Abstract In recent years, there has been growing interest in whether pre‐packed bankruptcy can be a mechanism through which firms facing imminent insolvency can preserve value. Although an extensive body of literature exists on “pre‐packs,” whether such techniques really preserve value remains ambiguous. By analysing bankruptcy proceedings filed with Dutch courts in the period 2012–2018 through the lenses of real options and debt overhang theory, we examined employment retention postbankruptcy as a consequence of the type of bankruptcy proceeding (pre‐packed bankruptcy and conventional bankruptcy) and the severity of prebankruptcy financial distress. The results show that in the Netherlands, a pre‐packed bankruptcy, when compared with a conventional bankruptcy proceeding, positively impacts employment retention rates after bankruptcy. The severity of financial distress before bankruptcy does not affect employment retention rates postbankruptcy. This implies that despite the amount of resource slack, the preservation of employee value is better served under a pre‐packed bankruptcy than a conventional bankruptcy proceeding. This finding is important for insolvency practice, as up to 22 June 2017, employee rights in the Netherlands (including redundancy) were not considered to be automatically transferred to the firm acquiring the bankrupt debtor's assets when a pre‐packed bankruptcy was applied. Implications for insolvency regulation and practice are discussed.