More restructuring-related exits make role design, cash planning and redeployment part of the same decision.
At nine on Monday morning, a founder studies three screens. One shows a weaker order book. Another holds the payroll forecast. The third contains an organisation chart with one position marked in red.
Removing that role appears to solve the immediate margin problem. Yet the work attached to it will not disappear so neatly.
CBS has put a national figure behind this uncomfortable meeting. The share of employees citing business-economic reasons or labour conflict as their main reason for leaving rose from 4.9 percent in 2022 to 8.1 percent in 2025. The increase sits largely in cutbacks, reorganisations and conflicts, rather than bankruptcy.
That points to earlier adjustment. More employers are changing capacity, costs or organisation before formal failure. Such a move can be responsible management. It can also become expensive improvisation when the numbers, roles and people do not tell the same story.
The pressure is real, but uneven
The Dutch labour market is cooling. In August 2026, unemployment stood at 4.0 percent, representing 408,000 people. Employers still cannot assume they will easily rebuild a team later.
At the end of the second quarter, there were still 375,000 vacancies. That equalled 95 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people.
This mismatch matters. A company may have too much administrative capacity and too few technicians. A restaurant may need fewer weekday hours but still struggle to cover weekends. A production business may reduce one shift while protecting the specialist who keeps a critical machine running.
National figures cannot make those choices. Management must decide which work has genuinely reduced, which tasks will move, and which knowledge the company cannot afford to lose.
General economic uncertainty is not enough. The order book, margin, workload and proposed organisation need to support one coherent account.
A role is more than its monthly wage
The founder studying those three screens may see an annual salary saving. The first question is where the work goes.
Will another employee absorb it? Will the company buy it back through overtime, an agency worker or an external adviser? Could invoices leave later, customer questions wait longer, or managers spend their evenings doing administration?
This is where a payroll decision becomes a whole-company decision. The saving should be measured against transition payments, notice periods, unused leave, advice, handover time and temporary loss of productivity.
Cash often leaves before the lower monthly payroll begins to help. There is also a market cost. If demand returns, the company may need to recruit the same capability in a labour market that remains tight for many skills.
Removing a position can be sensible. Removing capacity without understanding its contribution is something else.
The unavoidable question is simple: what are we accepting or postponing by removing this role? What will that choice produce in cash, people, compliance and customer delivery?
The employment route follows the business design
When an employee does not agree to termination, an employer generally needs UWV permission for a business-economic dismissal. An applicable collective agreement may instead provide for an independent dismissal committee.
UWV expects the employer to explain why jobs disappear, which positions are affected and why dismissal is necessary. The commercial case and the proposed organisation must therefore meet in the same file.
Selection cannot begin with the name of the person management would prefer to lose. Dutch rules require attention to the workforce mix, interchangeable roles and the applicable dismissal sequence.
Agency workers, self-employed contractors, on-call workers, fixed-term staff and permanent employees do not automatically occupy the same position in that assessment. The sequence matters because it reveals whether the business has truly redesigned its capacity or simply chosen an individual.
Redeployment belongs near the start. The employer must consider suitable work, including training where relevant. If the same work becomes available within 26 weeks, the former employee may need to receive an offer.
A vacancy list assembled at the end of the process rarely tells a convincing story about earlier management choices.
Timing carries its own risk. If at least 20 employees in one UWV work area are intended to leave within three months, collective-dismissal rules can apply.
Separate conversations and different termination routes do not change the underlying picture when management is carrying out one restructuring programme.
The human result stays with the business
CBS found that 31.9 percent of employees leaving for a business-economic reason were unemployed in the following quarter. Another 21.5 percent were outside the labour force. More than half were therefore not working three months later.
That does not mean an employer must preserve every position. It does mean that clarity and conduct matter.
People can usually understand that a service line has ended, a customer has left or a function has changed. Trust suffers when a commercial explanation shifts from one meeting to the next, or when a decision appears to have selected the person before defining the work.
Back at the Monday meeting, the red mark on the organisation chart should not be the first decision. The first decision is what the company will stop doing, change or protect.
Only then can management judge the roles, cash effect, selection and redeployment with discipline.
A restructuring can restore a healthy business. Its quality is visible not only in the salary removed, but in the company that remains afterwards.
Before cutting a role, align the business case, cash impact, selection process and redeployment options.
The data, sourcing, and analysis behind this article were conducted by Linda Pavan Geraedts. AI was not used to identify sources, build the factual basis, or produce the analytical judgment contained here. AI was used only as a drafting aid. The final English text was personally reviewed, edited, and approved by Linda Pavan Geraedts before publication.
References
- Ontslag om bedrijfseconomische redenen komt vaker voor · Salaris Vanmorgen
- CBS - Business-economic dismissals and post-dismissal outcomes
- CBS - Current labour-market cooling without labour-market slack
- CBS - Vacancies and continuing recruitment pressure
- CBS - Business pressure, confidence and uncertainty
- CBS - Bankruptcies as a limited but rising component
- UWV - Evidence, selection order and redeployment in business-economic dismissal
- Rijksoverheid - Dismissal order, collective-dismissal threshold and flexibility reform
