I was a boomerang employee.
Boomerang employees are people who leave an organization for personal or professional reasons and then come back to their former company as a re-hire. Just to be clear, I’m specifically talking about employees who depart voluntarily, leave the organization in good standing, and then are welcomed back to the company.
Truth be known, I actually double boomeranged, leaving and returning to the same senior care provider organization twice, ultimately investing 18 years of my career with a company I loved.
People move on for a variety of reasons. Some employees leave for higher pay or the belief that things will be better working for a different company, only to find out that the grass is not greener in other places. Others move because of a partner’s job relocation, caring for a child or simply the desire to try something new. Given the pandemic, some people leave because they are just plain burned out. But employee departures don’t necessarily have to mean a forever goodbye, as long as your door remains open to welcoming people back.
In the not-so-distant past, rehiring former employees was not considered an option. It wasn’t uncommon for an employer to hold the mindset that a person who chooses to leave is a traitor and his/her departure is an act of disloyalty. But loyalty doesn’t necessarily end when employees move on.
Read the full article on McKnight's.
