Every year or every now and then seem to deliver a new crop of jargon: phrases that slip into conversations, show up in meetings or suddenly invade our feeds. Some are trends. Some fade as quickly as they appear. And some linger because they expose something more consequential about how we work, how we communicate, and how we navigate power and expectations.
This year, two words have stood out, catching my attention: ghosting and boomerang employees. They sit on opposite ends of the professional spectrum: one about disappearance, the other about intentional return.
Silence That Says a Lot
Ghosting once belonged to dating culture. Today, it’s firmly embedded in the workplace lexicon, describing the moment when communication simply stops—no explanation, no closure, not even a polite “thank you for your time.” Just silence.
Recruitment is where ghosting has become almost routine. A candidate may interview enthusiastically and then vanish before signing the contract. Hiring panels promise feedback “in 3–4 weeks” and never follow up. Candidates prepare, interview, invest emotional energy, and then hear nothing. Recruiters schedule calls and then disappear without rescheduling. Sometimes the silence is logistical. Sometimes it’s avoidance. Sometimes it’s a quiet “no” no one wants to articulate. But the impact is unmistakable: uncertainty, frustration, and the sense that even a brief professional interaction didn’t merit a respectful ending.
Ghosting also happens inside organizations. A colleague may stop or delay responding once a project becomes complicated or demanding. A partner organization may disengage instead of renegotiating expectations. A client may disappear mid‑conversation, leaving you to guess whether the project is still alive. It’s rarely an act of intentional harm. More often, it’s emotional overload, misalignment, or fear of confrontation. But silence is still a message and in professional settings, silence can be louder than words.
Ghosting exposes an uncomfortable truth: we are not as good at endings as we think. We avoid difficult conversations. We underestimate the value of closure. We forget that clarity even disappointing clarity is an act of respect. It’s a contradiction in modern workplaces: we talk endlessly about transparency, psychological safety, and communication, yet we still struggle to communicate when it matters most.
Return That Speaks Volumes
If ghosting is about absence, the boomerang employee is about return. A boomerang employee is someone who leaves an organization, sometimes for growth, sometimes for pay, sometimes because life demands a change, and then comes back: as a renewed contributor with fresh perspective.
And we see this return everywhere. It’s in the familiar LinkedIn posts that begin with: “Happy to share that I have re‑joined X organization…” or “Thrilled to be back at Y after a few years away…” These announcements have become their own genre; part professional update, part homecoming story, part quiet acknowledgment that leaving wasn’t the end of the relationship after all.
People leave organizations for countless reasons: a better offer, a desire for new challenges, a need to test their skills elsewhere, or a life transition that shifts priorities. Leaving is not betrayal; it’s part of a healthy career path.
The return, however, is where the story becomes interesting. Boomerang employees re-enter with new technical or leadership skills gained elsewhere, a clearer sense of their strengths and boundaries, and a deeper appreciation for the culture they once took for granted. They come back with maturity and perspective, shaped by seeing the organization from the outside.
And their return says something important about the organization itself. People don’t come back to places that dismissed them, burned them out, or ignored their potential. They return to places where they felt valued, supported, challenged, respected, and seen. A boomerang employee is a quiet compliment to an organization’s culture.
Boomerangs also bring strategic value. They carry institutional memory paired with external experience. They understand the system but are no longer limited by it. They know the culture but can see its blind spots. They can bridge old ways of working with new ones. In a world where retention is fragile and recruitment is expensive, boomerang employees remind us that workplace relationships can evolve, repair, and deepen.
Two Words, One Lesson
Ghosting and boomeranging are opposites in almost every way. Ghosting is the breakdown of communication; boomeranging is the continuation of communication across time. Ghosting is avoidance; boomeranging is intentionality. Ghosting ends a relationship abruptly; boomeranging revives a relationship thoughtfully.
Together, they reveal something essential about modern work: we are constantly negotiating connection – when to invest, when to step back, when to return, and when to close the door.
If I had to distill the lesson, it would be this: people remember how you communicate. They remember how you leave. And they remember how you return. These two words mean that work is not just tasks and deadlines, it’s also relationships. And relationships require care and respect, in endings, in beginnings, even in unexpected returns.
References
1. Indeed Hiring Lab – “Ghosting in the Workplace” (2023): https://www.indeed.com/lead/indeeds-ghosting-in-hiring-report
2. SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) – “Vanishing Acts: How to Prevent Candidate Ghosting in the Hiring Process” (2024): https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/talent-acquisition/vanishing-acts–how-to-prevent-candidate-ghosting-in-the-hiring-
3. Harvard Business Review – “So, You Got Ghosted – At Work” (2021): https://hbr.org/2021/05/so-you-got-ghosted-at-work
4. Forbes – “The Ghosting Phenomenon in Hiring” (2023): https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2023/09/05/candidate-ghosting-new-insight-into-todays-hiring-epidemic
5. Fortune – “Job seekers aren’t imagining things: Available at: https://fortune.com/2026/03/20/job-seekers-arent-imagining-things-candidates-ghosted-by-employers-hit-three-year-high
6. Wox – “The Rise of the Boomerang Employee” (2022–2024) Data showing increases in employees returning to former employers, especially post‑pandemic .
7. McKinsey & Company “The Great Attrition and the Great Attraction” (2021–2023): https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organization/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours