Backfilling a Position: Why It’s Important and Best Practices

Change is inevitable in today’s work environment where individuals rarely stay in the same role or with the same company for the entirety of their careers. When individuals transition out of their roles—either by leaving the company or moving to a new role internally—this can lead to disruption in day-to-day business operations and employee productivity. To address this, organizations need a strategy in place to quickly and efficiently backfill roles. 

Learn what backfilling a position is, why it’s important, and best practices to effectively backfill roles at your organization. 

If you’re looking to quickly fill skills gaps at your organization, consider engaging skilled freelancers on Talent Marketplace™. Freelancers with more than 10,000 skills across a range of specialties, including artificial intelligence, accounting, and graphic design, are available to support your business needs. While freelancers aren’t intended to replace full-time employees, you can find and engage qualified freelancers on Talent Marketplace to address urgent skills gaps at your organization within a matter of days. 

What is backfilling a position?

Backfilling a position is the process of hiring someone to replace a team member who leaves their role. A backfill may be a temporary or permanent replacement, depending on the reason for and the length of the prior worker’s absence, as well as the organization’s short- and long-term business needs. 

A company may backfill a position for various reasons, including:

• Resignation 
• Retirement
• Termination
• Role change, such as an internal promotion or transition to a different team  
• Temporary projects or assignments in a different department
• Extended leave of absence, including medical leave, parental leave, or a sabbatical  

Why backfilling a position is important 

Having the right strategy and processes in place to address vacancies and backfill positions at your organization is essential to avoid business disruption and stay on track with company objectives when an individual transitions out of their role.

Here are some of the top benefits of backfilling a role:

1. Maintain productivity. Each time a team member leaves your organization, you lose institutional knowledge. Responsibilities may fall through the cracks, which can delay projects and lead to falling short of strategic business objectives. Quickly backfilling positions can increase the likelihood of critical tasks being completed on time, help your team avoid errors, and enable your team to stay on track with performance goals. 
2. Address skills gaps. When workers leave your organization, you risk losing critical skills needed to support your business. According to a survey of 2,300 business leaders distributed by Workday, 51% of respondents are worried about future talent shortages and only 32% are confident their organization has the skills needed for long-term success. By backfilling positions as efficiently as possible, you can more effectively address skills gaps in critical areas of the business. 
3. Avoid team member burnout. In some cases, when organizations lose a worker, they simply delegate the individual’s tasks to other members of the team. However, this can cause team member disengagement, decreased employee morale, burnout, and turnover. A survey of 625 full-time workers conducted by the Upwork Research Institute in 2024 found that 71% of respondents are burned out and 65% report struggling with employer demands on their productivity. Backfilling roles can help you maintain a healthy work environment, minimize burnout, and drive retention by preventing existing employees from being spread too thin. 

8 best practices to backfill positions 

You may be eager to quickly backfill a position when an employee leaves your organization or transitions to another role internally. However, taking enough time for a thoughtful approach is essential to identifying the right worker to help your organization achieve critical business objectives. 

Best practices include:

1. Develop a knowledge-sharing process
2. Create and implement a succession planning strategy
3. Transition existing team members 
4. Refresh job descriptions to highlight the latest skills
5. Engage freelancers
6. Encourage referrals
7. Build a talent pipeline
8. Use technology to streamline hiring

1. Develop a knowledge-sharing process

Rather than waiting until a team member is leaving your organization to determine how to maintain critical company information, developing and implementing a proactive knowledge-sharing process can be helpful. 

An effective knowledge transfer process involves collecting, centralizing, and regularly updating important information in a shared drive, company intranet, or other user-friendly platform. Doing so can help new team members get up to speed more efficiently when you backfill a position. 

Types of information to gather as part of your knowledge-sharing efforts include:

• Step-by-step workflows and team processes
• Essential documents, spreadsheets, and other assets
• A list of tools and systems each team uses, along with logins and user-friendly instructions 
• The status of projects, including milestones, deadlines, and key stakeholders
• Internal contacts each team member regularly collaborates with and for what purpose
• A list of external contacts including clients and vendors, as well as their preferred communication preferences (such as emails versus weekly check-ins)

In addition to implementing a proactive knowledge-sharing process, also conduct exit interviews with departing employees. Exit interviews can help you collect additional information to help a backfill worker quickly learn critical company information and identify ways to improve the employee experience moving forward.  

