Text message. It’s the ex.

Heart’s pounding.

They want to talk.

What do we do?

Businesses are having to ask themselves this very question in 2023 amidst a wave of “boomerang employees”. The term, coined by global recruitment consultancy Robert Walters, refers to those wishing to return to their former employers and explore opportunities within their old stomping grounds.

At the back end of the pandemic, businesses struggled to retain staff as employees re-evaluated what they wanted from their working lives. After 2 (long) years of disruption, home schooling and Microsoft Teams, many within the workforce felt burnt out and were ready for a change. This was the catalyst for what became known as ‘The Great Resignation’ with record numbers of employees leaving their jobs in search of roles providing more balanced post-pandemic lifestyles. However, according to Robert Walters, we are now seeing the first signs of the ‘The Great Regret’ with nearly three quarters of professionals hoping to return to their pre-Covid employer.

So, do we delete the message and hit the block button? Or do we think of boomerang hires strategically and incorporate into our talent acquisition strategies? While it’s understandable that managers may be reluctant to hire former employees, there can be many reasons why a former colleague might look to re-join an organisation and many benefits of them doing so. We shouldn’t shun them for having found out that, perhaps, the grass isn’t always greener, and instead should support their return to the business as well as looking to build on foundations that might inspire others to do the same. Boomerang employees are:

The holy grail in terms of ‘bang for buck’

Rehiring old employees can increase productivity and reduce training costs. Providing that they were a valuable team member the first time around, you should expect more of the same, but with additional insight and experience that comes from having been exposed to other cultures, working practices and models.

Good for morale

Not only does rehiring employees allow former colleagues to pick up where they left off, but it also demonstrates that you’ve a positive and nurturing culture, welcoming back those who make a positive contribution to the business. More, returning staff help with retention as they show current colleagues that they’re part of a great team – why go anywhere else?

Helping minimise recruitment costs

82% of those surveyed by Robert Walters stated that they had kept in touch with their former managers with a quarter of these respondents admitting that they’d reached out in the past year for job opportunities. Keeping up relationships with former hires as they progress through their career helps you to build future talent pipelines. In effect, your managers can become your talent acquisition team with eyes and ears in the market watching out for potential moves.

Interested in culture

In response to the ‘The Great Resignation’, employers scrambled to offer higher salaries and make their roles ultra-flexible in efforts to attract and retain staff. While it’s still important to be competitive and have adult conversations about flexibility, the ‘boomerang employee’ has shown us that these components, ultimately, aren’t the be all and end all when it comes to retention. As important, is the culture within your organisation and being proactive about building and reinforcing this culture.

So, getting back with your ex might not be such a bad thing. In fact, used correctly, boomerangs might keep you topped up with experienced talent year after year.

Disclaimer: I’m not recommending that you get back with your actual ex. You’re right, they were probably crazy.

Until next time.

Check out our top tips on leadership:

• Be a good listener and create a safe space for people to have a voice. You want your team to be able to confide in you, offer ideas and support each other. Good listeners develop social and professional relationships on a much deeper level.
• Display the qualities you want to see in your employees, people love to be inspired.
• Motivate your employees to improve. Whether it be creating paths for growth or offering incentives, there’s many ways to motivate your team.
• Create a positive workplace culture. Work culture can affect the overall happiness and growth of your employees. Some quick wins could be: Being that bit more flexible, listening to feedback and actually asking for it, encourage socialising whether it be taking a lunch break together or having a meal after work, this can really help connect on a different level.

Most employers understand the importance of having a diverse workforce. However, hiring managers can unconsciously favour younger candidates able to show how their skills are a match for modern and technology-focused working. According to research conducted by the Chartered Management Institute, while 74% of managers are open to employing those between the ages of 18-34, this number drops dramatically to only 42% actively interested in the 50-64 demographic. With significant skills and labour shortages across all sectors, it seems paradoxical that businesses would be hesitant about recruiting older workers (especially considering potential age discrimination claims) and yet easy to appreciate how employers may struggle to balance cross-generational working. While investment in government programmes such as returnerships should help provide more mature candidates with pathways into work, businesses need to seriously think about age diversity and what initiatives they have in place to attract and retain older workers. With age comes experience, and we need to harness the value of life-long learning and the impact that this can make within a business and within our teams. So, how do we do this?

