Rehiring Employee 2

[weeeds]

A good employee has left for the lush green grass on the other side of the hill, and found that it was only astroturf.
The individual now sees the error in their move and asks for their old job back.
Good employees are hard to find and we could certainly use this one, so what do we do?
Does your Company have a rehire policy?
What are the pros and cons of rehiring a well qualified employee?
What are your experiences, from the management and from the employee side?
Thank you for your feedback.

 

[jmw]

In some sectors, in the big contracting houses, for example, the work force expands and contacts according to where the contracts go and the dispossessed follow the contracts, OK, Usually as contract self employed, but the shrinkage and growth can sometimes exceed the normal ebb and flow and it happens to permanents as well.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[DarthSoilsGuy]

in my old department at my old company, that's how 5 of 20 people had gotten their raises. HAH! Those 5 were the top paid on the crew.

-dsg

 

[dozer]

Epoisses, why do you say, "the person will NEVER lose face even further and leave the company a second time!!"? I did and I didn't see it as loosing face at all. I agree with your other points. Maybe your last one was tongue-in-cheek and I just didn't get it. Anyway, what's the difference if he leaves in two years. At least you had somebody who know what they were doing for two years.

I think the risk of a newbie not working out or working out but leaving in a short time is just as big a risk as anything you risk hiring the old guy back. In the end, Widla, you know more about the situation than any of us arm chair managers, go with your gut.

 

[jmw]

OK, rehire on the same terms or improved terms?

First the re-hire is way out the cheapest option even if you find out it is about the money and pay him more.
You can take him back as if he never left.

The advantages are that HR protect their budget and their turnover ratio.
If you have to hire a replacement they need to spend on advertising and then they pay an agency to do their work for them. Plus they will probably have to pay a living wage to get a newbie anyway and he isn't going to be worth anything for 6 months.

And at the end? the newbie is as likely to move on as anyone else.

So with the rehire you may have to pay him more and re-instate his seniority etc else you just are making sure he is straight back on the job hunt and all you bought yourself is a few weeks or months.

If you do significantly increase his rewards did you buy anything? Well, perhaps a couple of years.

But if you can't keep people you pay well, how do you expect to keep people you don't pay well?

The only downside would be if he teaches the others on subsistence level incomes how to work the trick.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[weeeds]

The money is really not the issue. We understand that you "pay me now or you pay me later". It is every manager's responsibility to know what their industry pays and to try to remain competitive.
The main concern we have is with the message to the remaining employees. The message can be that it is OK to try something else and if it does not work out then these chumps will always take me back, or, I better make sure that I am doing the right thing and have given it the appropriate amount of thinking because this door will close behind me. In some ways this becomes a test of character. If you leave and then want to come back then are you considered to be weak of character?

 

[jmw]

The message is simpler than you think and you have over-analysed it.

If one of the chumps had gone we wouldn't be having this discussion because you'd have said "No thanks, you chose to go, stay gone."

So the fact is that you want to rehire this guy because this guy is an OK worker.

You haven't stated the policy clearly enough for yourself to act on it:

"Good guys can come back, chumps can't."

By re-hiring this guy you think the message going out is:
"Any one can come back."

So what? When one of the chumps goes and tries to come back you'll get the real message across.

On the other hand, if you don't rehire this guy the message that goes out will be:
"No rehires, no way, no how." and that is a message that could hurt you in future. Now in fact because not rehiring this guy is going to cost you more than rehiring and it won't send out the message you think you need to send.



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[bencraddock]

I once had a coworker leave the company and come back in two weeks. It was actually a big moral boost since the remaining employees were overloaded with work and we really liked the guy. The returning employee brought back all these horror stories about the other company and made us all happy to be where we were. Turns out he just misjudged the other employer and made a mistake.

BUT, I definitely agree with everyone else that it depends upon the character of the employee and whether or not his reasons for leaving in the first place have been resolved.

 

[plasgears]

A rehire is not a bad idea. The person is a known quantity with most likely related experience valuable to the company. The best rehire is a past intern.

Some now hires made by one of my past companies have turned out to be disasters. They specialized in hiring unqualified individuals. That's what you see in small companies.

 

[DarthSoilsGuy]

In my old company, we had a guy quit to work in construction as the foreman for a small outfit.

He worked there for a week and quit there because the heavy machine operators were heavily using drugs and working drunk. He came back in less than a week and many people in the other departments never knew he had left.

We had a marketer that quit and came back for his job after the weekend. Both of the staff have been recognized by corporate for their good works. You should expect people who take their careers seriously to go through some internal crises in their lifetimes.

i don't see any mixed signals in rehiring. supposedly, if the employee was not worth rehiring, he/she would not have left on their own free will in the first place. Being rehired should eliminate many of the false expectations on both sides. i.e. my friend had the false expectation of working in a safe and legal environment.

 

[weeeds]

Some great post folks!
I am definitely softening on my position to this issue.
Sometimes we (I) take things too personally, such as someone leaving for what they think is a better situation elsewhere.
Thank you all for some great thoughts.