The COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian government's response, and longer-term influences within Australia's higher education sector, provided the background and rationale for this study in an Australian public university. From a context of how Antipodean University (AU) dealt with the revenue crisis, this paper describes how a sample of staff were affected through job loss or redeployment. It describes reported experiences of 77 AU staff, who either departed AU or who transferred to other jobs within AU, and who provided narratives describing their leaving/redeployment experiences. Respondents had been academic and professional staff, and most of those leaving did so in December 2020. An inductive reflexive thematic analysis of online survey responses revealed six themes: Relevant features of the external environment, AU's organisational culture and values, Parties involved with respondents' leaving experience, Leaving/redeployment processes encountered, Respondent's personal agency, and Past/present condition in/directly attributed to changed employment status, with 25 subthemes.