Do employees automatically lose their jobs when a business goes into receivership, or do I still have to deal with them?

Receivership itself doesn't automatically end every employee's job — but in practice, a receiver often does lay off some or all staff, depending on whether the business keeps operating while it's being sold. Nothing about this is automatic in either direction, so a buyer needs to find out specifically what happened to the workforce before assuming either that employees are gone or that they're still there waiting to be dealt with.

If you go on to purchase the business as a going concern and hire people who worked there, ordinary employment-law principles about whether their prior service counts toward future entitlements can still be relevant, even though the business passed through a receiver rather than a private sale. This is a fact-specific question that depends on exactly how and when employment ended and how your hiring is structured, so it needs its own review rather than an assumption either way — confirm the actual employment history with the receiver before closing, and get advice on how any hires you make should be structured.