What’s a boomerang employee? They’re an employee that leaves a job, only to eventually come back.

Numerous studies have been done to examine the performances of internal and external hires, but not many have looked at boomerang employees, so Professor of Management at Purdue University Mike Campion’s study decided to change that by analyzing data on 30,174 employees of a large retail chain.

“Historically, boomerang employees or employees that left were viewed as disloyal,” said Campion. “However, I observed, and I’ve been in the profession many years, that in some context rehiring is common.”

He gave the example of when he worked at IBM full-time in the ’80s before coming to Purdue.

“When people would quit they would often throw a party for them and would be like, ‘We’ll see ya later.'”

He said at the time he thought it was odd that people would tell others that even though they’re going to work for a competitor they might work with each other at the company again in the future.

Now, we’re in an era that an average employee will work for many different employers during their career, and companies have become more open to rehiring former employees.

“I think the value of boomerang employees is they know what they’re getting into, and their job performance is likely to be predictable,” said Campion.

In the study boomerang employees initially performed similar to external hires and internal promotions, but as time went on it appeared that both the external hires and internal promotions began to perform better while boomerang employees stayed the same.

He gave this advice to employers looking to rehire a former employee.

“They’re likely to be a predictable person, who will work at about the level they worked at before,” Campion said. “They’re probably not going to be a superstar, but they might have improved.”

He said they may also be more likely to leave again.

His advice to people who want to return to a company they worked at before is if you’re going back to an employer bring a fresh perspective, new knowledge, and skills to the job.

Campion also made it clear that this study did not apply to employees wanting to return to a company after having to leave because of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said we could see more boomerang employees as the economy recovers from the pandemic, but told employers not to look at them the same as a normal boomerang employee because they were forced to leave the job.