Article: Are boomerang employees a part of your recruitment strategy

Performance Management

Are boomerang employees a part of your recruitment strategy

Former employees can prove to be a powerful resource for your business if you know how to tap into their skill set and use it wisely for your organizations success.
Are boomerang employees a part of your recruitment strategy

Just like some of the retro fashions coming back in vogue, old bands coming back together to produce new albums for their fans, some organizations actively look for old employees to rehire. The simplest reason behind the move is that boomerang employees have a wealth of knowledge about your organization and they would have acquired some new skills and market intelligence while working with your competitors during their time away from you. To some, it may sound risky, but the truth is that rehiring old employees has its benefits that have largely been overlooked by most organizations in the past. However, since change is far more acceptable in the current business environment, it becomes important for HR managers to look at these boomerang employees and tap into a powerful resource for growth of the organization as a whole.

They are aware of your business

You can skip the part of training them in your business, organizational structure, and corporate culture. Boomerang employees are already aware of your business and require no on-boarding process. More than one-third of HR professionals and hiring managers believe that hiring boomerang employees has great benefits for them as they are already attuned to the organization’s culture.

Quick to start working

With boomerang employees, the steep learning curve can be done away with. The time they would’ve spent at your organization earlier gives them the edge over new hires and allows everyone including HR department, hiring managers and the employee to get down to business immediately.

Save your resources

Hiring can be a resource intensive exercise, especially when you have to look from a pool of new talent. But if HR departments maintain a ready contact list of former employees who might be interested in coming back, it can save both time and money in the hiring process for the organization. One, you won’t need to find out the hard way if the new hire is fit for the role or not. And second, you’ll get the added advantage of instilling confidence in your current workforce that your organization is the best place to work when they see a former colleague return to the workplace.

Remove the ‘surprise’ variable

The risks and surprises variable that are an integral part of the hiring equation are automatically taken care of with boomerang employees. Any smart person could manage to impress you in a few meetings and present a well written resumé. But with boomerang employees, that element of surprise is taken care off.

They’re better than ever

Former employees who left on good terms will be equipped with many new skills by the time they decided to come back. It could be like they just took a sabbatical from work for professional development and came back with additional knowledge that they could share with the rest of the team.

In conclusion

There’s always risk involved in rehiring a former employee. However, the rewards that it can bring for an organization as well as the employees far outweigh the risks. And in all this, let’s not forget the resources that are saved in the process. So, it would be a good idea to keep a list of former employees who might be a good fit for the organization in the future as well ready for use when needed. Chances are, many of them would gladly come back to familiar territory to work with people they enjoyed working with previously.

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Topics: Performance Management, Talent Acquisition, Strategic HR

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