Boomerangs Are Our Greatest Change Agents

By Anthony Salazar

There’s a generational shift taking place in the workforce. Just consider retired professionals of previous generations. From parents to grandparents, family friends to neighbors, there’s a pattern in older generations—such as the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, and even Gen X—whose members have spent the majority of their careers at one or two companies.

Younger professionals are not buying into this lifestyle. Take, for instance, teachers, entry-level employees, even middle management who appear happy in their roles. They are often high performers who work well with their colleagues, and yet they leave after a few years of employment.

There are many reasons why employees leave companies. The most notable and archaic reasons stem from dissatisfaction with work culture and colleagues. There’s even an old saying that people don’t leave bad companies, but rather bad bosses. These reasons are valid and still exist today, but there are more prominent reasons beyond simply being dissatisfied.

An age of job-hopping?

The pursuit of new skills, yearning for higher titles and salaries, establishing a more flexible work-life balance, and even searching for organizations with aligning missions and ideologies is not new. But the pursuit of these opportunities is becoming more prominent for younger professionals who witness the array of possibilities through social media, online job ads, and professional websites like LinkedIn. The last 20 years of technological advancements has unveiled and encouraged an age of job-hopping.  

High retention cannot solely rest on a team of transformational leaders. Of course, leaders should always work to improve their organizations by asking for feedback when their high performers leave, but they should not automatically assume their employees leave due to ill intentions.

Leaders must instead adapt to the growing need for opportunity by maintaining relationships and encouraging reemployment for future roles within the company that better align to departing employees’ growth needs. This entails prioritizing the offboarding experience as meticulously as the onboarding experience. Employees who seek new opportunities elsewhere and later return to their prior company are considered boomerang employees, much like the boomerang tool, or toy that keeps coming back when thrown.

Instead of viewing departed employees as betrayers of a corporate cause, leaders should view departed employees as potential assets of future innovation and change. Whether an organization changes a technology, policy, procedure, or hierarchy structure, most employees require time to adjust, yet boomerang employees are built for rapid change and may serve as an organization’s greatest resource.

Here’s why.

Boomerang employees are natural change agents

Employees who leave organizations for growth opportunities elsewhere are natural change agents. These individuals aren’t afraid of seeking change in order to achieve their goals in life. They don’t cower from instability or the unknown as long as their path aligns with new and healthy challenges.

Anyone can sit at a desk or work in an assembly line for years, performing the same task. But instead of viewing this work as x-amount of years in the industry, it’s actually more like one year in the industry performed for x-amount of years. Employees who leave for new experiences do not want to get caught in the crosshairs of redundancy. They need change, and an opportunity elsewhere may offer a fresh perspective of possibilities.

Boomerang employees understand possibilities

Employees who leave organizations and return years later have a greater understanding of possibilities. They experience firsthand what works and what doesn’t work at other organizations. They may also have opportunities to explore ideas that were met with skepticism by their prior leaders. Being able to test hypotheses elsewhere offers valuable learning opportunities for employees who seek development.

Employees who remain in the same industry further gain experience learning how other organizations operate. This is not for the purpose of acquiring proprietary information, but rather for acquiring new approaches to operating efficiently and effectively. When an employee remains stagnant at one place, they limit their perspective and often struggle to see new possibilities. Only when one radicalizes their environment will they open up to challenges outside their comfort zone.

Boomerang employees know the history

Disgruntled leaders who refuse to rehire boomerang employees often do so out of an egotistical feeling of betrayal and disloyalty. However, high-performing boomerang employees know what the job entails. They know how the organization strategizes and implements change. Upon reinstatement, they typically onboard much quicker than employees who are entirely new to an organization. And, more importantly, they have a historical perspective of how the company operates.

How often do we hear long-tenured employees say “we’ve done this before, it won’t work” or “we don’t have the bandwidth for change” immediately after a new idea is proposed by a newer employee? Boomerang employees know the history behind strategy talks and why prior implementations failed in the past. But their fresh perspective elsewhere may offer insight on how to successfully approach change in a way not thought of by those with limited perspectives. They are truly the best change agents who know how to persuade leaders who are reluctant to take innovative risk.

Boomerang employees are here to stay

The workforce is changing, and the possibility of growth, development, work-life balance, and matching values is becoming increasingly alluring to younger generations fearful of stagnation. Many employees must learn firsthand if the grass is truly greener on the other side, and leaders must understand that their transformational approaches to leadership may not guarantee employee retention. When high performers leave, leaders must treat their departed employees as assets who may reunite with future employment opportunities.

Image credit: mathisworks