Boomerang employees – people who return to a previous employer – are a valuable part of the talent landscape. LinkedIn estimates that 4.5% of employees have returned to a previous employer, and 40% of employees have said they’d consider a boomerang move. It’s only a decade ago that HR teams widely reported ‘no rehire’ policies, but this has changed dramatically, and now 76% of HR professionals are open to hiring a boomerang employee (Raveendra et al., 2021).

For communicators inside organisations, the pandemic represented a many-faceted challenge. There was a huge increase in operational communications. A shift to digital channels. And an uptick in leadership communications. All put huge pressure on communicators.

The funny thing is, when we sent everyone home in March 2020, we knew that our environmental channels were dead to us. But we all assumed digital would be an easy answer to all our employer-comms prayers. Box checked.