Speaker #0Now is probably not the right time to talk about hiring, all the crazy stuff going on in the world. But there is an interesting thing happening or a new phenomenon. It's called boomerang employees or boomerang hire. And I want to talk a little bit about what that is, why it's effective, and how you would benefit your company. Welcome to the Key Hire Small Business Podcast, where we cover the issues that help owners scale their small business. I'm Corey Harlock, creator of Key Hire Solutions, and I will be your host and your guest today. Lucky you. So we have this concept of a boomerang employee. So let's talk about what that is. It's a rehire. It's hiring someone who used to work for you. And I guess the concept around the boomerang employee is they leave. for greener pastures they find out it's not so green on the other side and they realize maybe i didn't have it so bad where i used to be and they talk about coming back to work for you so there's there's a couple benefits there's a couple mistakes we can make and there's a couple benefits to this so let's talk about the mistakes first when a valuable employee quits They usually quit at the exact wrong time when you feel like you need the most. And as a business owner, it can be hard not to take it personally and not be upset about it. And sometimes we might not treat that person very well. We might walk them, meaning, if you're going to give me your notes, you can just leave right now. I don't need you. We might accept their... their notice and our opinion of them, even though they were great employees for however long they were with us, our employee may sully and we may start getting negative on them. And maybe their last two weeks, they don't try as hard as they used to. The quality of their work isn't as good. And there's an expression out there, you're only as good as your last day worked. And so our, our recent impression of them is they weren't great, but they're leaving for a reason. And it could be any number of things. It could be life gotten away. Maybe they moved and they're looking for something closer to their home. Maybe they're commuting. The commute's too long. Maybe they don't feel challenged. We've done lots of episodes on kind of how to re-engage employees and re-hire. When we say re-hire your employees that are currently employed, but going to them and acting like you were going to rehire them again, how we can keep them engaged. And maybe they weren't feeling that. Maybe it's just time for them to move on. Maybe they just weren't challenged enough and they wanted to go get some new experience and see what else was out there. Whatever it is, if they were a good employee, our mindset can often shift to, well, they weren't that good. Maybe it's better they leave. We can get someone better. And we try to justify it because maybe we have hurt feelings or maybe our ego gets in the way with it. Or maybe they had they didn't see eye to eye with the new leader you brought in. And man, stop me if you've heard this story, but new leader is hired. Great employee gets frustrated and leaves. And three months later, new leader is terminated. And now not only are you down a leader, but you're down. one of your best employees who used to report to said leader. So there is, I guess what I'm trying to say is I understand how when people leave, it's hard to not be upset about it or have hurt feelings. But what I'm going to tell you is, and I'm not painting every business owner with a broad brush, not everyone does this and not everyone does this all the time. We all have good days and bad days, but when a great employee leaves, take a beat, take a breath and think, if they ever wanted to come back, would I bring them back? And if the answer is yes, we need to treat them with respect and treat them as well on their last day as we did on their best day and let them know that, hey, I get it. I understand why you might want to leave. I understand things. Maybe circumstances are at work of change. I understand we brought in this new leader and maybe we're taking it's it's we're trying something different and it doesn't gel with you. I understand your ambitions are bigger than what we have or we can't. provide you with the experience that you're hoping to get. Let's keep in touch. I wish you all the best. I want to hear about all your successes. Let's keep in touch. Let's check in. And FYI, the onus will be on you, Mr. or Mrs. business owner, to check in and see how things are going. And it could be six months. It could be 12 months. It could be five years. Who knows? But one day, the opportunity for them to say, hmm, man, I really liked working there, and I really liked that owner, and I really liked what they were trying to do. I wonder what's going on there now. Maybe I left because I had a conflict with one of the employees, didn't get along with them, didn't see eye to eye with them, didn't like the direction they were trying to take it. I wonder if they're still there. Let me reach out and see. And I'm sure some of you, if not all of you, have gotten an email from that long-term employee who left a while ago saying, hey, how are things? I just wanted to check in. What's new? That's probably them dipping their toe in the water to see what's happening. Now, that's kind of the groundwork. That's what happens when they leave. But what are the benefits of bringing them back? And there are a few benefits of bringing them back. Number one, they may have gone out to a larger company and got more experience. And when they come back, they might actually be bringing your business more capacity. And if I kind of explain that out and expand it, if you were doing $5 million when they left, and a couple of years later, you're doing $12 million, but they went to a $50 million a year company. and they went in as maybe a supervisor or an individual contributor, but got promoted into a leadership role, and we're managing people and managing process and procedure, they can now bring that experience and capacity back to your business. That's a plus. The second plus is, over the time they're gone, your business will have changed. But But... the core of it will probably remain intact, meaning your values, your leadership, what you're trying to accomplish. And they already get that and understand that. So when they come in the door on day one, if there were a great culture fit before, there's a chance there's still gonna be a pretty good culture fit. Now, you will have changed, your business will have changed, and they will have changed, but hopefully for the better. And being... you know hopefully you become a better manager over that time hopefully your business has changed for the better you've created better process and procedure you're delivering at a higher level and they've gone out and changed for the better in terms of being more professional and getting more experience and building that capacity we talked about so if they come back your time to ramp them up it's going to be a lot less they might still know some of the people that are working there if you have that kind of tenure and you have some long-term employees they're going to be familiar they're going to know where the bathrooms are. They'll be able to figure out where the bodies are buried pretty quick because they can go to the people they know and say, hey, fill me in. What's going on here? What's going on there? So their road to being 100% functioning and being able to go and do their job at 100%, it's a shorter road, shorter lead time than to hiring someone from outside the business. That's an advantage. So they might have the experience and capacity that you're looking for. They might have developed their leadership skills and they already kind of know the business, even though everything has changed. It'll be faster than