2. Create and implement a succession planning strategy

In addition to maintaining a skills database, a succession planning strategy can help you better prepare to backfill roles when the need arises. Succession planning is a key element of more comprehensive talent planning and workforce planning. The process maps critical roles and skill sets across your organization and identifies potential existing team members to take on vital positions when workers transition out of their roles. 

An effective succession planning process also identifies ways to develop successors to ensure they have the right skills and experience to take on a new position. A proactive succession planning strategy can help you quickly backfill roles, whether a worker leaves the company or transitions to a new role internally. 

As you create a succession planning strategy, identify a list of critical roles at your organization and outline the following details for each position:

• Job title
• Team member name 
• Job description or a high-level list of responsibilities
• Overview of required skills for the role
• List of team members and direct reports (if applicable)
• Short list of potential successors 
• Readiness score for each internal candidate
• Talent development plan and cross-training opportunities for each potential successor

3. Transition existing team members 

Based on the details outlined in your succession planning strategy, when a team member leaves your organization, select the best-fit worker to backfill the position. 

One benefit of selecting an existing team member to backfill a position is that they’re already familiar with your company processes, culture, and structure. However, keep in mind that even if the worker has a high readiness score and the right skills to take on the role, moving to a new position requires a transition period. Treat the process similar to new hire onboarding to set each individual up for success and support a smooth transition. 

Steps you can take to ease the transition for existing workers include:

• Explaining the new role, responsibilities, and expectations
• Aligning on a timeline to transition from the current to the new position
• Reallocating responsibilities from the prior role to avoid overload and burnout 
• Sharing relevant resources, such as project management documents and team objectives
• Setting new, measurable goals for the individual’s next performance review period 
• Providing relevant training resources 
• Pairing the individual with a mentor on the team during the transition period 
• Scheduling one-on-one introductory meetings with the new team members and recurring meetings with the worker’s direct supervisor
• Collecting and giving feedback on the transition process
• Evaluating performance and progress in the new role 

4. Refresh job descriptions to highlight the latest skills

When backfilling a role with an existing team member isn’t an option, you’ll likely need to recruit external candidates to address skills gaps. Before beginning the recruitment process, refresh your job descriptions to ensure the requirements, responsibilities, and skills are up to date. 

Updating job descriptions is particularly important if the individual who’s leaving your team has held the position for several years. Research from the World Economic Forum projects that 39% of workers’ skill sets will be transformed or become outdated by 2030. If you share outdated job descriptions when you need to backfill a role, you risk hiring new employees who don’t have the right skills or experience to meet shifting business needs. 

As you refresh your job descriptions and evaluate candidates to backfill positions, consider taking a skills-based approach to hiring and emphasizing the most critical skills needed to succeed in each role. Also known as skills-first hiring, skills-based hiring emphasizes engaging and advancing workers based on their skills, knowledge, and capabilities, over degrees or previous employers.

According to a survey of C-suite executives conducted by the Upwork Research Institute, 81% of organizations surveyed report that their organizations are taking deliberate steps to adopt skills-based hiring practices. Additionally, a survey of more than 1,000 employers conducted by TestGorilla found that 94% of respondents agree evaluating a candidate’s skills is a better predictor of job success than their resume.

5. Engage freelancers

As you look to identify external workers, consider engaging freelancers to address urgent skills gaps. While freelancers aren’t meant to replace full-time employees, breaking down your job descriptions into the most critical skills can help you quickly identify and engage freelancers with the competencies you need—especially for urgent, critical projects. 

As an example, if a generalist marketing manager leaves your small business leading up to a timely marketing campaign launch, hiring a permanent, full-time replacement may take weeks or months. To keep the campaign on track, you may decide to engage a few freelancers with the essential skills you need immediately. Depending on the marketing manager’s specific skills and responsibilities, you may look for freelancers to complete certain campaign deliverables, such as a project manager, copywriter, and email marketing specialist. 

