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.
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.
Managers and roster coordinators navigating a freeze face a tricky juggling act:
In short: you're expected to do more with less - but without compromising care.
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:
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.
“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:
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.
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:
A collaborative culture around rostering helps teams feel more in control - even when options are limited.
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:
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.
Too often, hiring freezes are seen as HR problems. However, when rostering and vacancy management work together, services are more resilient.
Ask:
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.
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.