For years, Julie Yancey thought her company was safe from the dot-com spell that lures IT professionals from their corporate jobs every day. After all, FedEx's Memphis headquarters is nowhere near Silicon Valley or other high-tech havens where technology startups take root. And since FedEx tends toward the cutting edge of technology, ambitious IT pros were often inclined to stay.
Yancey, FedEx's managing director of worldwide IT people development, also drew comfort from the fact that the company's turnover rate has always been less than 6 percent, while the industry average is closer to 20 percent, she said.
But the Internet has changed everything.
The company's turnover rate is rising, albeit slowly. "I won't be surprised if [the turnover rate] is in the double digits within the next six months," she said.
That's because FedEx, like many established corporations, is losing IT staffers -- at all levels -- to the siren song of online companies that entice workers with flexible hours and the possibility of becoming millionaires overnight. For example, Charles Schwab, Hewlett-Packard and Aon were all temporarily crippled by the recent loss of key IT executives.
Even FedEx's own Dennis Jones, who announced his planned retirement earlier this year, is considering continuing his career at a pre-IPO company, he said in an interview with eWEEK.
Not all dot-coms make it to IPO Elysium, however. And not all people take to the dot-com culture, which can consist of mercilessly long workweeks with no guarantee that those options will pay off. That's why corporations are beginning to develop strategies for winning back former employees who are suffering from startup seasickness. Many are dusting off the welcome mats and setting them outside the offices of departing employees.
And instead of waiting passively for the prodigals to reappear, companies must make efforts to reach out.
Employees won't return "unless the employer kept in touch to let good [people] know that if things get tough, they can come back," said Tom Call, an area manager at RHI Consulting, an IT staffing consultancy.
An IT manager who requested anonymity agreed. "Personally, I try not to let anyone go and then slam the door," the manager said. "I always stay in contact with good people because it gives them the opportunity to come back or even to use me as a reference. ... The industry is small enough ... that somewhere down the road you could hook up with them again."
At FedEx, it is more important than ever to maintain a relationship with exiting employees because they could also be future customers of the overnight delivery service.
Indeed, Yancey is collecting e-mail forwarding addresses of those techies off on their next big adventure.
The company is also modifying old personnel policies that could pull people back to FedEx in the event that the new job is not to their liking. For instance, "tenure is a good example," Yancey said. "Maybe don't make their seniority [full], but don't treat them like a brand-new hire. Honour their past service ... for things like vacation accrual."
To get a handle on the things that would bring people back, a few months ago FedEx deployed a new online exit interview process. Employees on their way out are asked questions about their new job title, pay, what sort of change in responsibility they might be getting and what most influenced them to consider leaving the company, Yancey said.
There are also questions about the FedEx experience and, specifically, a question that asks, "Given the future opportunity, would you return to FedEx?"
The information is collected in a database to enable the company to identify employment trends and fix any problems that might be causing attrition.
It is, however, the simple, warm "good luck" and a pat on the back that are the keys to getting lost workers to come home. "We don't want anyone to walk out the door with a bad taste in their mouth or their final memories to be of a bad experience with FedEx," Yancey said.
If employees leave on good terms, at least they will know that the same door they walked out of will be open to them in the future, and their employer is ready to greet them with open arms -- no hard feelings and no questions asked.
