I’ll be honest: Before I was assigned to write this post, I had no idea what the term “reboarding” meant.
As it turns out, I actually did – I just didn’t have a word for it.
Reboarding is what you do when an employee comes back after an extended absence (12 weeks or more), changes role due to promotion or restructuring, or your company undergoes pretty much any major change where employees will need to adapt to new policies, procedures, and processes.
I know what you’re thinking. Reboarding. Onboarding. It’s all the same thing, right? How complicated can it be?
But reboarding is not the same as onboarding.
They’re both equally important and similar in a number of ways, but the structure, focus, and obstacles of each will be very different.
For example, everyone knows new employees need some sort of onboarding process. Not nearly as many realize that reboarding is:
- Something that needs to happen for even the most experienced employee;
- Something that needs to happen even if the employee is returning to the same role;
- Even a thing managers should do.
Seriously. You know what it’s like coming back from just a couple weeks of vacation. Loads to catch up on, overflowing messages, sometimes new people you’ve never seen before but everyone is already best friends with.
If things can change that much in 3 weeks, how much do you think they’ll change in 3 months?
Yeah. That’s what I thought.
So in this Process Street post, let’s look into exactly what you need to do to make this whole return-to-work thing easier. And don’t worry – I’ve broken it down to just 5 things, so for once you won’t have to slog through one 4,000 words just to get to the good stuff. My editor’s happy about that, too.
These are the things you need to know:
Let’s get you up to speed, yeah?
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