The ballad of the boomerang employee is a post-pandemic tale for the ages. But as most employees now know, especially ones who jumped ship mid-great-resignation, the grass is not always greener.
For employers, boomerang employees are an interesting bunch - they’re both familiar and not; undoubtedly friends with people who still work at the organisation, but strangers in that they have seen, and grasped, opportunities elsewhere.
They are both capable of quitting, and hitting the ground running - they are, for all intents and purposes, a brilliant risk. Common advice dictates that to re-hire boomerang employees is a little like offering an employee a counteroffer and then staying at your company - they are good workers, effective at getting the job done…but mentally they may have clocked out.
Boomeranging in 2023.
Despite advice to the contrary, boomerang employees are, in some sectors, actually increasing.
As per this LinkedIn piece:
“According to data from the LinkedIn's Economic Graph, this trend of rehiring so-called "boomerang" employees has picked up pace since the pandemic. Government administration, oil, gas, mining and financial services showed the highest share of returning employees”.
Why is it that some sectors see an uptick in boomeranging staff whilst others haemorrhage staff by the thousands? Do some industries simply not onboard or integrate new staff very well, or are the cultural demands of a higher cost of living pushing people back into safe and familiar jobs for security's sake? Here is the Quest guide to when to rehire - and when to not rehire - a boomerang employee. When to rehire. When your onboarding capabilities can handle it. If your onboarding strategies are adaptable enough to factor in boomerang employees you’re off to a good start. By that, we mean doing things like a reverse exit interview - rather than focusing on traditional onboarding plans (such as staff mentoring, L&D training or probational target setting) you build a more bespoke strategy for someone that, for all intents and purposes, understands the business, but may need a top-up in company policy, workflows, team members etc. When you communicate transparently. The most vital element of a reverse exit interview is wider team communication - the last thing you want to do is drive a confused, miscommunicated wedge in the existing team dynamic and break apart team bonds that have grown in the absence of your returning employee. In those sorts of confusing, toxic environments resentment can grow. That, in turn, leads to broken teams, toxic dynamics and a dysfunctional workplace. Re-onboarding takes patience, team collaboration, and complete transparency - you risk a firesale of quitting employees if you don’t factor this in. When your boomerang employee’s motives match yours. That is where your interview technique comes into its own. You need to drill down into why a person wants to return to your firm. What drives them? What caused them to have a change of heart? Why wasn’t the other company the right fit? What are they expecting from your company now? What are you offering that other companies don’t, or what is it your company now offers that you used to not offer? Getting a read of any new hire is especially important when considering team dynamics, career pathways and company cohesion. For a rehire, the last thing you want is them returning for reasons that simply don’t match the energy and purpose you’ve created in their absence. When not to rehire. When you’re desperate for talent. Desperation hires are a hell of a drug and one that should be avoided where possible. It may seem easy to retro-fit an ex-employee when you’re in need, but again we refer to the above section on motives - if you rush a boomerang employee, and fail to understand the motives for their return (are they simply looking for a payday somewhere they don’t need to push themselves?), you will never integrate them properly and run the risk of alienating your other staff. Simply because they’re available. Great talent is hard to come by, and taking a fantastic ex-employee back “off the talent market” is an easy way of bolstering your team. But again, we refer to team dynamic management and purpose - if you are simply stacking your team with talent to remove the competition from the market you can massively upset the balance within your existing team and throw hard-worked plans out of the window. There is a balance of skills, ego, team-working, career growth and company vision that any good management has to strike in their workforce. Being competitive doesn’t mean hiring for hiring’s sake - it means making targeted additions to the workforce of people who match your company's vision and purpose and who align with every other person in the firm.
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