The
handling of an employee’s departure can have knock-on effect on future
recruitment and business performance, according to research.
Nine
out of 10 HR directors
questioned in a study by People
in Business believe that strong alumni relationships are good for
business, and 70 per cent
think they can influence potential employees.
For
those HR directors who say they do maintain contact with former employees, 63
per cent do so only through pension scheme correspondence, while one in four HR
directors assert that they do not maintain any contact with alumni.
Only
one in three CEOs questioned say previous employers have maintained contact and
cite this as a key reason for doing business with them.
One
in five CEOs do not respect the way their former employers operate as a
business – and will share their views with colleagues and potential employees.
The
younger the CEO, the more disillusioned they appear to be with previous
employers – two-thirds of CEOs under 41 said that they would "probably
not" or "certainly not" recommend their previous employer to a
friend or relative thinking of going to work there, compared to just under a
third of CEOs aged 41 to 55
and just 16 per cent of
CEOs in the 55-plus bracket.
HR
directors in the financial services sector expressed the most positive views
about their company’s external image, compared to only 50 per cent of HR
directors in the manufacturing sector. Â
In
both cases, the
corresponding views of CEOs was less
favourable.
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Less
than half of the CEOs questioned would actively do business with former
employers, and 84 per cent
of these cases said that previous employers had maintained contact.
By
Ben Willmott
