There’s a generational shift taking place in the workforce. Just consider retired professionals of previous generations. From parents to grandparents, family friends to neighbors, there’s a pattern in older generations—such as the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, and even Gen X—whose members have spent the majority of their careers at one or two companies.

Younger professionals are not buying into this lifestyle. Take, for instance, teachers, entry-level employees, even middle management who appear happy in their roles. They are often high performers who work well with their colleagues, and yet they leave after a few years of employment.

There are many reasons why employees leave companies. The most notable and archaic reasons stem from dissatisfaction with work culture and colleagues. There’s even an old saying that people don’t leave bad companies, but rather bad bosses. These reasons are valid and still exist today, but there are more prominent reasons beyond simply being dissatisfied.

An age of job-hopping?

The pursuit of new skills, yearning for higher titles and salaries, establishing a more flexible work-life balance, and even searching for organizations with aligning missions and ideologies is not new. But the pursuit of these opportunities is becoming more prominent for younger professionals who witness the array of possibilities through social media, online job ads, and professional websites like LinkedIn. The last 20 years of technological advancements has unveiled and encouraged an age of job-hopping.  

High retention cannot solely rest on a team of transformational leaders. Of course, leaders should always work to improve their organizations by asking for feedback when their high performers leave, but they should not automatically assume their employees leave due to ill intentions.

Leaders must instead adapt to the growing need for opportunity by maintaining relationships and encouraging reemployment for future roles within the company that better align to departing employees’ growth needs. This entails prioritizing the offboarding experience as meticulously as the onboarding experience. Employees who seek new opportunities elsewhere and later return to their prior company are considered boomerang employees, much like the boomerang tool, or toy that keeps coming back when thrown.

Instead of viewing departed employees as betrayers of a corporate cause, leaders should view departed employees as potential assets of future innovation and change. Whether an organization changes a technology, policy, procedure, or hierarchy structure, most employees require time to adjust, yet boomerang employees are built for rapid change and may serve as an organization’s greatest resource.

Here’s why.

Boomerang employees are natural change agents

Employees who leave organizations for growth opportunities elsewhere are natural change agents. These individuals aren’t afraid of seeking change in order to achieve their goals in life. They don’t cower from instability or the unknown as long as their path aligns with new and healthy challenges.

Anyone can sit at a desk or work in an assembly line for years, performing the same task. But instead of viewing this work as x-amount of years in the industry, it’s actually more like one year in the industry performed for x-amount of years. Employees who leave for new experiences do not want to get caught in the crosshairs of redundancy. They need change, and an opportunity elsewhere may offer a fresh perspective of possibilities.

Boomerang employees understand possibilities

Employees who leave organizations and return years later have a greater understanding of possibilities. They experience firsthand what works and what doesn’t work at other organizations. They may also have opportunities to explore ideas that were met with skepticism by their prior leaders. Being able to test hypotheses elsewhere offers valuable learning opportunities for employees who seek development.

Employees who remain in the same industry further gain experience learning how other organizations operate. This is not for the purpose of acquiring proprietary information, but rather for acquiring new approaches to operating efficiently and effectively. When an employee remains stagnant at one place, they limit their perspective and often struggle to see new possibilities. Only when one radicalizes their environment will they open up to challenges outside their comfort zone.

Boomerang employees know the history

Disgruntled leaders who refuse to rehire boomerang employees often do so out of an egotistical feeling of betrayal and disloyalty. However, high-performing boomerang employees know what the job entails. They know how the organization strategizes and implements change. Upon reinstatement, they typically onboard much quicker than employees who are entirely new to an organization. And, more importantly, they have a historical perspective of how the company operates.

How often do we hear long-tenured employees say “we’ve done this before, it won’t work” or “we don’t have the bandwidth for change” immediately after a new idea is proposed by a newer employee? Boomerang employees know the history behind strategy talks and why prior implementations failed in the past. But their fresh perspective elsewhere may offer insight on how to successfully approach change in a way not thought of by those with limited perspectives. They are truly the best change agents who know how to persuade leaders who are reluctant to take innovative risk.

Boomerang employees are here to stay

The workforce is changing, and the possibility of growth, development, work-life balance, and matching values is becoming increasingly alluring to younger generations fearful of stagnation. Many employees must learn firsthand if the grass is truly greener on the other side, and leaders must understand that their transformational approaches to leadership may not guarantee employee retention. When high performers leave, leaders must treat their departed employees as assets who may reunite with future employment opportunities.

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In this text, Freire theorizes that adult learners experience unease and resistance when learning new concepts that contrast their prior lived experiences and ideologies. The ‘Banking Model’—the traditional teaching method of educators ‘depositing’ new content to learners’ banks of knowledge—becomes less feasible for adult learners who challenge, as opposed to accept, new learning opportunities.

