Employers are seeking to implement recruitment freezes rather than cut jobs, according to new figures.

The figures, based on early data from the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) and KPMG’s Labour Market Outlook survey, show that half of employers are introducing recruitment freezes to stave off making redundancies, while 44% are ending temporary or agency worker contracts to prevent the shedding of in-house staff and 15% have introduced short-term working.

Gerwyn Davies, CIPD public policy adviser, says: “There is little doubt that private sector companies will continue to shed staff in great numbers this year and into 2010.  However, what often goes unnoticed beneath the media headlines is the extent to which employers are introducing alternatives to avoid or minimise the number of redundancies they make. Measures such as recruitment freezes, shedding temporary workers and short-term working are clearly not without pain, but they can often be preferable to redundancies.