Hello again: Managing talent with boomerang employees

Abstract

Boomerang employees—previous employees who return to an organization after an absence—offer unique value in the talent pool, representing external employees with internal job experience. Utilizing a sample from a professional services firm in the United States, we draw from the literature on talent management and renegotiated psychological contracts to compare the compensation, satisfaction, commitment, and performance of boomerangs to similar employees who never left the firm. We find that reentry yields improvements in compensation, satisfaction, and organizational commitment for boomerangs relative to matched internal employees. Archival analysis of hours worked reveals that boomerangs spend significantly more hours on extra‐role projects rather than in‐role billable client hours. Boomerang performance is, however, on par with that of matched internal employees who never left the firm. Implications for adopting a boomerang talent management strategy and the renegotiation of disrupted psychological contracts are discussed.

The new needs friends: Simmelian strangers and the selection of novelty

“…Our findings add to the scant research on short‐term inter and intrafirm mobility, such as the literature on secondments (Hoenen & Kolympiris, 2020; Kolympiris et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2010), short‐term intrafirm mobility (Choudhury, 2017) and boomerang employees (Keller et al, 2020; Snyder et al, 2021). This literature has focused on the advantages and challenges of short‐term mobility events for the individual and the sending unit after the individual returns.…”

The Generative Mechanism of Boomerang Intention: From the Perspective of Legacy Identification

“…Since rehiring is an under-observed recruitment method in research, there is still an extreme lack of study about this topic ( Arnold et al, 2021 ). Moreover, most related studies focused on the attitude, behavior, and performance of boomerang employees after being rehired ( Swider et al, 2017 ; Arnold et al, 2021 ; Maier et al, 2021 ; Snyder et al, 2021 ). Although Shipp et al (2014) and Raveendra and Satish (2021) focused on the antecedents and processes before the rehiring.…”

“…However, most of the related studies focused on the attitude, behavior, and performance of boomerang employees after being rehired. Specifically, Arnold et al (2021) studied the job performance and turnover rate of the ex-employees after they have been rehired; Snyder et al (2021) showed the psychological contract reconstruction and the resulting improvement in compensation, satisfaction, organizational commitment, extra-role/in-role behaviors, and performance of boomerang employees after they have been rehired; Maier et al (2021) showed that boomerang employees who have returned to a previous employer consider their new situation better than the first time; Swider et al (2017) extend a careers-based learning perspective to construct a theoretical framework of a set of factors that influence boomerang employee return performance. Although Shipp et al (2014) and Raveendra and Satish (2021) focused on the antecedents and processes before the rehiring.…”

Job involvement and valuation of job resources: The mediating effect of satisfaction with job resources

“…In addition, this research has helped to clarify the psychological process that people most involved in the organisation go through, and it has helped to advance the importance of the psychological contract (Snyder, Stewart & Shea, 2020). Moreover, this work has aided understanding of how involvement is related to other attitudes (Truss, Shantz, Soane, Alfes & Delbridge, 2013) and how this involvement is linked to employees' recognition and demands in organisations.…”