Some employers leave door open when workers go

HOUSTON—Good employees are hard to find. So more companies are figuring, why not rehire the former workers we like?

Architectural firm Gensler calls them “boomerangs” and presents each returning employee with a wooden boomerang with name, quitting date and date of returning to the fold.

Some accounting and consulting firms take the courting process one step further by publishing alumni newsletters, hosting cocktail receptions and making sure every departing employee has someone to call in case the new gig doesn’t quite work out.

“Gone are the days when you quit, you are persona non grata,” said Michael Jalbert, president of the search firm MRI Network in Philadelphia.

Instead, he said, it’s becoming more common for companies to welcome employees back with open arms. It makes sense: Former employees already know the culture, the clients and how to file expense reports.

It’s also cost-effective because it doesn’t require a recruiter, said Nancy Miles, human resources regional leader for Gensler.

And those employees can hit the ground running, said Miles, who is a boomerang herself. She left the firm after her second child was born and returned when her old boss gave her a call because he heard she was thinking of going back to work. It was a pitch she found hard to resist.

Gensler welcomed back its first boomerang in 1972, and the program has picked up steam ever since. Today the Houston office has about 25 boomerangs out of 270 employees.

One came back after only two weeks in her new job. “She thought it was a dream job,” Miles said. But it wasn’t. One call later, the employee was back onboard with Gensler. Another had been away for 20 years, Miles said.

The firm celebrates its boomerangs by listing them on its intranet site. It makes formal presentations of wooden boomerangs twice a year, along with welcome-back letters from the vice chairman, and reminds employees on the way out that the door is always open. And they’re also members of an elite group, the Boomerang Club. “We don’t actually meet,” Miles said.

Joni Calkins, an architect who returned in 2000 after a seven-year absence during which she had two children, said it was a “celebration” to come back.

“It’s the prodigal son: Kill the fatted calf, get the boomerang,” she said.

Calkins said she didn’t look anywhere else when she decided to return to work, remembering those magic departing words, “we’d like to have you back.”

She just called her old boss at Gensler, and he said, “Come on over.”

Now when workers announce they’re leaving, Calkins likes to remind them, “There’s a boomerang waiting for you.” Or when she runs into a former co-worker at an industry event, she’ll remind them: “Are you ready to be a boomerang?”

Architect Edward Folse took advantage of his decision to boomerang after finding his new job at another firm wasn’t a perfect fit. Folse wanted more of a leadership role, and he ended up changing design studios when he went back to Gensler last year.

And not once did anyone say, “I told you so,” Folse said.

Managing the boomerang process—whether you give away an actual trophy—is important. In other words, a nice lunch and kind parting words go a long way to reminding employees just how valuable they are.

Jalbert said he tel ls good employees: “Just remember you have a round-trip ticket. You did great work here.”

Lots of times it works, he said, estimating that of the 25 employees he’s told they can return with just a call, four or five have come back.

Scott Wilson, the KPMG partner in charge of the southwest region for alumni relations, said the recruiting of boomerangs starts when someone is first recruited to the firm.

“If we’ve done a good job as the employer of choice, they will think of going back,” said Wilson, whose office is in Dallas. KPMG has established a strong alumni network with a newsletter, continuing education programs and receptions, even in the smallest offices, he said. Retired partners are invited to quarterly lunches.

To make sure the firm doesn’t lose track of its alums, before employees depart they’re enrolled in the alumni network and assigned contacts inside the firm.

So far, the effort is working pretty well, said Wilson, who is beginning to measure the effort’s efficiency.

In the fiscal fourth quarter of 2007—that’s July, August and September for KPMG—one percent of new hires were ex-KPMGers.

During the most recent quarter, five percent of new hires were returnees.

That represents 12 people in the southwest region and nearly 50 in the U.S.

“That doesn’t sound huge, but it really is,” Wilson said. “When they come back, you see a huge return on investment.” —Houston Chronicle