There is so much you can do to ensure your new employees return to work is a success. We have collected some top tips from Returners we’ve worked with.
Prepare ahead of time:
- Prepare a detailed job description
- Consider what you need to communicate, both the small things and bigger picture
- Have a current ‘new joiner’ pack ready
- The first few weeks need to be about familiarisation, learning the basics, and networking
- Appoint and brief a Buddy
- Share with the whole team the challenges and benefits so that they can offer support
- Ensure you are prepared so that things start on a positive note
Understand new returners’ skills and experience:
- Get to know the person joining and respect their previous experience
- Focus on their skills, don’t let lack of recent experience overly concern you
- Encourage them to share their fresh perspectives
Outline expectations:
- Provide context of what has to be done
- Make expectations clear
- Clarify what needs to be delivered
- Ensure you are both clear of working patterns
- Ask what help they need
Avoid bias and assumptions:
- We may need give extra time at the start to get up to speed, when at speed we have so much to offer, but early days can be overwhelming
- Be careful before introducing us as ‘Returners’ – the label can bring unhelpful assumptions, new to the organisation might be enough
- Be aware of any prejudice / assumptions / unconscious bias – we are all different
- Don’t confuse ‘insecurity’ with ‘inability’
- Be understanding in the early days of our need to manage our personal situations (young children, dependants in the family etc), it soon settles down
Be accessible and communicate regularly:
- Be super accessible first few months
- Commit to a weekly 1hr meeting with us – it really helps
- Feedback regularly
- Simple and small things can be huge encouragements
Proactively involve new returner:
- Help us to integrate by making introductions, invitations to meetings etc.
- Regularly review progress with us, we want to work together to develop the best working approach
- If our working pattern clashes with a meeting / task / responsibility work with us to find a solution that works for us all
- Help us work out what further training may be helpful i.e. systems / tools / technical / management