Hello and welcome to Working It.
Some workplace fangirling to report this week, because Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson came to the FT. She was here to talk to staff about psychological safety at work and how we can learn from our failures — but only when they are the “right kind of wrong”. This is also the title of her new book, which has been shortlisted for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award (full list here).
Amy also recorded a Working It podcast episode and (pleasingly) confirmed that I am right in thinking that failure, in itself, does not teach anything or make us wise. Social media may say otherwise, but like most worthwhile things in life, learning from failure takes a lot of hard work (and honesty) 🏋🏽.
Read on for the benefits of “boomerang” staff returning to their old employers and in Office Therapy we advise an executive assistant with a brusque boss.
What have you learnt from failure? How do you get past a workplace culture of shame to one of openness? Why are so many leaders unwilling to admit their mistakes? All opinions welcome: [email protected]
‘Boomerang’ staff are back for good (maybe) 🪃
The trend known as “boomeranging” — when workers rejoin a former employer — is suddenly everywhere, as hiring managers look for qualified people to fill gaping holes in their teams. And who better to recruit than someone you know already?
It’s like dating an ex: probably not perfect, but you both know the score and it’s familiar territory. Especially when there’s a talent shortage.
Always ahead of the trends, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff is (re) hiring — some months after brutal lay-offs — and has reportedly told ex-staff that “It’s OK, come back”. According to CNBC, the company hosted an alumni event at its massive Dreamforce conference, where 50 former employees were given “designated seats at the show and custom swag, such as a stuffed animal wearing a yellow shirt with an illustration of a multicoloured boomerang”.*
US jobs market expert Josh Bersin, chief executive of the eponymous HR research and advisory company, says the boomerang trend is here to stay. “This is the way the world is going to be.” He points to longer lives as a key factor. Many of the boomerangers, he says, are 55-plus and have retired once. “Maybe the retirement wasn’t what they wanted, or maybe inflation is so high they just need the extra income.” 📈
Most of this group will be returning to jobs that are perhaps below the level of their last role — “I think there is a bit of perception or a culture that if you are coming back, we are not going to take you back where you were — for now.”
People earlier in their careers may also find that leaving and gaining experience elsewhere before returning to their original workplace can be a good way to leapfrog “blocked” internal career paths. Working in different environments widens horizons 🌅, making younger “boomerangers” a very attractive hire.
Until recently, employers would often cry “betrayal” when staff left — some organisations had a total block on anyone returning. That’s become a massively outdated, and short-sighted, attitude. “It is a necessity now [to rehire] because it is so hard to find people,” says Josh. “Companies are much more flexible.”
Big employers now cultivate alumni networks and stay in touch with their former staff — forming a ready-made pool of potential returners (as well as a great source of new clients and contacts). Deloitte, the professional services firm, runs regional events and has a monthly alumni newsletter and LinkedIn group. Fiona Hurst, UK alumni lead, says that more than 400 boomerangers have returned to Deloitte in the past two years alone.
Their familiarity with the business means they “can often make a quicker impact than first-time hires — particularly if they have worked outside of professional services and bring this expertise back with them.”
The only downside of all this positivity? If you left a job because you didn’t like the corporate culture/managers/clients the first time around — things aren’t likely to have changed. Although you may have had career setbacks and toxic colleagues elsewhere, and after those experiences, as Josh says, a lot of people start to think that maybe “the place I was before wasn’t so bad”.
*Want to see the boomerang teddy — or is it a raccoon? Look at Salesforce “boomeranger” Kendall Collins’ LinkedIn post. Cute huh? Other Salesforce Astro raccoon merch is on eBay (from $9.90) 🧸.
Does your organisation welcome “boomerangers” — or are staff who quit for rivals still considered “unpersons”? What’s your experience of going back to an old employer? All views welcome: [email protected]
This week on the Working It podcast
Why are so many people retraining as counsellors and psychotherapists? Part of the answer is a post-pandemic boom in people deciding to have a better work-life balance and wanting to help others with their workplace and personal problems (sometimes those are the same thing).
