A resignation often creates a vacancy, but it also creates a rare opportunity to ask whether replacing like-for-like is really the right thing to do.
Someone resigns, everybody is disappointed, the job description is found in a folder somewhere, the salary is checked, a few changes are made and recruitment begins.
It is completely understandable, particularly when the departing person has been good at their job and the rest of the team is already wondering how on earth they are going to absorb their workload, but it may also mean organisations are missing one of the best opportunities they ever get to reshape their workforce.
Because a vacancy doesn't only create a recruitment problem, it creates permission to re-design the role!
And right now, that could matter more than it has for a very long time. The person who leaves doesn't necessarily need to be replaced.
Roles across the membership sector are evolving, sometimes subtly and sometimes quite dramatically, as AI, automation, data, digital expectations, commercial pressures and changing member needs alter what organisations require from their people.
This isn't simply an AI story either, although AI is undoubtedly accelerating it.
Research from Robert Half found that 64% of UK hiring managers are shifting their focus towards different in-demand skills because of advances in AI, while 49% already see AI expertise as a strong advantage for candidates even where it isn't an essential requirement.
Indeed's analysis of the UK jobs market tells a similar story: overall recruitment demand remains subdued in many knowledge-work categories, yet vacancies mentioning AI are growing strongly in areas including HR, management, marketing and finance, suggesting employers aren't simply changing how many people they recruit, but what they expect those people to be capable of doing.
Indeed Hiring Lab PwC's 2026 analysis goes further, finding that the skills required in highly AI-exposed jobs are changing particularly quickly while demand is rising for capabilities that remain distinctly human, including judgement, creativity and leadership.
For membership organisations, that creates a very practical question.
If a role was designed three, five or even eight years ago, why would we assume its replacement should look exactly the same today?
A Membership Manager might still be a Membership Manager, but the ingredients could be different.
Imagine a Membership Manager leaves after five successful years.
The instinctive response might be to find another experienced Membership Manager with roughly the same background, but during those five years the organisation may have implemented a new CRM, begun experimenting with AI, introduced new commercial products, changed its membership model, gathered considerably more member data and started thinking much more seriously about personalisation.
Perhaps the next Membership Manager therefore needs stronger data literacy and commercial confidence alongside the relationship-building skills that have traditionally been central to the job.
The same question could be asked across almost every discipline.
If a Marketing Manager leaves, does the organisation simply need another excellent content marketer, or does the next person need to understand automation, audience segmentation, AI-assisted marketing and how data can connect marketing activity more directly with recruitment and retention?
If an Events Manager leaves, is the requirement still primarily operational delivery, or has sponsorship, commercial development, community building and digital engagement become a much bigger part of what success looks like?
If a Policy professional moves on, will the replacement need exactly the same technical policy background, or will the ability to communicate complex issues publicly, build coalitions, understand political audiences and turn policy expertise into visible influence become equally important?
And at leadership level, does the next CEO, Director or Head of Membership need the same capabilities that made their predecessor successful, or will they need to lead an organisation where technology, commercial sustainability, workforce change and member expectations look fundamentally different?
These aren't arguments for throwing away traditional expertise. They are arguments for examining the balance of skills around it.
Don't automatically recruit the job description
One of the simplest questions a hiring manager can ask when somebody leaves is:
If we were creating this role from scratch today, would we create the same job?
Sometimes the answer will absolutely be yes, because the departing person was doing precisely what the organisation needs and the priority genuinely is continuity.
But sometimes that question opens up a much more interesting conversation.
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Perhaps 20% of the old role can now be automated or absorbed elsewhere, while another capability has become much more important.
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Perhaps two roles have gradually started duplicating one another.
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Perhaps a job that was historically administrative has become analytical.
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Perhaps somebody who has always been measured on activity should now be measured on commercial outcomes.
Or perhaps the organisation has been asking one person to perform three increasingly specialist jobs and the vacancy is finally the moment to acknowledge that the structure itself needs to change.
A resignation can feel like disruption, but it is also one of the relatively rare occasions when an organisation can rethink a role without asking an existing employee to fundamentally reinvent the job they originally accepted. Look at the team before you look at the vacancy
There is another way to approach this which can be even more useful: instead of immediately asking what skills the departing person had, look at the capabilities that already exist across the team.
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If you already have exceptional relationship builders but limited data capability, perhaps the new hire should rebalance that.
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If several people understand member engagement but nobody naturally thinks commercially, perhaps that tells you something.
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If AI and automation are beginning to remove routine work, perhaps the value of judgement, creativity, coaching, influencing and strategic thinking should carry more weight in the next appointment.
Skills England's work on AI adoption makes a similar point at a broader workforce level: access to AI tools alone isn't enough, because organisations also need people with the confidence, judgement and role-specific understanding to use them effectively.
This is where workforce planning and recruitment increasingly begin to overlap, because the question isn't simply “Who can do this job?”
It becomes “What combination of skills does this organisation need next, and which person gives us more of them?”
Be careful not to write a job description for a superhero
There is, however, an obvious trap.
Once you start thinking about future skills, it is incredibly easy to create a job description asking for a commercially minded, data-literate, AI-confident, strategically brilliant, operationally excellent, inspirational relationship builder who can manage a team, understand policy, produce content, run the CRM and presumably leap tall buildings before breakfast!
Future-proofing a role doesn't necessarily mean adding every desirable skill to it.
It means being clearer about which capabilities have genuinely become more important and which responsibilities may no longer deserve the emphasis they once had.
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Sometimes the answer will be recruitment.
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Sometimes it will be training somebody already in the organisation.
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Sometimes it will mean redesigning responsibilities across a team rather than expecting one new person to solve everything.
The important thing is that the conversation happens before the old job description becomes the new vacancy.
Your next hire could be doing this job in 5 years
That might sound like a long way away, but somebody recruited permanently today could very easily still be sitting in that role when 2030 arrives.
The better recruitment question therefore isn't simply whether somebody can perform the role as it exists in October 2026, but whether they have the underlying capabilities to evolve with it.
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Curiosity starts to matter.
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Adaptability matters.
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Judgement matters.
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The ability to learn matters.
So does being comfortable saying, “I don't know yet, but I'll work it out.”
These qualities can be harder to put into a job description than five years' experience with a particular CRM, but they may ultimately tell you far more about how valuable somebody will become as the role changes around them.
That doesn't mean hiring for vague “potential” while ignoring evidence and experience; it means recognising that in a period of rapid change, the capacity to keep developing is itself a valuable skill.
A vacancy is a window
At Membership Bespoke, we spend a lot of time talking to organisations about the person they want to recruit, but some of the most useful conversations happen before the specification has been finalised, because that is the point at which market knowledge can genuinely influence the shape of the role.
After more than 15 years specialising in the membership sector and building a UK network of more than 16,500 professionals, we can see how briefs are changing across Membership & Engagement, Policy & Public Affairs, Marketing & Digital, Events, Finance & Governance, Operations, Communications & PR, Education & Training and senior leadership.
And increasingly, the interesting question isn't simply:
“Who can replace the person who has left?”
It is:
“What could we hire now that would make this organisation stronger in three years' time?”
That is a much more ambitious recruitment question, but it is also one worth asking, because vacancies don't come along every day and, once somebody has been appointed, the opportunity to fundamentally rethink that role may not come around again for years.
So before automatically replacing like-for-like, take another look at the job, the team and where the organisation is heading, because the person who has just left may have been exactly right for the role you had.
The person you recruit next needs to be right for the role you're going to have. And, don't forget, we can use our experience and expertise to guide, support and help you.