The Great Resignation: Why bosses should beware of 'boomerang' employees

A study published last year by Harvard Business Review found that boomerang employees are more likely than their colleagues to head back to the door. Photo / Campaign Creators, Unsplash

Opinion

OPINION:

Many people spend their whole lives not knowing what exactly they want to do.

It all starts with the often laughably bad career guidance offered at school. When I was asked what I'd like to do for work experience as a teenager, and I ticked a box on a form saying something creative, they sent me to work on the shop floor of Thornton's. I spent the following two weeks serving honeycomb batons and creamy fudge.

The only thing creative about my placement was the fact it was an option in the first place.

My two weeks behind the chocolate counter in a crumbling London shopping centre didn't matter to my career in the long term, because I always had a rough idea of what I wanted to do. But I had no clue then those two weeks could have been game-changing, had they been used wisely.

Top private schools know this all too well, which is why in the past they have auctioned off placements in creative industries and across the City of London to the highest bidding parent.

Instead of serving chocolate truffles behind a frozen counter after ticking a box saying they fancied a creative career, these lucky students will have ended up rubbing shoulders with those at the top of journalism, film, advertising or art. In the best-case scenario, those who had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives will have finished their placements feeling excited, focused and inspired for their future.

But most people don't leave school feeling this way. With no idea what to do next, they eventually fall into random careers.

Many will stay in those roles for life, others might flip-flop back and forth as they search for fulfillment elsewhere before being lured back again. Companies which are desperate to fill jobs are now pining for these flip-floppers, hoping to win back those who have left them like a badly guided ex fed up with feeling lonely.

'Year of the boomerang worker'

Andrea Legnani, global head of alumni relations at Citi, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme on July 19 that more than 10 per cent of the Wall Street bank's recent recruits have been these "boomerang" hires.

Some are double boomerangs - they've already rejoined and left once before. In his view, these returners save the bank around £62,500 (around NZ$120,250) in hiring costs and bring in skills that they've acquired elsewhere. Last year the bank hired 4000 of these ex-employees.

Citi is far from alone. Recruitment experts have already predicted that 2022 will be the year of the boomerang worker as companies around the world struggle to fill roles and a record number of people switch jobs.

Banks in particular will be hoping to win back old flames after the glossy tech companies which poached their staff in recent years lose their shine and make mass redundancies.

Between January 2020 and April 2022, Bloomberg data shows that Coinbase, one of the world's biggest cryptocurrency companies, successfully hired from some of the world's biggest banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, HSBC and Barclays.

That trend is now likely to reverse after it unveiled plans to cut almost one in five staff. Many who left traditional companies for buzzy start-ups that are now struggling may now be looking back at the comfort of their old lives fondly.

The inconvenient truth

But chasing this cohort is a disaster in the making. Workplaces which are struggling to fill roles shouldn't bring in a bunch of people who have already tried and tested them out and decided they didn't want to stay.

A study published last year by Harvard Business Review found that boomerang employees are more likely than their colleagues to head back to the door, and often leave for similar reasons again.

Their behaviour is predictable, which can be good and bad for the company rehiring them. Someone whose performance stood out before is likely to stand out again, but they are also more than twice as likely to leave compared to their peers who never left.

While these returners might initially outperform internal and external hires because they already know the ropes, the study found that they are often beaten by others after the first year on the job.

While rehires are low risk because employers know exactly what they're going to get and don't need to pour time and money into training someone fresh, in the long term their performance can lag external hires and internal promotions and they are more likely to leave.

Of course there are exceptions, and it depends on why the person left in the first place - rehiring someone who quit for family reasons or an illness is clearly very different to rehiring someone who resigned because they weren't happy in the job or had itchy feet. This latter group of workers should think about what they really want to do with their careers before running back to the comfort of an old role which didn't make them happy.

Employers fighting to win back embittered ex-workers might think that they have found a smart solution to job shortages, but it is a short-term solution which will only end up making workplaces more miserable.

Those who left jobs and industries they didn't like must think twice before being lured back. Workers who are still not sure they're in the right career must think like a teenager looking for work experience, and go for what excites them.

• Lucy Burton is the Telegraph's employment editor