“Life can take you to unexpected places, love can bring you home.”
We are seeing a strange phenomenon among our clients. While they are creating empowering cultures where team members are grown and opportunities for them increase as the companies scale, sometimes they decide to leave. There is often a “grass is greener” experience where the prospect of something better is dangled and they take the bait. Sometimes they should go.
And increasingly, the comparison culture of our age has them not really appreciating their current situation and believing that another option will not only alleviate any challenges and frustrations of their current job but also offer all the things they love about that job. It sometimes takes stepping away to appreciate what you have.
Historically, exiting employees rarely make a successful journey back to the place they left. We find that is due to several reasons:
the culture is: once you leave you can never return
the employees are embarrassed about the poor decision they made
a clear path to return is not created in their exit
Obviously, we are glad to see some people go, but for those we wish hadn’t, there is a lot we can do to help facilitate their return.
support their decision to try something else
let them know that the door isn’t closed for them
tell them you’d love to have them back on the team if things don’t work out as they hoped
stay in touch with them after they leave or have someone on your team close to them keep contact
And why would we be so magnanimous and generous in our support of a defecting team member? Several reasons:
They are already trained, know our culture, and can reintegrate immediately. The alternative is possibly hiring several to get a similar replacement and then training them to get them up to speed.
Every other employee is watching how you will honor and support or disparage and disrespect. They conflate that for your true feelings and possibly how you feel about them.
We’ve seen exiting employees change their minds and stay because of how they were treated at the exit.
Your best next hire may be a returning employee. And if you are cultivating the kind of empowering culture that develops employees and diversifies power and authority to them, it shouldn’t surprise us that they would want to come back home. What once felt like the place they had to leave may just become a beacon of light in the darkness.
And one more great tip. You need to create a culture of honest feedback or at least cultivate the opinions of an exiting employee to understand hidden challenges that need to be addressed. An exiting employee is often buffered by the shared concerns of others. Having a safe and open exit interview will not only help you address the concerns of the exiting employee but likely improve your entire organization as well.
Consider
Have you ever re-hired an employee who left your company?
Do you think the way you handled their exit had anything to do with why you have or haven’t?
What do you change in the way you transition employees leaving to increase the probability of their return”?