A practical guide to internal reskilling in an SME: when it costs less than recruiting, what changes in the employment contract and what duties arise when the job duties change.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
When a role becomes redundant, the first reaction is often dismissal, followed by recruitment for the new role. Sometimes that is the only option. But in many cases, especially in SMEs, moving someone who already knows the company into another post is quicker and cheaper than bringing somebody in from outside.
The problem is that internal reskilling has an administrative side that people discover late: you cannot move an employee into another role through a simple conversation. This guide separates the three layers — the HR decision, the contractual amendment and the legal obligations.
Not always. Four costs are worth comparing honestly, not just the salary:
| Internal reskilling | External recruitment | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to productivity | Shorter — they know the company, the processes, the people | Longer — includes settling in |
| Direct cost | Training, learning time | Recruitment, possibly a higher salary |
| Risk | They may not fit the new role | They may leave during the probation period |
| Effect on the team | Usually positive | Neutral or negative, if there were internal expectations |
Reskilling makes most sense when the new role calls for skills adjacent to the existing ones and when internal knowledge (clients, processes, product) counts for a lot. It makes less sense when the new role calls for a technical foundation the person would have to build from scratch.
A practical signal: if the estimated training time runs beyond a few months, compare it seriously with the probation period of a recruitment — the rules on the probation period are an instrument designed for exactly this kind of uncertainty.
This is the part small companies miss most often.
The job description is not an optional internal document. It describes the duties for which the person was hired. If the duties change substantially, it is not enough to rewrite the description and file it — see what a job description has to contain.
A contract is amended by agreement of the parties. The essential elements of the individual employment contract — among them the position, the duties and the salary — are amended through an act adițional (an addendum to the employment contract), signed by both parties. Details in the guide to the act adițional.
The practical consequence: reskilling cannot be imposed unilaterally as a change of position. It can be proposed, negotiated and recorded — but it needs the employee’s agreement.
If the occupation changes too, check whether the new role has a different COR code (the Romanian classification of occupations) and whether the change has to be transmitted to the register. See the new occupations in the COR and the REGES obligations.
A different post can bring obligations the old one did not have:
These three points are the most frequently forgotten, precisely because “internal” reskilling does not feel like a new hire. In terms of risk, it often is.
Three principles that make the difference between a real programme and a good intention:
Start from a concrete role, not from a list of courses. Reskilling makes sense when there is a post that has to be filled. Training “in general” does not turn into usable skill.
Allocate time explicitly, within working hours. Training done “whenever possible” does not get done. If the person still carries 100% of their old tasks, the programme will fail — and will be wrongly read as a lack of motivation.
Define from the outset what the end looks like. What exactly the person has to be able to do for the reskilling to count as complete, and what happens at that point to their position and salary. Ambiguity here is the main source of frustration later.
Reskilling generates documents: an act adițional, an updated job description, a fitness-for-work certificate, SSM training, possibly an equipment handing-over record. Workly keeps them linked to the employee’s file, with the deadlines tracked — so that the renewal of a certificate or a missing signed document shows up before an inspection, not during one. Documents with sensitive data are encrypted and handled in line with GDPR.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal advice. Amendments to the individual employment contract and the SSM and occupational medicine obligations should be checked against the text in force (the Labour Code — Codul Muncii, the SSM legislation) or with a specialist, before starting a change of position.
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