In September 2015 I received my official (voluntary) retrenchment notice. Wonderful people, who I had built relationships with in the 14.64 years of working for my employer, arranged a farewell for me. When one of my colleague-friends said that she hoped I would soon come back to the company, my response was, “I hope I don’t come back. Hopefully I move forward, not backward.”
In the last week, I had conversations with two erstwhile colleagues who had also left the company. The first, let’s call him Arnoldus Papenfus Dreyer (I honestly don’t know where that came from), left the company about eight months ago, to pursue a dream of working in another province. He recently called me for advice. He wants to “come back” to the company. The move is not working out for him. The second, let’s name her Amber Burgundy Kimberley Pretorius (see parenthesis above), left the company at around the same time as Arnoldus to escape an untenable team situation. (People leave managers, but that’s a story for another day.) Amber wants to “come back”.
Ironically, I already “came back”. Two weeks after my retrenchment, I started working on contract at another division of the organisation, and that position later became permanent. Faced now with two other individuals who seek my advice, I thought about what I had said at my farewell. I listened to the reasons why these people left and why they want to come back. And I realised that I didn’t quite understand what “moving backwards” meant when I spoke at my farewell.
I might be employed by the same company again, but I have not moved backward by coming back. I am different. Changed. More objective. More confident. No longer dependent on job security, because I generated an income doing projects I enjoyed for 15 months thanks to my reputation, relationships and track record. I have gained experience which makes me a different type of employee, and I found a different type of division where I can make a difference. The same applies to Arnoldus and Amber.
So, I changed my mind, and told Arnoldus and Amber so. I take it back. Coming back is not the same as moving backwards. We’re not opening the same doors we left through. We’re opening new ones. Different ones.
For me, coming back was a step in the right direction. I hope it will be so for them too.