Freire further associates the Banking Model as a form of oppression, where learners are forced into educational submission and told to believe information without resistance from educators. Dismantling the hierarchy of educator and learner thus demands a restructuring of adult learning, where educators must transform into co-facilitators of discovering new knowledge with employees for optimal growth and engagement. 

While parts of Freire’s text are too idealistic and exemplify the disconnect between theory and praxis in sectors beyond academia, L&D specialists may still benefit from examining and challenging the hierarchical structures of oppression that hinder an optimal approach to adult learning.  

This article describes some elements of this model that L&D specialists should consider when strategizing content development for adults in corporate environments. 

Work with SMEs 

Freire describes adult learners as resistors to change. They must understand the why when taught new knowledge to truly comprehend a new concept’s placement within old knowledge. This requires L&D specialists to work with SMEs throughout the design and development stages of new learning opportunities.

While this framework is not new to the talent development field, many L&D experts rely too heavily on external research to develop internal content. Outside information brings forth innovation (particularly with AI), but L&D should still work closely with internal  SMEs who have an archival understanding of past and current structures and can provide valuable input on the direction new learning opportunities may take when improving, yet challenging, these structures. This means addressing not just the how but also the why when new development and learning opportunities are introduced to employees. 

Understand the industry’s development needs 

Freire’s approach to effective adult learning requires more than the normal preliminary work from educators. Understanding a learner’s needs and abilities in line with liberated learning—an andragogical approach where learners have autonomy over their development—entails an understanding of prior lived experiences and personal ideologies. The corporate environment does not typically allow L&D professionals the opportunity to study their learners’ needs and abilities prior to training, but learning leaders may draw thoughtful generalizations based on industry culture, expectations, and values.  

Many industries develop cultures that seep into organizations’ expectations and values. These generalizations may help L&D professionals identify a homogeneous culture, such as a customer-focused culture for retail, a market-driven culture for tech, a competitive culture for sales, or a safety culture for logistics. These cultures are generalizations that do not always resonate with all companies within their respective industries, but the talent who circulate throughout different organizations are aware of the culture that shapes their industry and respect training that mirrors their industry-focused expectations. 

L&D professionals should consider industry practice, standards, and culture when designing tailored curricula attuned to learners’ past experiences, interests, desired deliverables, and holistic development. Doing so is especially important for seasoned employees who may challenge new learning experiences that contrast their own past knowledge—and for novice employees who want to adapt to the industry.

Choose the best modes

Implementing a learning environment where instructors are co-facilitators of knowledge through in-person learning typically lacks feasibility and scalability, especially for low-margin industries and large organizations that cannot offer time for employees to learn or do not have the resources to quickly target a large group of employees. In addition, eLearning poses many roadblocks, as learners have different needs, interests, learning styles, and prior knowledge. Broadly speaking, eLearning assumes and generalizes the targeted audience, which hinders adult engagement and buy-in.   

Keeping in mind corporate constraints, L&D specialists should view learners as having a plurality of needs. This approach entails providing multimodal and blended learning, where learners not only engage with online or in-person learning, they also use a combination of additional forms of learning. This may involve a learner-centered approach for in-person sessions, with participatory lectures, discussions, activities, online modules, and takeaway materials. Providing employees with multiple modes that target the ones they are most accustomed to using promotes a classroom environment exempt from the oppressive educator-learner hierarchy.  

Align training to company capabilities 

Moving away from the Banking Model is difficult for L&D practitioners who face constraints with company capabilities. Many do not have the luxury of working with a fully staffed L&D team, nor do they have the tech capabilities to create multimodal content. Systems such as an LMS or eLearning authoring tool may present additional constraints.

Other roadblocks include an inability to reserve time for development, downward markets, declining company profits that reduce learning opportunities, decision-makers who do not value developing employees beyond their current expectations, or L&D professionals not knowing where to start when tasked with developing a massive number of employees. These issues are merely a few of the many constraints L&D teams face every day. Understanding and accepting company capabilities will help to create learning that is both feasible and sustainable.

Promoting a learning culture

When companies do not have the capabilities to instill advanced learning and development opportunities, they should instead focus on promoting a learning culture. This involves a shared understanding and implementation across the organization, not just one promoted by L&D and HR.

Managers should seek symbiotic opportunities for sharing knowledge with their direct reports. These conversations expand beyond typical coaching, and employees should also have similar, reciprocal opportunities to teach their managers and peers. A learning culture further encourages employees to praise each other’s successes without considering the chain of command’s direction. 

A learning culture does not solve all learning and development gaps, but it does promote an environment where employees invite learning opportunities. It further diminishes resistance to new knowledge and encourages a participatory experience where learners and educators are co-facilitators of knowledge.

Expanding the scope of development

Freire’s theories on adult learners (such as the Banking Model and oppressive learning that demands liberation) should always be on the horizon of L&D specialists. One training session or development program at a time with consideration to the needs of adult learners is one step closer to the horizon, a step in the right direction for optimal engagement and development. 

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