◆Merits include efficiency in securing personnel
The number of companies that are introducing re-employment systems for young and mid-career staff (job return systems) as a strategy to solve human resources shortages is increasing. These are systems that re-employ people who resigned from the company at some stage in the past.
These systems present numerous merits in terms of securing personnel efficiently. Hiring costs can be kept low, people can be hired with peace of mind as their personalities are already known, and they can be set to work straight away as they already have work experience with the company.
Originally, many companies used such systems for women who had to leave their jobs due to reasons such as marriage, childbirth, raising children, or caregiving. However, with the recruitment difficulties that companies are experiencing in recent times, more and more have opened the door wider and introduced such systems as a measure to secure personnel.
◆Wide variations in the content of re-employment systems
While we might say “re-employment system,” how these systems work varies widely across companies in terms of who they may target for re-employment (conditions such as the number of years in employment, areas of experience, number of years since leaving the company may be applied) or the reasons for first leaving the company that allow people to be re-employed through such a system (which may be limited to unavoidable reasons such as childbirth, bringing up children, caregiving, one’s spouse’s job transfer).
The fact that these systems can be structured so as to apply to targeted HR who are wanted back at the company can also be considered another of its merits.
◆A challenge: working conditions in terms of positions and salaries
While such re-employment systems have many merits, they also have points for consideration in terms of the way that the system is structured or implemented.
One area that is particularly prone to problems is working conditions for re-hired employees versus those for employees who have continued to work for the company without ever resigning. Consideration must be given to points such as what kind of position returnees will be given, how salaries are decided, and later, when it comes time for promotions and advancements, how the time that such employees have spent working for other companies will be assessed.
Since lack of mutual agreement or of fairness can become the cause of strife, a system designed to take balance into consideration is called for.
