I had an interesting employee rehire case during my career. I had a quality engineer working on my project team and reporting to the quality engineering department manager. She was a very dedicated and a thorough engineer. She was commuting between her home and work 120 miles every workday. We always chatted about her commute at the beginning of our weekly meetings. We talked about speed traps, getting traffic violation tickets, traffic jams, what are the best hours to drive on the freeway, and so on. I had a good rapport with her. She did not mind the commute and
I thought she enjoyed it. I valued her contributions to my team. One day I got a call from her manager informing me that she gave her notice that she was leaving our company in two weeks.
I was surprised at her departure announcement. I went to her office and expressed my disillusionment. She told me that she was sorry to leave my team. She really enjoyed working on my team. She said that she found a great job very close to her home at a start-up engineering company. Her new job was a perfect fit for her and she would miss my team and also the daily commuting.
I had to scramble to find a replacement for her in the company to join my team. I finally got a novice engineer to replace her. He needed a lot of monitoring and hand-holding. She and my novice engineer were able to interface for about a week so that she could transfer her tasks to him. I also asked her to leave all her engi- neering books and e- mail files with me regarding my project. Her manager and I gave her a great farewell luncheon. All of my team members attended her luncheon.
After her departure from my company, I still kept in touch with her. We e- mailed each other at least once a month asking how things were going. About four months passed and I received a telephone call from her. She told me that her new job was not what she hoped for. She wanted to quit her job and rejoin my company and especially my project team. I was very surprised to hear her dismay at her new job. Apparently, there was no organi- zational structure at the new start-up company. She had to take care of everything on her own. Working hours were very long. She was working on average 12 hours a day. Her boss was enforc- ing unreasonable deadlines on her. All they did was to rush- rush to get a prototype out to their customer so that they could guaran- tee their next phase of funding. She wanted to return to our more structured and employee- valued environment. I told her that our company had a no- rehire policy, but I promised her that I was going to try my best to get her back.
The next day, I set up a meeting with her old manager and the human resources director. I explained to them in detail the call I had from her. I expressed my favorable views about rehiring her. After an hour of discussion, we came to a just solution to be able to bring her back to our company. She was going to join my team as a consulting quality engineer. The novice engineer would move back to the quality department. She would contribute to my team for the rest of my project, which had another year and a half to go. After a year and a half, the quality department manager would
reinstate her as a senior quality engineer into his group. This way we were not going to break the no- rehire rule of our company.
I called her immediately after our meeting and told her our solution for rehiring her. She was ecstatic that she was coming back to work for my company and very grateful for my help. She accepted our proposal to work as a consultant for a year and a half and join the quality group full time afterward. I told her that she would get a formal call in the next day or two from the quality department manager and the human resources director to finalize the details of her return.
Three weeks after her pleading phone call to me, she started to work for me. Her work ethic and contributions to my team were of the highest standard. She was reinstated into the quality group after 18 months on a full- time basis as promised. I thought the company gained an excellent employee by taking her back. We did not break the no- rehire rule of our company, but we had to bend it a little.
A work environment should be like a second family environ- ment away from home. Every employee should be able to talk and express his or her issues and concerns to their managers, upper management, and/ or to human resources without any reserva- tions or fears. These issues and concerns can be personal ones, work- related ones, or community- related ones. As managers, our responsibility is to help every employee all we can to make them feel that they are always under our company’s family umbrella.
LESSONS LEARNED FROM THIS PROJECT EVENT
• After leaving your job at will from a company, it will be very unlikely for you to go back to your old job.
• Job hopping is an unwritten taboo between competing high technology companies.
• As project managers, we have to help a good person in our team all that we can when that person makes a per- sonal mistake.