Boomerang Employees

Context:

We are living in an era of Great Resignation where enterprises are vastly hit by the mass exodus of their talent pool leaving them for various reasons. As per CNBC findings, the continued Great Resignation wave gave rise to the boomerang employee – a former worker who returns to the company after some time away.

We are not democratic & generalized in our views but limit our context to High-Potential Employees (HiPo). A HiPo employee is a proven high performer with 3 distinguishing attributes Ability, Aspiration and Engagement that allow them to rise to and succeed in more senior, critical positions.

What makes Employees stay or leave?

Often, it’s an exaggerated & overreaching statement that Employees leave for Materialistic and Tangible benefits alone, and the data and research speak otherwise.

As per HBR, the brief answer is “Inertia.” Employees tend to remain with a company until some force causes them to leave. The concept here is very like the concept of inertia in the physical sciences: a body will remain as it is until acted on by a force.

What factors affect this inertia?

Job satisfaction & Company Environment.

Job satisfaction is intrinsic, comes from the autonomy with purpose one feels in work.

Company Environment is external, comes from the belonging with comfort one perceives at workplace.

Ironically, these are purely intangible factors that cannot be touched or seen but can only be felt and experienced, which strengthen inertia or stickiness of the Employee to the Organization. In the absence of these mentioned intangible factors that weaken inertia, employees will be instigated to offset the perceived missing worth with tangible factors (outside) which are purely materialistic; in deciding to leave the company, in pursuit of tangibility.

But what makes one come back?

While reasons could be many, some monetary and some situational; the key factors that we briefed above; Autonomy (one seeks in the work itself in deriving one’s own purpose), Belonging (one looks for with the community that one was associated with before) & Comfort (one feels out of familiarity), will play a crucial role in the comeback as the Tangibility (outside) is short lived, the perceived intangibility kicks-in again.

Coming back is a strong indicator of the bond between employee and employer. More often or not, a comeback may lead to longer tenure as one has reinforced his or her decision to be with the company be coming back and/or also regretting one’s decision to move out in the first place.

One becomes Citizen by coming back and such employees are driven by intense Citizenship behaviors in the company in a longer run.

What elements motivate Ex-Employees to comeback?

Familiarity:??????? Familiarity with the work, people & of course the whole ecosystem

Learning:?????????? Plethora of resources for learning, development & growth

Wellbeing:???????? Better work-life integration for overall wellbeing

Culture:????????????? Fostering culture of Autonomy, Collaboration, Diversity & Recognition

Support:??????????? Multi-layered strong support system across peers, teams & leadership

How will it benefit the enterprise?

Save Time & Money:?????????????????? Reduced lead times for hiring, onboarding of Ex-Employee

Readymade Cultural fit: ????????????? Ex-Employees deemed cultural fit & become Integral soon.

Tacit Knowledge:???????????????????????? Deeper Insights & Knowledge that Ex-Employees bring-in

High Productivity:??????????????????????? Familiarity with Job/Role/Work leads to High Productivity

Higher Team Morale:?????????????????? Resonating Citizenship behaviors drive Optimism & Morale

What is the Role of Leadership?

It’s a dated concept to assume leader’s role as taskmaster or mere supervisor; organizations need leaders who can bring more value and amplify the worth with the existent. Leaders should be able to see or perceive the unseen, in having the big picture, in looking beyond the Tangibility, that is a Possibility and that can happen with Meta-Leadership. In Meta-Leadership, a leader will be able to see things around as ‘what-they-could-be’ (Possibility) & ‘what-they-should-be’ (Purpose) than ‘what-they-are’ (Present).

With Leadership at the Meta layer, there is utmost significance on the leadership role in an organization for Employee retention. Level 5 Leadership (Pinnacle) is characterized by “People follow because of who you are and what you represent”. A leader should act as a coach & catalyst, in guiding, mentoring, and nurturing employees to discover their own entelechy (the realization of potential), to create synergies through teamwork and cohesiveness and further leveraging all of these towards the growth and success of the organization.

“Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don't want to.”

HiPos into Citizens:

With capable leadership, once the Organization turns its HiPos into Citizens, widening the overlaps between these two, we will observe more of OCB (organizational citizenship behavior) that can resonate with the Organizational culture, productivity increases exponentially with organizational growth becoming a byproduct.

A Win-Win at the end:

Overall, comeback employees are truly great assets and would bring tangible as well as intangible benefits to the company both in the short and long term. Their worth gets compounded (by their Citizenship behaviors) and resonated (with people in ecosystem) and will lead to higher synergies in the company leading to higher productivity & improved team performance. A problem can be turned into a potential opportunity; just like the Great Resignation led to Great Comeback Employees transforming the enterprise indeed into a Great-Place-To-Work.

~ The Comeback Is Always Stronger Than the Setback ~