Welcome Boomerang Employees Back in Style
(Editor’s Note: Today’s article is brought to you by our friends at Kronos, a leading provider of workforce management and human capital management cloud solutions. Both Fortune Magazine and the Great Place to Work Institute have named Kronos a best workplace for Millennials for a second year in a row. Congratulations to them! Enjoy the article.)
I recently had the opportunity to interview Kronos CEO Aron Ain about his book, “WorkInspired: Build an Organization Where Everyone Loves to Work” and his journey of transforming the company into a billion dollar business. I hope you’ll take the time to check out the webcast because I really enjoyed the conversation.
In discussing the culture of Kronos with Ain, one of the things he likes to talk about are boomerang employees. He’s very open about letting employees spread their wings and listen to other opportunities. He’s also comfortable with the Kronos culture and work environment to let exiting employees know that they’re welcome back at any time.
This isn’t something new at Kronos. I’ve been working with the company for years and this has always been a part of who they are. I know many organizations are apprehensive about rehiring employees. And only because of the challenges in today’s labor market are they reconsidering that point-of-view.
But today’s Time Well Spent cartoon reminded me of the conversations I’ve had with Ain and Joyce Maroney, executive director at The Workforce Institute, about Kronos’ views on boomerang employees. In fact, did you know that Kronos promotes the boomerang trend on their website? And while your organization might not want to dedicate a page to boomerang employees, does your company include anywhere in their recruitment marketing that they encourage former employees to reapply?
The other thing that today’s Time Well Spent reminded me of is that we need to make orientation and onboarding more of a celebration. Often when employees leave, the company or the employee’s department throws them a nice party or takes the departing employee out to lunch. Sometimes the exiting employee is given a gift. Do new employees get the same? It would send a huge message if new hires got the same gifts and parties that exiting employees do. Just something to think about.
A lot of great employees leave our companies for no fault of the organization. And sometimes they regret those decisions. Organizations have the opportunity to leave the door open. The question becomes, will they do it.
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