What is a boomerang employee?
The Boomerang employee is a worker who leaves the company due to personal or professional reasons and is rehired at a later point in the same position or the different position.
The main reasons employees temporarily leave their positions are to:
- Further their career in another company
- Pursue their passion
- Focus on their life-change moments, like caring for a child
- Work seasonally(usually in hospitality, retail and F&B industries)
Why should HR hire a boomerang employee?
In past decades, reaccepting an ex-employee was not considered a tattoo. A recent Forbes article by Benjamin Laker identified “boomerang workers” – referring to workers who return to a former company after leaving a job – as a 2022 career trend following the Great Resignation and sometimes it might also be beneficial for employers to hire boomerang employees as well.
Some of the advantages are included as:
- A time saving and and much more effective onboarding process
- A high likelihood of fit in the company culture
- New skills, point of views, and customers brought from external job experience.
- An established employee-employer relationship and boost morale and a shared sense of purpose in the workplace.
The disadvantages of rehiring a boomerang employee
However, not all boomerang employees are high-performing and could be beneficial for the company. The disadvantages of rehiring a boomerang employees are:
- If they leave on a less-than-high note, boomerang employees have the potential of bringing bad blood back into the office.
- When management, policy or company culture changed, they may take more time than you thought to fit in.
- They might not be the most qualified candidates for the new position regardless of their past performance.
Workstem
These days, employers and HRs realise loyalty does not necessarily ends when employees move to other opportunities, and rehiring boomerang employees may also bring benefits to their businesses with many aspects.
At Workstem, we fully believe that the strength of the company is in people. Thanks to our powerful employee database management system, you could not easily manage new joiner’s onboard that easily and never miss one record for the change in the database like position transfer, salary change or staff information edit. Want to rehire someone? The system will also automatically recover the relevant employment history in just one click!