What counts as a redeployment?

A redeployment is when you place a worker who has already worked for you into a new assignment. The clock usually starts when their prior assignment ends. Most firms use a 30, 60, or 90-day window. Pick one window and stick with it. If you place someone within that window, it counts. If you don't, they roll into the general candidate pool. The exact window matters less than measuring it the same way every time.

What is a good redeployment rate?

It depends on your staffing vertical, but light industrial and clerical firms should aim for 40 to 60 percent of ending assignments turning into a redeployment. Professional and IT staffing runs lower because assignments are longer and rarer. If you have never tracked it, expect your first number to be ugly. That's fine. The point is to get a baseline and improve it quarter over quarter.

Who should own the redeployment number?

Whoever owns fill cost and recruiter productivity. In most firms that's the ops leader or the branch manager. Redeployment sits at the intersection of recruiting and account management, so nobody owns it by default. That's exactly why it goes untracked. Assign it to one person, put it on the weekly scorecard, and it stops falling through the cracks.

Redeployment: Staffing's Cheapest Source of Fill

Redeployment is the second-least-tracked metric in the industry, according to the 2026 State of Staffing Benchmarking Report. That's a problem, because a redeployed worker costs a fraction of a new hire. Here's how to start measuring it.

A redeployed worker costs you almost nothing to source. You already found them. You already screened them. You already know they show up and do the work. Yet most staffing firms treat every open req like they're starting from zero.

The 2026 State of Staffing Benchmarking Report put a number on it. Redeployment rate is the second-least-tracked metric in the industry. Firms track submittals, interviews, fill time, and margin. Almost nobody tracks whether they're putting their own people back to work.

That's a strange gap. Because if you run the math, redeployment is the cheapest fill you will ever make.

The Cost Math Nobody Runs

Sourcing a new candidate costs money at every step. Job board spend. Recruiter hours screening resumes. Phone screens. Background checks. Onboarding paperwork. Add it up and a single new placement can carry hundreds of dollars in sourcing cost before the worker sets foot on a job site.

A redeployment skips most of that. The worker is already in your system. Their background check may still be valid. They know your process and you know their reliability. Your recruiter spends fifteen minutes on a call instead of two days building a pipeline.

Here's the part that gets a PE ops leader's attention. If a firm makes 5,000 placements a year and even 20 percent of them could have been redeployments instead of net-new sourcing, that's 1,000 placements at a fraction of the cost. At a conservative $200 in sourcing savings per fill, that's $200,000 a year sitting on the table. In a portfolio of eight staffing companies, you're talking real money.

And that ignores the speed. A redeployed worker can be back on assignment the same day the req opens. New sourcing takes days. In staffing, speed to fill wins accounts.

Why It Goes Untracked

Redeployment falls through the cracks for a simple reason. Nobody owns it.

New sourcing has a clear owner. The recruiter gets a req and goes to work. The metrics are baked into the ATS. Submittals, interviews, and fills all show up on dashboards because vendors built those reports years ago.

Redeployment sits between two roles. The account manager knows the assignment is ending. The recruiter needs to fill the next one. But there's rarely a system that says "this worker's assignment ends Friday, and here are three open reqs they qualify for." So the worker rolls off, disappears into the database, and the recruiter starts a brand-new search for someone you already had.

The other reason is data. Tracking redeployment means connecting a worker's assignment history across time. Many ATS setups make that harder than it should be. If your system can't easily tell you how many workers went from one assignment straight into another, you won't measure it. And what you don't measure, you don't improve.

How to Start Tracking It This Quarter

You don't need new software to start. You need a definition and a report.

Step one: define redeployment. Pick a window. When a worker's assignment ends, do they get placed again within 30, 60, or 90 days? Choose one number and use it everywhere. Consistency matters more than the exact window.

Step two: pull the baseline. Ask your ATS or ops team for two numbers over the last quarter. How many assignments ended, and how many of those workers started a new assignment inside your window. Divide the second by the first. That's your redeployment rate. It will probably be lower than you expect.

Step three: put it on the scorecard. Add redeployment rate to the weekly ops review, right next to fill time and margin. What gets reviewed gets acted on. When a branch manager sees the number every week, they start asking recruiters about ending assignments.

Step four: build the trigger. The best firms don't wait for workers to age out. They flag every assignment ending in the next two weeks and match those workers to open reqs before the last day. This is where AI earns its keep. A tool that scans your open orders and your rolling-off workers and surfaces the matches turns redeployment from a hope into a habit.

What This Means for a PE Portfolio

If you run ops across a portfolio, redeployment is one of the highest-leverage fixes available to you right now. It doesn't require a system migration. It doesn't require a hiring spree. It requires a definition, a report, and a weekly review.

The payoff shows up in three places on the P&L. Lower sourcing cost per fill. Faster time to fill, which protects revenue and client relationships. And higher recruiter productivity, because your team stops rebuilding pipelines for workers you already had.

Roll a redeployment target across every company in the portfolio and you create a standard that's easy to benchmark. Company A redeploys at 45 percent. Company B redeploys at 22 percent. Now you know where to focus, and you have a specific number to move.

Most operational fixes in staffing are slow and expensive. This one is fast and nearly free. The only reason it stays broken is that nobody's looking at it.

Your Move This Week

Send one email to whoever owns your ATS data. Ask for two numbers from last quarter: assignments that ended, and how many of those workers started a new assignment within 60 days. Divide one by the other. That's your redeployment rate.

Bring that number to your next ops meeting. If it's below 40 percent in a high-volume vertical, you just found money that's been walking out the door. Start there.

Redeployment Is Your Cheapest Source of Fill. So Why Isn't Anyone Tracking It?