bringing someone in from the outside. Attention business owners. Are you tired of wasting valuable time hiring for associate level positions only to have them not work out or show up? Let me introduce you to CareerSpring. CareerSpring connects. first-generation and low-income college students with employers like you for those crucial early career roles. Many of these graduates had to balance a full-time job and a full-time course load to achieve their college dreams. They understand the value of hard work and overcoming obstacles. And here's the best part, CareerSpring is free for employers. Yes, you heard that right. As a non-profit organization, CareerSpring offers their services at no cost to you, making it easy to find and hire these incredible future leaders. They work with students all across the United States, from trade programs to Ivy League schools and everything in between. If you're ready to make a real difference and connect first generation potential with future opportunities, click the link in the show notes below and learn how you can transform your business and support these exceptional students. Financially, it's going to be cheaper to hire them. You're going to have to pay them more. because they're not coming back for the same dollar value you brought them in, but the ROI on hiring them is faster. It's more, it's greater because you already know them. There's familiarity. Again, we're bringing skills, we're bringing capacity. Hiring someone new, you got to put them through all this training and do all these things. You can do an abbreviated training with a new person. So there's a lot of advantages to bringing someone in. who is already familiar with and has gone away and gotten some skills that are transferable to bring back to your business. That's a perfect situation. They may have left and gone and done something totally different and the skills they got are not transferable and they may not have built that capacity. Is a good idea to rehire them? It could be. Depends what they're asking for. It depends what you need. They want to do what you need them to do. If they were an individual contributor when they left, then they're still happy being an individual contributor when they come back. And what they're asking for in terms of an hourly rate or a salary is within your budget for what you want them to do and what they want to do. It makes perfect sense. Again, you have this quicker ramp up quicker. quicker road to success and being able to do their tasks and operate within your business at 100% faster. The key to all of this is maintaining the relationship. It's treating them with respect and not getting upset and not letting them know you're upset. It's okay to say, man, I'm really upset you're leaving. It sucks for me. I understand why you want to go. That's a different message than how dare you leave. You could have given me more notice. You know this is our busy time. And it's probably all of that stuff. But it's people, people are people and they're going to make the right decision for them. Even though it's your business and your decisions are based on what's right for your business, their decisions are probably based on what's right for me. in my career, in my family. Now, go back to last week's episode with Marina, where she talked about the differences in the entrepreneur brain and the leader slash employee brain, because there is a difference in the way we think, the way we prioritize, what we think is important, how we're able to process information as business owners versus our leaders and employees. And I think that's an important distinction to make too, because what's important to you at that time probably isn't priority number one for the person who's resigning. They might have family issues. Like I said at the beginning, there could be any number of things going on in the world and they're making a decision that they feel is best for themselves, their career, their future, their family, whatever it could be. This episode is brought to you by KeyHire Solutions, where we work exclusively with small business owners who need the right team to scale and grow their business. Are you struggling to find the right talent for your business? 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So it takes a lot of self-control to be able to take a pause, take a breath and think, OK, this has been a great soldier for me, someone who has been by my side and helped me be successful and someone I can count on. And they are very hard to replace. And I'll take a little side road here. The replacement theory. So to re- make this really simple. If you have a high performer and they leave and you say, fine, go, I'll just replace them. I'll find someone better. The odds of finding someone who is as good as they are is one in three, 33%. You're going to find someone as good as them. You're going to find someone who, or you're going to find someone better. You're going to find someone as good or you're going to find someone worse. So, but with... The hiring strategies and techniques that most small business owners use, they don't maximize the probability of getting the right person. So the probability of you hiring someone as good as one of your top performers is low. The opportunity for you to hire an average performer in place of them is okay. And the chances of you hiring a poor performer in replace of them is... okay as well right so you're probably going to get someone who is a poor or medium performer to replace that high performer and that's how you should think of it we're always trying to bring in the best people and if they are one of your best people we need to pause and think okay if there's ever an opportunity down the road to have them rejoin our company I need to maintain this relationship and I need to be thinking about that and I need to make their exit um easy. And I need to know that they were valued and they are welcome back anytime. If whatever they're doing in the future doesn't work out, give me a call. I would love to have that conversation with you. I hope that all made sense. But this idea, I work with a lot of business owners and I've seen it happen and I've seen it work. And I've also seen it get blown up where a great employee gives notice and the relationship is from one side or the other or both, it's terminated and never shall we work together again. And if they've been great employees for you for five years, it doesn't make sense to just blow it up because we have hurt feelings or it's bad timing or they made a bad decision. Who knows? I'm not... trying to place blame. I'm just trying to say there's circumstances here and it's worthwhile pausing and weighing this out and saying, if they wanted to come back, would I take them? If the answer is no, then it's fine. You deal with it the way you need to deal with it. But if the answer is yeah, then we need to manage that exit almost as much as we manage the onboarding of a new employee to give them that great warm. fuzzy and make them feel like, hey, I want you to know I support your decision, but if you ever want to come back, we're here for you. So that's my rant on Boomerang employees. I hope it made sense. If you have any comments about it or questions, drop them in the comment box. If you're watching here on YouTube, make sure you subscribe, hit like, share it with anyone who you think might be going through the same thing here. uh but subscribing and commenting is really important let us know what you think or if there's any topics you'd like us to address drop them in there if you prefer to listen to your podcast you can find us on apple spotify whatever your favorite platform is just search up the hires small business podcast i'd like to thank you for listening i'm corey harlock and until next time stop grinding start growing