Some of the many benefits of engaging freelancers on Upwork when you’re on a tight timeline to backfill a position include:

• Draft a job description in seconds. Rather than writing a job description from scratch, Job Post Generator powered by Uma, Upwork’s Mindful AI, drafts an AI-generated job post draft in seconds. All you need to share is a sentence or two about what you’re looking for with your open job or projects. 
• Reach qualified freelancers with quick invites. Once you post an open job, the quick invites feature on Upwork instantly identifies eight top freelancers based on your job requirements. You can then select one or more of the highlighted freelancers, click “Invite to job,” write a personal message (optional), and send the invites. 
• Automate candidate evaluations. Uma also powers candidate evaluations, which helps you screen and identify the qualified candidates faster. After evaluating proposals, Uma shares a side-by-side comparison of candidates, highlighting how their skills and experience align with your job post. 
• Short-list top freelancers. With an Upwork Business Plus plan, you can also access the top 1% of freelancers on Upwork and short-list the most qualified freelancers based on your needs.  Through the short-listing service, dedicated experts review your job requirements and identify a curated list of up to five qualified freelancers from the Upwork platform within two business days.
• Streamline communications and the offer process. When you’re looking to backfill the role, you need to ensure the process is as quick and efficient as possible. Upwork Messaging streamlines communication by creating a new thread of messages, known as a message room, each time you connect with a new freelancer or start a new project through the platform. Once you select a freelancer, the offer process can also be completed in a matter of clicks, saving your team time. 
• Initiate contract-to-hire working relationships. Upwork’s end-to-end full-time hiring solution offers the option to initiate contract-to-hire working relationships. This option can enable your team to quickly fill skills gaps when you need to backfill a position, engage workers for a trial period, and decide whether the individual is the right fit for a full-time working relationship.

6. Encourage referrals

Another option to identify top talent for a backfill position is soliciting referrals from current team members. Referred candidates are often among the most qualified because current team members want to work with others who will positively contribute to shared company goals. Hiring referrals can also save your organization time because in many cases, you can skip initial screening steps and move forward with scheduling interviews. 

Consider implementing an employee referral program to formalize and standardize the process of referrals from current workers. Consider the following tips when developing a referral program:

• Develop a simple process and channel for team members to share referrals
• Communicate your referral program across the organization, such as during company and team meetings and through email communications
• Add a job application field for candidates to indicate whether they were referred by an existing team member
• Offer incentives such as referral bonuses, gift cards, and other rewards
• Include additional incentives for urgent, leadership, or hard-to-fill positions 
• Use referral software to organize referral details and track key performance indicators (KPIs) of your referral program

7. Build a talent pipeline

Continually building a talent pipeline or network of potential candidates can help you quickly engage qualified individuals when you need to backfill positions. A strong talent pipeline includes both active candidates, meaning individuals looking for a job or who have previously applied to join your team, and passive candidates who aren’t actively looking but would consider the right fit.

The following tips can help you build and maintain a proactive talent pipeline:

• Identify short-term and long-term staffing needs and required skills
• Research potential candidates for future vacant positions
• Support a positive candidate experience each time an individual applies to an open position, even if they don’t receive an immediate offer
• Develop relationships with universities and professional organizations
• Send emails and other communication to individuals in your talent pipeline, such as highlighting new vacant roles or company updates
• Measure the success of your talent pipelining strategy—such as metrics related to time to hire and quality of hires—and make improvements over time

8. Use technology to streamline hiring

According to a survey of 8,035 global HR professionals conducted by LinkedIn, 22% of respondents spend from three to five hours a day reviewing applications.

Whether you’re an HR team member, talent acquisition manager, or a small business owner or operator, spending hours each day reviewing potential candidates for a backfill position takes away from other day-to-day and strategic responsibilities across the company—and slows down hiring. To streamline the hiring process and backfill positions sooner, consider embracing AI-powered recruiting tools and other hiring technology such as: 

• Talent sourcing tools  
• AI-enabled recruiting assistants and job applications
• Interview scheduling software
• Talent assessment tools
• Resume parsing and matching software
• Candidate relationship management software
• Applicant tracking systems
• Talent management software

Upwork can help address urgent skills gaps on your team

No matter the reason for their departure or transition, replacing a valued member of your team can seem challenging. However, by understanding that team member transitions are often unavoidable and implementing an effective backfilling strategy, you can minimize disruptions to your business. 

When you have skills gaps on your team, consider engaging freelancers on Upwork with the skills you need. While they aren’t replacements for full-time employees, experienced freelancers are available to help you address urgent skills gaps. Whether an individual leaves your team, you need to scale due to increased demand from customers, or you need to access emerging in-demand skill sets such as AI engineering or machine learning, skilled freelancers are available on Upwork. 

Create an account, post a job, and hire qualified freelancers on Upwork today. Also access the top 1% of talent on Upwork and short-list top freelancers based on your specific requirements through Upwork’s Business Plus plan.