Enhance flexible working opportunities

As we age, there are natural changes within our bodies that may affect the ways and patterns in which we work. Where once we may have been happy with a fast paced 8-hour shift, we might find this slightly less comfortable later in life. Similarly, as many of us take up new roles as grandparents or carers, it can often be challenging to juggle work/life commitments, especially if we’re also managing health conditions of our own. The solution? Rethink shift patterns and the deployment of staff to help retain more experienced workers.

Dedicated recruitment campaigns for older workers

I bet you know your ideal customer. Your marketing team might even have customer personas for each of your product lines or divisions. However, recruitment advertising is often given a lot less thought, with listings hastily posted on Indeed hoping they hit the mark. Safe to say, one size doesn’t fit all. Using neutral, non-biased language is inclusive in as much as it won’t turn anyone off, but it also doesn’t help you to engage groups that are perhaps underrepresented within your workforce. It’s important to think about language, tone, and imagery, as well as content related to the role, responsibilities, and benefits. You must put yourself in the shoes of the person you want to attract.

Don’t make assumptions

“She’s worked here for 20 years; she won’t be interested in training”. Is this reality or assumption? Have we asked the question? It’s not only younger colleagues who appreciate the opportunity for upskilling and further development. Moreover, older workers are often conscious of being less familiar with the new technologies and processes coming into our businesses. Inevitably, this can push people closer to the door, so we need to be on top of skills development and have clear progression pathways for all the members of our teams.

Support for health and wellbeing

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, more than half of workers have a long-term health condition by the time they reach 60. This accounts for more than 15 million people in the UK. Generally speaking, the key to long-term support for health and wellbeing is in leading with compassion. Are your managers providing an environment where team members feel supported enough to come forward and talk about the things they’re dealing with? Is absence managed in a caring and supportive way? While different conditions will need different levels of support, it’s important to get the guiding principles in place. This is what we’re helping businesses with, day-in day-out.

Feedback. It’s essential for creating a positive and nurturing culture that allows your employees to grow and thrive. In providing clear and constructive feedback, you’re helping guide and motivate your team, reducing opportunities for miscommunication and boosting productivity. But it doesn’t always feel like that. As managers, we know we need to give feedback, but it can feel a bit scary, a bit uncomfortable, and can be one of the things that keeps us awake at night. Be honest, how many times have you avoided giving feedback, or brushed it under the carpet, hoping it just resolves itself or disappears altogether?

Giving and receiving feedback needn’t be loaded with apprehension. Done in the right way, it’s a powerful tool, showing people that you care about them, personally and professionally. We should strive to create a culture of feedback within our organisations, where we aren’t reliant only on formal processes, such as performance reviews, but provide feedback continuously in the impromptu moments. In saying this, it’s essential that the recipient is in the right mindset to receive what you have to say.

At Realise, we provide specific coaching on how to create a feedback culture and how feedback can be best delivered. Here are some tips:

1. Reframe the idea of feedback from positive/negative to reinforcing/redirecting. Thinking about feedback in this way automatically changes your approach and makes giving feedback a lot less intimidating. Reinforcing feedback (when we want someone to continue with a positive behaviour) can be delivered anytime, anywhere. Redirecting feedback (where we want someone to do less of one behaviour and more of another) should be slightly more considered.
   
   
2. Think about timing. Is the person in the right mindset to receive the feedback? How are they feeling today? How are they feeling at this moment? We want to look for a neutral time where the feedback will be received as intended and not in a time of heightened emotion.
   
   
3. What’s your goal? Think about the purpose of your feedback and be prepared with specific examples that will help guide future behaviour. Hearing that you did a good job is great, but what specifically did you see that you would like repeated or to see more of moving forward? This clarity will help the feedback become meaningful and purposeful.
   
   
4. Feedback must be actionable. Forget broad, sweeping statements. Employees must be able to see that your feedback allows them to improve and reach their goals by taking action. For example, if we want a colleague to be more vocal during team meetings, this needs to be framed positively and where the person can see what actions they need to take to achieve this. We want to avoid top-level feedback such as “you’re too quiet”; this type of feedback doesn’t provide enough detail on how to improve and so is demotivating in nature.
   
   
5. Be aware of your biases. We all have conscious and unconscious biases, so it’s important to think about whether you would provide the same feedback to another team member. Research has shown that, in providing feedback to male and female colleagues of the same seniority, we are more inclined to provide warmer and kinder feedback to women than we are to men. And while kindness isn’t necessarily a bad thing, a desire to be kind can inflate or misconstrue feedback, making it less actionable and less helpful. Similarly, feedback without kindness can be detrimental to someone’s wellbeing and mental health, so it’s important we’re conscious of our biases and look to strike a balance wherever we can.
   
