Redeployment after a termination
In the Netherlands, employers must make an effort to reassign employees before they terminate them. But if you work for a large, multinational corporation, is your employer obligated to find a position for you anywhere in the world?
Updated: February 2025
Legal obligation
The question then arises as to whether this obligation to redeploy is limited to the particular company where the employee is working or whether it applies to the entire corporate group to which the company belongs. If so, efforts must be made to redeploy within the group as a whole.
Dismissal
An employer must have reasonable grounds to dismiss an employee. Those grounds can including reprehensible behaviour, poor performance or economic reasons. However, employers also have an obligation to redeploy staff prior to dismissing them. This means that the employer must make efforts to redeploy the employee within the company before proceeding to dismissal.
Shell ruling
In a landmark decision, the Dutch Supreme Court addressed the issue of redeployment in the context of the Shell case. The court ruled that a multinational corporation has a broader obligation to consider redeployment across its global operations, emphasizing that companies must explore all potential positions within their corporate family before proceeding with dismissals. This ruling clarified that the obligation to redeploy is not confined to the local entity but extends to the entire corporate group, reinforcing the need for employers to actively seek alternative employment opportunities for affected employees.
Effort vs. result
It is important to note that the obligation to redeploy is not a result obligation but rather an effort obligation. Local entities of the company have the authority to decide whether or not to hire an employee who has lost their job in the Netherlands. These foreign entities cannot be compelled to actually employ these individuals based solely on the redeployment principle.
This is different for redeployment within the Dutch employing entity, in which case the employer is obligated to offer a vacant position to an affected employee, provided that the position is suitable.
What to do?
Our advice to employers is therefore to consider redeployment very seriously and to show that they have looked at options across the corporate group. Otherwise the risk is too high that a district judge will determine that the redeployment obligations have not been met, resulting in the dismissal being rejected or the employer being penalized.
If you are an employee who is facing a dismissal or if you are an employer who must dismiss an employee, you can contact our specialised lawyers to assist you.
