfilled across Aotearoa, with some District Health Boards implementing informal hiring freezes despite growing clinical demand.

A survey conducted in 2024 revealed that 86% of health workers believe that budget cuts, including hiring restrictions, will make it harder for people to access healthcare. This sentiment underscores the frontline impact of the hiring freeze.

Key challenges for managers during a hiring freeze

Managers and roster coordinators navigating a freeze face a tricky juggling act:

• Covering vacancies without locums or new hires
• Balancing safety and fairness in shift allocations
• Maintaining morale among stretched staff
• Staying compliant with union agreements and fatigue limits
• Meeting leave obligations despite limited flexibility

In short: you're expected to do more with less - but without compromising care.

Strategise to optimise your shifts during a freeze

Strategy 1: Optimise your skill mix, not just headcount

One of the most effective ways to navigate staffing constraints is to focus on skill mix rather than raw staff numbers. That means thinking about:

• Which qualifications and competencies are needed per shift
• How junior and senior staff are balanced
• Maximising coverage based on skills

Optimising your skill mix ensures you maintain safe, effective care - even with fewer people on the roster.

Digital rostering tools that allow skills-based matching when building shifts can help support this. The tools ensure you have the right capabilities for each shift - not just the right number of staff.

Strategy 2: Use AI rostering to maximise shift efficiency

“Hiring freezes are often felt first by those last consulted - frontline staff. AI rostering can help rebalance that reality.” - Isaac, Co founder of RosterLab

During a hiring freeze, every shift counts. That’s why AI-powered rostering tools have become essential in many hospital departments.

Instead of manually juggling complex requirements, AI tools can help:

• Automatically generate fair, balanced rosters within minutes
• Account for staff fatigue limits, union rules, and leave
• Optimise shift lengths, breaks, and handovers
• Reduce unintentional over-reliance on certain individuals
• Spot inefficiencies in your current roster setup

AI doesn’t replace human oversight - it optimizes your decision-making, freeing you up to focus on leadership, support and most importantly better patient outcomes.

Hospitals using AI rostering have reported 90% reductions in rostering time and up to 5% gains in staffing efficiency - even during hiring pauses.

Strategy 3: Communicate proactively and protect wellbeing

When staff feel unsupported or in the dark, a hiring freeze quickly erodes morale. As a leader, your role in transparent, compassionate communication is critical.

Here’s what helps:

• Acknowledge the strain - don’t pretend it’s business as usual.
• Share what you know - be honest and transparent about the hiring status and timelines.
• Explain how rosters are built - involve staff in understanding constraints and trade-offs.
• Flag alternatives - promote internal secondments, shift pick-up options, or flexible arrangements when possible.
• Watch for fatigue signs - support leave where you can, and flag risks early with upper management.

A collaborative culture around rostering helps teams feel more in control - even when options are limited.

Strategy 4: Plan ahead for post-freeze recovery

Hiring freezes rarely last forever - but their effects linger. Proactive teams can see the freeze as a period to improve processes and optimize for efficiency so they’re ready to scale back up when permitted.

During the freeze:

• Audit rostering rules and pain points
• Implement or trial digital rostering solutions
• Refine shift coverage maps and skill tracking
• Track overtime and backfill patterns for future recruitment planning

By the time roles reopen, you’ll have robust data and a more efficient rostering system in place - making it easier to justify new hires and structure teams strategically.

Strategy 5: Rethink “vacancy management” as a rostering issue

Too often, hiring freezes are seen as HR problems. However, when rostering and vacancy management work together, services are more resilient.

Ask:

• Are we over-rostering to fill gaps that could be solved with better allocation?
• Can role design be tweaked to allow coverage across units?
• Do we know which shifts are hardest to fill - and why?

Having visibility of this data from a rostering platform can give workforce planners the insights they need to make smarter calls - even before the next vacancy opens.

Don’t wait for the freeze to thaw

If you're a manager dealing with a hiring freeze, you're not alone - and you're not powerless.

While you may not control recruitment approvals, you do control how effectively your current workforce is rostered, supported, and empowered. With the right tools and mindset, you can protect staff wellbeing, maintain service delivery, and emerge from the freeze stronger than before.

For many healthcare leaders, this starts with optimizing your shift planning - and ends with a better experience for both your teams and the patients they care for.

Explore how RosterLab’s digital scheduling solution is helping healthcare departments adapt to staffing pressures with fairness, speed, and compliance built in.