What You Do When Your Employee Wants to Come Back

Episode notes

Summary A high-performing employee leaves voluntarily, makes complaints about her manager during the exit interview, and those complaints are noted informally but never investigated. Eighteen months later, she applies to come back—to the same manager's team. Now HR is stuck: rehiring her means placing her back under the manager she complained about, but not hiring her could look retaliatory for protected complaints. In this episode of HR Voices, host Rebecca Taylor sits down with Jill Gawrych, CHRO at Springs Window Fashions, to work through this fabricated-but-very-real scenario about the boomerang employee problem. Jill brings a clear-eyed, action-oriented approach to what is genuinely a no-win situation with risk in every direction. She walks through who to talk to first (your HR team, then the manager—carefully), why you have to pause the hiring process before anyone takes unsanctioned action, and how to handle the investigation that should have happened 18 months ago.