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Boomerang Employees
There are employers who intentionally build in to their value proposition a willingness to let people leave the business but leave the door more than a little ajar for them to return later in their career.
Why do they do this?
They know people join some companies for the training/apprenticeship/articles etc and providing that training is expensive.
They know that once qualified some people will leave to travel.
They know some people will leave to simply work somewhere else and that some people will set up their own business.
To the smarter modern organisation this is talent lost or an investment wasted or at least not fully cashed in.
In the modern ultra competitive market of today organisations are being much smarter about their treatment of people who leave.
Smart Employers are more likely to be nice to people who leave these days.
They are actively involving them in Alumni Programs and invite them to company functions like old boy/girl get togethers from time to time.
Some are even helping professional staff get new roles sometimes in other countries particularly secondments with peer firms with a view to putting themselves in as good a position as possible at the completion of that time away.
What are the benefits of Boomerang employees?
One is they know the company culture.
They obviously know the companies business and if they are willing or interested in coming back they have obviously had a good time or at least a successful time first time around.
In other words if the former employee is open to rejoining they must have had a positive experience.
The incidence of Boomerang employees is high in the professional services sector, it is also quite high in the Human resources profession, HR professionals are quite mobile, they are however, in my view more likely to boomerang with their old colleagues more than their old companies, at HR Partners we often find people rejoining former work colleagues rather than rejoining former work places.
The reason for this I believe is that trust in others competencies is a significant priority and if you know a good operator in Remuneration for example (and you have been a good boss in the past) you stand a fair chance of having that person rejoin your team whether you are still at company "A" or not. I suspect that is true of many environments and professions.
I think the boomerang employee in HR is a testament to mutual respect and the establishment of mutual trust and reliance between like minded and committed individuals from which organisations take great benefit.
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