Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen. Lauren Justice – Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former Kroger employees who have left the company have received some surprising texts and emails. The supermarket operator – the country’s top-selling store – wants them back and isn’t afraid to reach out and tell them so.
Of course, things don’t generally work that way. Once you leave a company, there is little chance that they will contact you later and ask you to come back. For one, you might have let your boss down. But the lowest unemployment rate in 53 years means companies are getting creative in filling vacancies.
“Alumni are also a source of talent,” Tim Massa, the grocer’s chief people officer, told the Wall Street Journal. According to him, the Cincinnati-based company has made efforts to keep in touch with former employees since the end of the pandemic, and a significant number of them have returned.
For example, the company persuaded Tish Spurlock, a former recruiter at Kroger, to come back after approaching her, the Journal reported. Spurlock had gone to a technology company but returned to Kroger in a new role with a higher salary.
Associated Wholesale Grocers has since reached out to former employees via LinkedIn and Facebook, according to the Journal. The company became more aggressive about rehiring after seeing how well it was working — returning employees generally reach their goals months before new ones.
Of course, fears of a looming recession linger, credit card debt is rising in the US while savings are dwindling in the face of high inflation, and headlines of mass layoffs at big-name companies have been inevitable in recent months. But those layoffs have often been focused on the tech industry, where many companies have been hiring too many workers to meet rising demand during the pandemic.
Last month, Amazon began laying off 18,000 employees, Microsoft laid off 10,000 and Google parent Alphabet cut 12,000 jobs. It was followed by Facebook owner Meta, which laid off 11,000 workers in November. It is widely expected that Meta will continue to cut jobs in the near future as part of its “Year of Efficiency”. More than 150,000 technicians were laid off last year, according to tracking website Layoffs.fyi. But many other tech companies are still hiring, and laid-off tech workers generally haven’t stayed out of work for long.
Across the US economy, many workers who left their jobs during the Great Retirement received higher salaries in new jobs. Understaffed employers, meanwhile, have been forced to increase or offer higher salaries to attract new talent.
Or, in the case of Kroger and others, reach out to workers who are quitting.