Rehire an Employee

The article provides a comprehensive guide on rehiring former employees within an organization. It outlines the steps necessary to rehire an individual, emphasizing the importance of managing candidate profiles and ensuring that the employee's status is updated correctly. Key sections include sending a new offer letter, reviewing time off and benefits information, and assigning onboarding tasks. The article also addresses specific considerations for employees using BambooHR Payroll, including how rehire dates are reflected. Additionally, it highlights the need to enable BambooHR access for the rehired employee. Overall, the guide serves as a resource for HR personnel to facilitate a smooth rehiring process while maintaining accurate employee records.

  • Jul 6, 2026
  • Knowledge

Title
Rehire an Employee
Article Text
Banner at the top of the article showing four package labels: Core (green, active), Pro (red, grayed), Elite (blue, grayed), and Add-on (gray, grayed). This indicates that the “Rehire an Employee” feature is available for all package types.

How do I rehire a former employee?

Purpose: Employees come and go within an organization, and sometimes, they come back again. This help guide will teach you the steps of rehiring an individual you have previously employed.

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Candidate profile

Screenshot of a candidate profile in Hiring with a wide banner near the top reading Already in BambooHR, including a link to view the existing employee record. The banner draws attention to use the rehire path instead of creating a duplicate.

When you rehire an employee, you will most likely have a candidate profile for the employee as they are going through the application process. When a candidate's email address matches an employee's email address in BambooHR, you will see that the candidate is Already in BambooHR. This statement means you will not have the option to select Hire from the candidate's profile. Likewise, you will receive an error message if you try to add a new employee profile with the same email address. Instead, you will need to go to the employee's inactive profile to rehire the employee from there.

Please note, you will need to ensure there is a hire date when rehiring an employee or they will not receive emails from BambooHR. This includes company announcements and the Create Your Password email when Employee self-service is enabled. Additionally, they will not appear in the Org Chart and important Standard Reports.

Send a new offer letter

Status

You first need to change the status of the candidate's previous employee profile to Active before sending an offer letter to them in the Applicant Tracking System. If you do not change their status to Active, you cannot send an offer letter to their email address.

Once you change their status to active, the employee profile will still show as terminated/resigned. This status updates later in the process once you rehire the employee.

Changing the status to Active will also re-enable the ability to edit the entire employee profile (based on access).

Move the candidate to a current opening

Go to the original candidate's profile to move them to their hired position. You can find their original profile by going to the Candidates tab within Hiring, and change the view to All Candidates for All Job Openings and search the candidate's name to find their original profile. Click the action menu in the top right corner and select Move Candidate.

You will then change the status on the candidate's original profile and click Send New Offer to resume the hiring process.

Candidate profile for the employee showing dropdown menu with options. The option Send New Offer is highlighted. The timeline shows offer letter statuses: Sent, Viewed, Signed.

If they are being rehired for the same position, you can send a new offer letter by clicking on the drop down menu on their candidate profile and selecting Send New Offer. You will then be able to walk through the same offer letter process as when you initially sent them an offer letter. You can find more information on sending a new offer letter here.

Signed offer letter

Employee profile for [Employee Name] with the Documents tab open. Under Resumes and Applications, a PDF is visible. Left sidebar shows employee details and a Terminated status.

Once the candidate signs the offer letter, it will automatically upload to the Resumes and Applications folder on the candidate's previous employee profile.

At this point, you can go back to the candidate's profile and change the candidate status. You may notice that the Hire status is grayed out because the employee is already in BambooHR. You can switch the candidate's status to an inactive status (under Not Hired Because) to remove the candidate from the active candidates' list. For example, you could create a custom inactive status for "Hired, Already in BambooHR."

Now, if you go to the employee profile, notice the employee still shows as terminated/resigned. You will need to do the following steps to rehire the employee.

Rehire

Employee profile header with Request a Change at right and an overflow … menu opened. The dropdown contains Rehire Employee, which is highlighted to indicate where to begin the rehire.

Navigate to their employee profile and select Rehire Employee under the action menu.

Rehire Employee details

Modal titled Rehire with fields including Start Date (date picker) and core job details (e.g., Employment Status, Department, Location), plus Save. After saving, the Job tab displays an employment timeline/banner indicating the employee will become Active on the selected future start date.

In the pop-up box, enter the rehire information for the employee. Notice you can enter a date in Effective Date. You can future date the rehire status. For example, I can rehire the employee and have them start on September 24th 2024. This setting means their new status will not be set to active until 12:00 a.m. on the rehire date. Therefore, the employee will not show in the Company Directory and Org Chart until the rehire date. See the example below.

Employee profile with the Job tab open. A banner shows Starting On [mm/dd/yyyy]. Employment Status section lists: [mm/dd/yyyy] – Full-Time highlighted, [mm/dd/yyyy] – Terminated, [mm/dd/yyyy] – Full-Time

If an employee's rehire date is in the future, any onboarding tasks assigned to the employee will base on the original hire date since the new hire date will not show yet. If you would like to assign onboarding tasks before the employee's new hire date, you can manually enter the employee's new hire date in the Hire Date field and move the previous hire date to the Original Hire Date field. In this way, any assigned onboarding tasks will base on the new hire date.

A rehire will show in the Welcome to Company widget if their hire date is within 30 days of today's date, but a new Welcome email will not be sent out to the company for the rehire. The Welcome emails can only be activated or deactivated within the New Hire Packet, so if the rehire had already completed a packet in the past, there will not be an option to send this email out on their rehire date.

What if I am using BambooHR Payroll?

If you use BambooHR Payroll, the rehire date will automatically sync over to Payroll when the employee is rehired. If you do not use BambooHR Payroll and are interested in a demo, click here and fill out the form!

Pop-up modal labeled Rehire Employee. Fields include: Effective Date, Employment Status, Employee Tax Type, Job Title, Reporting To, Department, Division, Location. Buttons: Cancel, Save.

Selecting Rehire Employee pulls up a slightly different modal for BambooHR Payroll customers. The pay rate, pay type, and pay schedule fields are not included in this modal and will need to be updated in the Compensation table on the Job tab. You will also have an additional option to select the Employee Tax Type needed to run payroll. These options include W2, S-Corp - 2% Shareholder, H-1B Visa, and Expatriate.

How will the hire date reflect accurately when I rehire an employee?

When you rehire an employee, we will move the hire date to the original hire date, and the rehire date will be the new hire date.

Please note that if you end employment and rehire an employee multiple times, such as a seasonal employee, the original hire date will be when the employee first joined your company.

Employee profile with Job tab open. Employment Status table lists: Full-Time active with a green dot. Terminated (Resignation), Full-Time. Below, fields show Hire Date and Original Hire Date highlighted.

If you need to add the Original Hire Date field without a termination, you can add it using the Power Edit feature. Simply pull in the Original Hire Date field for the employees you have selected and then enter the dates as needed.

Review the employee's time off information

Employee profile with the Time Off tab open. Cards show Time Off policies assigned. In the first time off card, the gear dropdown menu is highlighted. Top-right label highlighted: Accrual Level Start Date.

If the employee was previously eligible for time off accruals, adjust information on their Time Off tab to ensure that new accruals occur correctly. To do this, remove and re-assign a policy to the employee with the rehire date as the new Accrual Level Start Date.

If you have a unique length of service in accrual levels that need to be reviewed, evaluate the Accrual Level Start Date.

Review the employee's benefit information

Employee profile with the Benefits tab open an highlighted.

Update the employee's benefit information as applicable.

Assign onboarding tasks

Employee profile for Charlo with Onboarding tab open. Section labeled New Hire Packet shows steps: Packet Sent, Packet Viewed, Employee Info Completed. Below, onboarding tasks include: 1. Gear dropdown menu to delete previou tasks; 2. Completed task checked; 3. Add Task Button to add a new task..

When you rehire an employee, if the employee previously filled out the new hire packet, you cannot send another packet to the employee.* If you need to send onboarding tasks, the best way to do this is on their Onboarding tab. You have three options:

  1. Delete previously completed tasks: Delete the task from their Onboarding tasklist by clicking the small gear icon > Delete items > checking the box next to Also delete completed items > Delete These Items.  Then, you can select the action menu in the top right corner and select Add Items From Template to find the tasks to add back to the employee's Onboarding tasklist. This action will send the employee an email notification with a request to resign any documents, and will have new due dates for all the tasks.
  2. Uncheck previously completed tasks: You can uncheck the box next to any previously completed onboarding tasks. When you uncheck a task, the assignee will receive an email notification that the task reopened, and they will see another notification in their BambooHR inbox. There are a few things you need to keep in mind when using this option:
    • The old due date will remain, even if you have updated the hire date. 
    • If you uncheck a task, it will not have a history of the task's completion status, but it will keep any previous comments or attached files.
    • If the task has an attached e-signature document for the employee to sign, it will not automatically ask for their signature again if they already signed it when first hired. You would need to delete this task and re-add it to re-send the e-signature request.
  3. Add a new task:  You can add one-off tasks to employee's Onboarding templates. This ability allows you to add any new tasks that are unavailable in your Onboarding template in Settings. Additionally, you will be able to see a history of all previously completed tasks.

*If the employee did not fill out a New Hire Packet when first hired, you will see an option to send them a new one on their Onboarding tab. This option will only appear if their hire date in the Hire Date field is in the future or less than two weeks in the past. 

Ensure you have set the employee's status to Active so they can access the tasks and complete them on time.

Enable BambooHR access

Employee profile with the Personal tab open. In the action menu, the option BambooHR Access Level → Employees (0) is selected.

Once you updated all information for the employee, you may want to re-enable their access to BambooHR. You can do this by going to the action menu on the employee's profile, then hover over BambooHR Access Level and select the access level you would like to assign to the employee.

When you enable access, the employee will automatically have the access they had when they were disabled.

To grant the employee access to BambooHR, they will need to have a status of Active. If the employee's rehire date is in the future, the employee will remain inactive until rehired. If you need to grant the employee access before their rehire date, manually change their status on the Personal tab to Active.

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