As my former colleague Michael Skapinker, now a counsellor, tells me on this week’s Working It podcast episode, the workplace is a “grand theatre” where drama is played out every day. We really ought to think more about what that means. And I talk to the FT’s Bethan Staton about her hit article on the boom in therapy-related careers. (Have we hit peak therapy? Are there enough clients to go around?) 🙇🏾♂️
Office Therapy
The problem: I have a manager who is lovely in real life but sends brusque emails and texts. No “Dear X” or pleasantries at all. I am fairly new in a trainee/executive assistant role. When I have worked hard on something, to get no mention or thanks is hard. I book a lot of travel, meetings etc for her. Can I say something?
Isabel’s advice: Don’t say anything. You’ll get used to your boss’s ways of communicating. She’s busy — and she’s signalling that you are doing fine through her real-life interactions. I took advice from people who have been in a similar role to you and they suggested that you should be confident in your tone when you interact with your boss — and also that you should talk to colleagues who might have done your role before: what do they say?
I spent years being upset because my husband only communicated the barest information via text and email. No pleasantries or xx on the end. When he was diagnosed with a neurodiverse condition, it all made sense: he is far more literal than I am. He wasn’t being rude: he told me what was required. And he was equally frustrated with my texts, which forced him to process what he thought was irrelevant information. By which I mean: everyone brings their own outlook to any digital exchange 💬.
Got a question, problem, or dilemma for Office Therapy? Think you have better advice for our readers? Send it to me: [email protected] or via a voice note. We anonymise everything. Your boss, colleagues or underlings will never know.
Five top stories from the world of work
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Dyson and the divide over working from home: This is a fascinating long read about extreme workplace culture, and what really happens when bosses enforce return-to-office regulations. Laura Hughes and Peter Campbell report on events at the UK engineering group, Dyson.
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Paternity leave in finance: Financial services companies are trying much harder to give generous leave to all new parents — men and women — but the gap between policy and reality is still wide, and comes at a cost for men who decide to take up their leave, as Emma Jacobs reports.
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Success is more complicated than one exceptional individual: Margaret Heffernan takes on the cult of the great leader in this column that debunks our notions of top performance.
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Bosses won’t like it but WFH is a happier way to work: Simon Kuper — a happy home worker — on the post-summer return to the office with a column on the joys, and efficiencies, of being away from the workplace.
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Net zero was never going to be an easy win for workers: Sarah O’Connor looks at the hard choices and trade-offs involved in green transition and argues that giving workers a say in decision-making might help.
One more thing . . .
We’ve all had unrequited secret crushes 💔 and it’s very common to have them on co-workers. I once had it so bad that I couldn’t even look at the object of my affection. These feelings are often painful, but read A Crush Can Teach You a Lot About Yourself, in The Atlantic, and you’ll be put right on that: “There’s something to be said for yearning,” says its author, Faith Hill.
By projecting perfection on to another, flawed, human being, we are in an unrealistic situation — in real relationships we see our partner’s shortcomings. But, as Faith writes: “A crush that goes nowhere can still be a pleasure unto itself. It’s a luxuriously inefficient experience, which is rare in today’s goal-oriented dating world.”
A word from the Working It community
Last week’s newsletter highlighting the emerging world of “team coaching” — which may be more effective in sorting out dysfunction than focusing on one-to-one sessions — brought lots of responses. An interesting take came from Alice Driscoll and Louise van Haarst, who are specialist workplace conflict coaches (what a job title!).
Avoiding team conflict, it seems, can be as bad as all-out confrontation, although with a caveat: the pair have occasionally dealt with instances of actual physical violence in teams 🥊.
Here’s Louise: “Healthy conflict strengthens relationships rather than damages them. The key is knowing how to manage emotions in the moment, and if things have become heated, to prevent escalation and focus on making a repair afterwards. People tend to fall back on the belief that ‘time heals’. It doesn’t.
“Our top tip when thinking about managing a conflict within a team is to ensure your focus is on ‘task conflict’, rather than ‘relationship conflict’. This means taking a mindset of ‘you and me against the problem’ rather than ‘you against me’. You need to let go of the idea of winning, point scoring or being right*. Instead, it’s about getting it right and solving the problem. Keep bringing the focus back to the task. Teams who are good at conflict are great at collaboration. It’s a hallmark of high performance.”
*Good luck with getting workers to stop “point scoring” 🎯.
Read the full article here