Should You Rehire a Former Employee?

 Wed 10 Feb 2021

Should You Rehire a Former Employee?

An employee who left your company wants to come back. What should you do? It may seem like a good idea to rehire them: 

Because the former employee is a known quantity, you may consider them to be a safer bet than a new hire. But new research shows that the decision to rehire a so-called “boomerang employee” may not be so clear cut. On the one hand, rehires may require less on-boarding and may contribute more quickly than new hires. 

 

However, they also turn over at a higher rate than other employees (and more than twice as often as people who were internally promoted). And while the job performance of a boomerang employee is fairly predictable, both internal and external hires improve more on the job over time. 

So, if predictability, short-term impact, and lower training costs are your goals, a boomerang employee might be the right fit. But if you’re looking for someone who’s going to stick around, an internal promotion might be the way to go.
This tip is adapted from “Should You Rehire an Employee Who Left Your Company?,” by John D. Arnold et al.