Are we missing out on Boomerang Employees?
As we have been analysing and reporting on exit feedback we gather for our clients, we have been surprised at the level of people who said they would consider working for their employer again in the future. Almost 60% (59.7% to be precise) said they would.
This is a fascinating piece of insight but what do we do with it?
In a Harvard Business Review study looking at rehires, it found that 28% of hires were people returning within a 36 month period of resigning. If almost 60% of people say they would consider returning and less than half of that actually are, the question is, are employers missing out on a potential talent pool and if so, what can they do?
Get proactive.
A first step should be looking to close the barn door before the horse bolts. Employers must be doing something right for people to consider coming back so it might be useful to get proactive and really understand why people stay.
Carrying out stay interviews with critical or high-risk employees is one way of doing this. In our stay interviews we ask whether people intend to stay with their employer in a given time period (often a 1 or 2 years depending on the type of organisation). When people state their intention, it often translates into action.
We also ask about the things people value about their work and the things that frustrate them. We build a picture of what will lead people to stay and what will tip them over the edge and leave.
Nurture your alumni.
Most good employers work hard on welcoming and onboarding their new people. Really smart employers make sure they say farewell in a positive way too. Creating a positive leaver experience is important if you want to have people being positive advocates out there and potentially coming back if their new employer does not work out.
The same Harvard Business Review study found that people tend to wobble in their new jobs just after the one-year anniversary so keeping in touch at that one-year mark with those you would love to come back, could pay talent dividends.
Ask the right questions!
If your leavers are saying they would work for you again, but then don’t, instead of asking yourself why….ask them! Do you have a process in place that gives people a psychologically safe space to share what would have to change in order for them to return? It’s not uncommon for us to hear things like, I would return if the management team changed, or I would return if I could work in a different department, work different hours… and so on. Done well, exit interviews can identify themes and key areas of focus that could help re-engage boomerang leavers.
Deliver what you promise.
The study also found that people who did boomerang were a bit disillusioned that the role they went to did not meet their expectations. Here’s the twist, in our 432 exit interviews, we asked whether leavers’ experience of working for their employer matched their expectations when they joined. Only 42% said it did, 22% were neutral and 35% said it did not.
Over a third of leavers disagreed with this statement, 17% of which strongly disagreed.
Our attraction efforts sometimes work against us. In selling a role, a culture, a career, or experience to get people onboard, we often fail to deliver fully. This creates dissonance and dissatisfaction and when people feel the psychological contract is breached, they will look elsewhere.
This is an opportunity and a threat. An opportunity for us to lure back the people we miss but a threat because it is a cause for people to leave in the first place.
When we hire and employ people, we make a huge investment. We build skill, knowledge, expertise and capability which we lose when people leave. It would be great if we did not lose our most productive and talented people in the first place but as our research (and that of others) shows, all is not lost if we get proactive in understanding why people stay, get smart at nurturing our alumni and be honest when we’re hiring.
Exit interviews offer us insight into why people leaving but done correctly, they can also tell us whether people would consider coming back, and more crucially, what employers need to improve for them to do so.
