What do you call a boomerang that doesn’t come back? A bad recruiting strategy.
That’s if we’re talking about “boomerang employees,” or US workers who return to a former employer. Boomeranging became a workplace trend in 2022 and 2023, as some workers said they regretted job-hopping during the Great Resignation. While the term may not be in the limelight anymore—Google searches for “boomerang employee” and similar phrases peaked in 2022—data from multiple labor market analytics platforms supplied to HR Brew suggests that boomerang employees, as a trend, are sticking around.
In today’s cooling labor market, boomerang employees can be a boon for recruiters with limited bandwidth and budgets because those returning can require less time and money to recruit and onboard.
“Boomerang employees become really easy to hire in that environment. I don’t need to put you through 13 interviews and a case study, test for culture fit, and all that stuff,” Bob Goodwin, president of Career Club, told HR Brew. “It’s a very streamlined hire in a process that normally has tons of friction.”
Boomerang boost. Boomerang employees represented 2.7% of all new hires at low-seasonality companies that hired at least 500 new hires in January 2022. That number jumped to 3.1% in December 2023 and has remained somewhat steady since, reaching 3.2% in July 2024. according to data from workforce intelligence platform Revelio Labs shared with HR Brew. Similarly, employers have posted an average of 3,180 job postings per month that mention “boomerang,” “rehire,” and “alumni hires” so far in 2024, higher than in 2022 and 2023, as per data shared with HR Brew from labor market analytics TalentNeuron.
“There’s definitely a steep increase in people wanting some of the maybe regrettable losses to be rehired,” Elin Thomasian, senior vice president of workforce strategy and consulting at TalentNeuron, told HR Brew.
The healthcare sector has seen the most success with re-recruiting former employees. Around 4.3% of all hires in the healthcare and social assistance sector in the last two years were boomerang employees, the highest in any non-seasonal sector, according to Revelio Labs data.
Providence Health and Services, a healthcare system headquartered in Renton, Washington, rehired 2,600 former employees in 2023, a nearly 44% increase from the 1,800 boomerangs it recruited in 2022, Greg Till, Providence’s chief people officer, told HR Brew. This year, he added, it expects to rehire 3,000 former workers.
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“There’s no downside to putting even more effort and investment into hiring boomerangs. They know our culture, they know the value,” said Till, adding that, “It’s been a great investment over the last several years for us and [we] see that continuing.”
Other non-seasonal sectors that have seen success recruiting alumni workers include professional, scientific, and technical services, administrative and support services, and finance and insurance, Revelio Labs found.
David Reed, global head of talent acquisition at Sedgwick, told HR Brew that boomerang employees—along with colleague referrals and internal hires—represented about 3 in 10 of the claim administrator’s total US hires in 2023, and around 4 in 10 so far in 2024.
“When you talk about what’s happening in the external labor market, there’s just far less movement,” Reed told HR Brew. “In terms of its sustainability, for us at Sedgwick, we continue to believe that attracting alumni is a core part of our strategy.”
How to get the boomerangs back. Recruiters who are looking to attract former employees, but are unsure where to start, might consider corporate alumni networks and communications campaigns.
Till, Providence’s CPO, said he has had continued success with the latter strategy. Providence contacts former employees via text, email, and other communication channels every six months for five years after they depart.
“We have over 60,000 people that we’re reaching out to on a regular basis. We don’t want to be annoying, so we target that outreach every six months, but we do it [to] keep the relationship alive while they’re thinking about what their next opportunity might be,” he said. “I think that’s been really successful for us.”
Staffing firm Adecco has relied on alumni networks and employee communications. Amy Glaser, SVP of business operations, is a boomerang employee who returned to the company in June 2022 after leaving in September 2021. In the last six months, she says she’s hired two boomerang employees, both of whom she kept in touch with after they left the company.
“That was one of the things that Adecco did right, that a lot of other companies are doing as well,” she said. “Creating alumni communities and organizations, whether through touch points of great talent that’s left via emails or newsletters…employers that are getting it right are definitely staying in touch.”