   
6. And finally… ask for feedback from others. If there’s one way to diffuse the tension around giving feedback, it’s to receive it more regularly. The more you have feedback conversations and the more it’s embedded within your culture, the less stressful it’ll be. Of course, not every situation requires feedback, but it should be the norm. Feedback helps everyone grow and develop.

A few months back I spoke at an event in Manchester as one of three speakers. We had never met, nor had we planned what we were going to say. Ok not great, however, as a collective, there was one common theme in our speeches – managers are key to every aspect of your business. Sadly, there was an overwhelming agreement that organisations fail to invest in developing managers and equipping them with the tools to do their job.

Why do we under-invest in management skills and what impact does this have?

Many managers are promoted from within, and what a great business strategy, IF you have the right potential, skills and behaviours available to you, as well as the right development programmes and opportunities for them to grow into their new role. Managers are often promoted because they are high performing in their technical role, and they have potential but all too often they are left to just get on with the job. This often leads to managers feeling overwhelmed, frustrated and sometimes hating the people management side of their job, not to mention that teams become disengaged, which impacts on their performance, the bottom line, culture, retention and possible reputation. No company can afford to have a disengaged workforce.

Gallup has been studying the correlation between employee engagement and company performance for around 30 years. In their State of the Global Workplace report, a staggering 87 per cent of employees worldwide are not engaged, and companies with highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 per cent in earnings per share. Managers account for at least 70 per cent of the variance in employee engagement scores.

So let’s make 2023 the year to give managers the confidence and skills to be able to engage, motivate, communicate, support and develop their own teams as well as the ability to deal with the tricky side of people management.

Where and how do you start to change some of this? This is a complex challenge; there are many places to look, analyse and change, however, Rome wasn’t built in a day. My advice would be to start having honest conversations with your managers to truly understand how they feel about being a people manager and what support they need.

We’re here to help! If you have thought about putting your managers through some training then check out our 7 week Managing People Programme, where delegates get the chance to learn new techniques to become a great people manager. Click here for more info on this, or to book your place you can email hello@realisehr.co.uk and one of our lovely team will talk you through next steps. So, what are you waiting for?

PRESS RELEASE

Immediate Release: 19/12/2022

Realise, Cumbria’s biggest HR consultancy, is providing young people with the opportunity to gain experience in HR & Recruitment throughout 2023.

Investing in several regional initiatives, Realise is looking to raise awareness around HR careers and entry pathways into the sector.

Claire McLean, Founder CEO of Realise, said: “HR is not typically talked about as a career opportunity in school. However, as an integral part of any successful organisation, HR provides a whole host of possibilities in business management with a clear focus on people. I’m keen to make sure that HR is made accessible to young people; it’s an exciting time post-covid to get into HR as businesses are heavily relying on their HR colleagues to steer them in the right direction.”

Realise will be developing an early careers programme to be delivered in local schools in 2023 and have committed to several schemes to help bridge the gap between the world of work and education. As part of Dream Placement, a unique Cumbrian initiative managed by the Centre for Leadership Performance, Realise will be offering a young person the opportunity to spend time in industry and learn from their range of in-house HR professionals.

Martin Norris, Head of Recruitment at Realise, will also be supporting Caldew School in an advisory capacity to support their careers programme and help further promote HR pathways. Cheryl Eastburn, Careers Lead at Caldew School said:  “we are delighted that Martin will be supporting our students as an Enterprise Adviser. Martin brings with him a wealth of knowledge on careers. He will be supporting us with bespoke activities that we have identified our students will benefit from so that they are work ready. This will be through mentoring, mock interview and individual career workshops.”

Cath Dutton from The Cumbria Lep adds: “We are thrilled that Martin has volunteered as an Enterprise Adviser.  Our Enterprise Advisers play a crucial role in bringing their business experience into the school by supporting the Careers Lead to deliver an outstanding careers programme for all their pupils.  Martin’s knowledge and experience will be a great asset to Caldew School”.

Cumbria Careers Hub are still looking for Enterprise Advisors in Dallam, Settleback, Kirkbie, Kendal and Millom School. If you would like to know more, please contact Cath at Cath.Dutton@thecumbrialep.co.uk