The employers certainly are unwilling to see a pool of talented employees crossing the line and turning into the “former employees” region and leaving the company. Employers spend quite a considerable amount of time source and recruit the best fit for them.
They put in their money to provide the employees with the required training and development, work quite closely with them for a long time, and one day the employees tell them that they are leaving. It makes the employers fuming, upset, and panic with this news.
A few companies show interest and connect virtually with their former employees after they quit or leave the company. But now, things are changing, particularly in the companies that have a well-built corporate culture.
There are organizations like Amazon, Tesla, and A.T. Kearney that have been able to form great Alumni Networks over time and are completely happy to rehire the “Boomerang” employees.
The Workforce Institute carried out a study in 2015, according to which around 15% of the respondents said that they are the ones who went back to rejoin their former organization.
Approximately 40% believed that they would love to accept the offer of the boomeranging back. Around 40% of the employees said they would be interested in rejoining their former employer if given a chance.
It obviously, is a tremendous opportunity for any talent acquisition team. Besides possessing a pool of talented and able candidates, the former employees tend to open the value for the company on numerous levels.
Some of these benefits include:
Pulling and Holding Back the New Hires
Demonstrating your former employees’ actions and works turns out to be a compelling story for your probable candidates.
You can take the example of Google – A fraction of its Employer Brand comprises the alums that move out intending to set up flourishing tech companies after some point in time.
You can view this to be beneficial in two ways: one is being employed at Google makes you able for your entrepreneurial success. Secondly, Google considers it equally important to stay in touch with former employees and illustrate their experience.
Reduced Hiring Risk
The ex-employees are the known candidates, and this makes their hiring less risky. They are the ones who very well understand your company along with its culture and processes. Also, they ensure lower onboarding costs as well.
Furthermore, they are equipped with more skills and bring a great perspective to the team. They also help to leave a significant impact on their colleagues.
It is a great thing from the retention point of view when we see a person showing the willingness to get back to the organization after experiencing the external market.
Strengthened Employer brand
The social media platforms, content websites, and significantly the review sites and the groups and communities like Glassdoor have made things quick and straightforward for the former employees to talk about their professional experience associated with their companies.
Their responses and feedback are generally taken to be more frank and objective by the prospective candidates. It gives your former employees the power to boost significantly or completely devastate your brand’s reputation.
Even a few frustrated former employees can ruin all your hard work in promoting jobs and setting up eye-catching Careers pages.
Employing Temporary Previous Workers
Your ex-employees might also be the seasonal workforce or provisional contractors engaged by your organization formerly. So, keeping contact with them lets you employ a team of pre-screened and skilled candidates.
Taking Benefit of former employees’ Referral Network
If even the former employees are unwilling to rejoin their previous organization, they are a great source of generating referrals. So, having a referral program in place for your past employees dramatically helps, and this way, you can leverage the network of your ex-employees.
You can also include your corporate alumni and make your network bigger. This further increases your chances of discovering the top talent.
The former employees who left the company on a good note and whom you are in touch with are a great source of encouragement for others. It inspires others to become a part of your company.
Staying Cost-Effective
For various benefits mentioned above, forming and keeping a corporate alumni network and staying in constant touch with the former employees asks for a little investment.
Since you are already equipped with the required data and network, don’t feel the need for the promotion and license costs needed to source the new candidates.
Keeping an excellent customer experience
A few years ago, Virgin Media put across that the laid-off candidates cost them around $5 million a year. You can easily gauge what damage unhappy or disgruntled former employees can cause to your company!
All this depends upon the exit interview of the employee. A wrong exit can make employees give up on your company’s products and services. And, yes they will undoubtedly spread a bad word about the same in their circle.
On the worst end, they might even work for a client and decide to avail of your services or products. If you did not have good terms when he left, he might give your competitor the contract.
Capturing Market Knowledge and Insight
Make appropriate use of the data and vision that you acquired from your ex-employees and identify the reasons behind the employees’ leaving organizations, where they prefer to go.
The data and insight act as an essential source of information for you. It enables you to deal with the issues you never thought of previously and helps you make your employees pleased.
How NextBee help brands strengthen their employee engagement and onboarding process?
NextBee specializes in developing Alumni Engagement Program that boosts employee retention and convinces them to bring high-quality referrals.
Scalable solution: The solution is 100% customizable and can be integrated into any HR tools. It also fits into any business model about the requirements.
Rewards & Recognition Program: Employers can rehire ex-employees and motivate them to perform extraordinarily with an exclusive recognition program.
Leaderboards: Leaderboards are great for infusing friendly competition and increase your employees’ performance. By offering employees their ranking and how much progress they need to make promote them to the next tier.
Thus, using appropriate technology, you, being an organization or employer, can remain wholly engaged with your alumni and keep up the bespoke communication to make your place in their minds.
Make sure that your previous employees do not abandon your database while leaving your company. These form a more significant component of your employer footprint.
