When and Why Employees Need Re-Onboarding 

Feb 10, 2025 | Articles, Employee Training, Onboarding

Key takeaways:

  • Re-onboarding maintains employee engagement and productivity during times of organizational or personal change.
  • Re-onboarding reconnects employees with the company’s culture, goals, and vision.
  • Personalize re-onboarding programs for employees who are transitioning roles, taking management positions, or returning after leave.
  • Effective re-onboarding programs include follow-up resources, social learning opportunities, and open communication channels.

Change is an inevitable part of any organization — and big changes can cause employees to drift and disengage at work. Whether it’s a company-wide transformation or an individual career shift, employees often find themselves needing to reconnect and re-engage with their workplace. This is where employee re-onboarding comes in.

What is re-onboarding?

Re-onboarding is the process of reintroducing an existing employee to an organization. Like onboarding, re-onboarding focuses on organizational issues, such as policy, workplace culture, compliance issues, and any changes within the company itself.

Because the employee has already been through an initial new hire onboarding process, re-onboarding is likely to be shorter and more targeted than the onboarding given to new hires.

In fact, because only a handful of events trigger it, re-onboarding may be customized to the needs of the learner, building on their previous knowledge and experience.

When does an employee need re-onboarding?

It’s rare that an employee needs to go through onboarding more than once, but it’s not unheard of. Often a new round of onboarding is necessary to drive employee re-engagement during times of changes. Here are examples of times when an employee might need re-onboarding:

During major changes to the organization

Certain transitions in an organization are big enough that they may cause employees to disengage, or simply not feel as connected to the company as they did in the past. Mergers and acquisitions, new leadership, or a shift in strategy, funding, company structure or product focus are examples of this kind of major change.

The key is to make sure employees are still able to connect with the organization. They may have felt connected to a previous leader, or valued a product that has been discontinued, or they might not be engaged with the company that is acquiring the business that hired them. In all of these situations, there is a potential for employees to disengage, and it may be necessary to re-engage employees with the mission, culture, or vision of the organization.

Supporting employees during times of change through learning activities that reinforce your company’s cultural values can help them feel re-connected with your organization.

This type of learning may look different than the traditional onboarding that a new hire would receive. It might be something as lightweight as a handful of sessions with your CEO and the new head of marketing to talk about strategy. Re-onboarding serves as a reminder of the values of your organization, key customers, and why the organization is making this change.

At its heart, this type of re-onboarding is a reintroduction; a reminder to employees of the values that matter to the company, and a realignment of those values with new goals, a new mission, or a new leadership structure.

When an individual makes a big change

Sometimes re-onboarding is necessary on an individual level. Sometimes referred to as re-recruiting, this customized approach to re-onboarding can be helpful for an employee making a big transition. They may be taking a position in a very different part of a large enterprise, for example, or moving into a management role. They may also be returning to work after an extended leave of absence. In this case, re-onboarding may look very different from one situation to the next.

Take the example of a large enterprise with many divisions worldwide. When an employee transfers to a new role in another division, it’s almost like taking a brand new job: they may be moving to another location, another team, and another office culture. They may be using new tools, and working within a different organizational structure with its own mission and vision.

In this case, it’s important to provide a re-onboarding to reorient the employee to their new role and their new workplace. This type of onboarding should provide the introduction the employee needs to understand their new expectations, and — as with new hires — L&D may want to create a 90-day onboarding plan. This allows the employee and their new manager to set goals that will help the learner engage with their new role.

Another example of re-onboarding may happen when an individual takes a management role. Although this is usually referred to as management training, it’s as much of re-introduction to company values as other re-onboarding initiatives. Managers see the company and its mission from a different perspective, so it’s important to reorient learners who are stepping into the management mindset.

In this case, a re-onboarding may focus on leadership behaviors, business strategy, and may also include a mentorship with another manager in the company.

Taking a personalized approach to re-onboarding

Because the situations that trigger it are so diverse, there is no one singular way to design a re-onboarding program. In almost every case, re-onboarding must be tailored to the learners who are receiving it.

While you can — and should — create courses to support re-onboarding, a true re-onboarding program must go beyond courses and learning modules, and should be reinforced by follow-up resources, informal social learning opportunities like meetings and Q&A sessions, and open channels of communication that encourage employee feedback.

The reason for that? Change is never easy, and re-onboarding — like onboarding — is meant to offer a series of supports to help your employees through that change. While re-onboarding may not be as comprehensive as onboarding, it’s still designed to ensure that your employees are engaged, informed, and aligned with your organization.

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