\n<\/p>\n
S<\/span>ay you\u2019re running a business and you bump into a favored former employee and find out she\u2019s interested in coming back to work for you. Is your first thought: \u201cWhat a great opportunity to pay her less?\u201d And if so, what is wrong with you?<\/p>\n Boomerang hires \u2013 those workers who work for a company, leave the company, then come back to the company \u2013 can be extremely valuable. What\u2019s curious is how many of my clients don\u2019t seem to realize this.<\/p>\n Quartz recently reported that boomerang hires were being offered significantly lower compensation from their former employers than they had earned when they worked there previously.<\/p>\n \u201cCreative professionals including writers, designers, PR staff, and marketing executives \u2013 even some public-sector staff \u2013 describe a pattern of former employers reaching out with familiar work, only at sharply reduced rates,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n Why? Some employers are citing AI as the problem as if AI \u2013 with its massive hallucination rates, inaccuracies and errors \u2013 can be relied upon as a replacement for workers.<\/p>\n The New York Times recently reported that \u201cof the 80% of companies using generative AI, just as many say they\u2019ve seen no significant bottom-line impact, with as many as 42% of companies reporting they abandoned most of their AI pilot projects by the end of 2024, up sharply from 17% a year earlier\u201d. Another report from MIT found that about 95% of AI pilot programs \u201cfail to deliver measurable profit-and-loss impact\u201d.<\/p>\n The age of AI actually replacing workers is still a long way off and, if anything, a boomerang hire that knows the job has the potential to leverage AI to be even more productive than before.<\/p>\n Lower compensation can also be tied to budget issues, because, as one recruitment expert told Quartz: \u201cLeaders feel pressure to show savings fast, so they reopen a familiar seat at a discount instead of rescoping the work.\u201d<\/p>\n These employers are making a big mistake.<\/p>\n People leave their jobs for all sorts of reasons, both personal and professional. Younger employees in particular are more used to hopping around from company to company more so than their older counterparts. And given the lack of corporate loyalty, who can blame them? Changing jobs \u2013 and then changing back \u2013 is just a fact of these times. It\u2019s not a negative. It\u2019s a reality of today\u2019s workplace.<\/p>\n Which is why a boomerang hire is much more valuable to an employer than any other hire. They\u2019ve seen your business, worked with your people, and they actually want to come back! Other employees see this and think to themselves that your company must be doing something right if this good person left and then wanted to return.<\/p>\n Another advantage: if an employee has been away for a while, they have likely worked at other, similar companies. As a business owner, you should be mining that person for information. This is valuable knowledge.<\/p>\n A boomerang hire comes with much less risk because you know what you\u2019re getting. You don\u2019t need references, background checks or testing: it\u2019s all happened before. Without lifting a finger, you\u2019re already saving money when you hire this person.<\/p>\n So now you\u2019re proposing to pay them less?<\/p>\n Employees are not auto parts, cans of beans or construction materials where negotiating the lowest cost is encouraged. They are people. Offering to pay them less than what they were paid before \u2013 despite all the benefits an employer gets by hiring them back \u2013 is insulting, degrading and embarrassing and will do nothing more than create resentment. This is not the way to treat people. And it\u2019s no way to run a growing business that relies on great talent as its core asset.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re not convinced, then consider the legal ramifications. According to the Quartz report a number of states have \u201cretaliation\u201d provisions included in their labor laws. An employment law attorney said in the article that it\u2019s a risk for employers not to consider these rules.<\/p>\n \u201cThe real issue isn\u2019t the lower offer itself,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s what employers say during these conversations. I\u2019ve seen companies admit they\u2019re \u2018testing the waters or assume someone will work for less because they\u2019re desperate. Those statements become smoking guns.\u201d<\/p>\n The labor market is still tight and the competition for good talent is high. If you\u2019re an employer that has the chance to hire a former worker \u2013 regardless of who initiates the conversation \u2013 that\u2019s reliable and productive then don\u2019t be dumb by insulting that worker with a lower pay offer. You\u2019re not doing the math correctly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Say you\u2019re running a business and you bump into a favored former employee and find out she\u2019s interested in coming back to work for you. Is your first thought: \u201cWhat a great opportunity to pay her less?\u201d And if so, what is wrong with you? Boomerang hires \u2013 those workers who work for a company,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[15680,303,1326,4928,3171,8588,2230,98,15681],"class_list":{"0":"post-26050","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-boomerang","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-dont","11":"tag-highly","12":"tag-hires","13":"tag-insult","14":"tag-paying","15":"tag-small","16":"tag-valuable"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}