Power Of Corporate Alumni Networks

• An alumni network such as the World Economic Forum's Forum Circle highlights how former staff can play a role in organizational life.
• Connecting with ex-employees can help foster a continued sense of belonging with those who still support the mission of the organization.
• Such networks also help an organization collect feedback, create insight and build valuable connections with former employees.

For the past two years I've had the privilege of building the Forum Circle , the World Economic Forum's corporate alumni network.

In cultivating relationships with those no longer on our org chart, I've had a front-row view of how employee departures do not necessarily mark the end of how an organization lives on in the hearts and minds of former employees - and how time spent within an institution can meaningfully shape what comes next.

Here is what we have gained by creating a corporate alumni network, and what this experience has revealed about the role alumni can play in organizational life.

Fostering a continued sense of belonging

Connecting with former employees through an alumni network helps maintain links with alumni who continue to identify with and support the mission and goals of the organization.

We've found that the desire for continued connection has long been present. By creating a network, we now have a formal channel through which to meet this demand and stay connected with our alumni.

We engage with our alumni through a portfolio of activities designed to meet them where they are in their lives - from regular newsletters sharing organizational updates that can be consumed passively, to in-person events where they can reconnect with us and with one another. In this way, we remain visible at multiple levels.

We also share job opportunities posted by alumni, which in some cases become their next career move.

Melding the past with the future

On our social channel, one weekly feature that consistently receives strong engagement is dedicated to memories of important moments from the past, enabling alumni to revisit experiences and highlights that were formative in their lives. We periodically pair this with updates on how our approach to employee engagement continues to evolve, bringing alumni along on our journey.

This connection between past and present is more than just content: it's also reflected in our hiring philosophy. Where there is an open role and mutual fit, we find that boomerang employees - alumni who return to their previous employer - can be an asset to our organization.

Their prior experience with us, combined with perspectives gained elsewhere, brings new practices and insights that strengthen our ways of working. Since the launch of our alumni network, nearly 7% of our hires were former employees who chose to return.

Collecting feedback and creating insight

Our alumni network helps us to understand how our institution has evolved over time. At regular intervals, we ask alumni how they assess their time spent working with us, and how they perceive our organization today. These insights enable us to take stock, to think and to act in a longer-term perspective, and to understand the capabilities that are core to our value and impact.

Through conversations with our alumni, we also learn how their time with us influenced their professional paths - from exposure to new topics that reoriented careers, to a deeper alignment with purpose . We see how our multistakeholder approach continues to shape perspectives and ways of working that alumni carry forward into their subsequent roles.

In our era of frequent job and career changes , employees crave understanding of how their roles today will help them tomorrow. To address this need, we've engaged alumni in livestreamed conversations, open to employees and alumni, where alumni reflect on their career trajectories and how their time with us prepared them for their next steps.

These exchanges bring to the surface how alumni describe the skills and capabilities they developed during their time with us. Translating institutional experience into market-ready capabilities helps current employees imagine their future trajectories, while also providing the organization with a clearer understanding of how time spent here is valued beyond our walls.

Celebrating the Forum alumni

All alumni journeys are unique: in the long run of life, their time with us may have been pivotal, or simply a happy detour.

We highlight the diversity of alumni journeys through spotlight profiles that trace the particulars of each one: why they joined us, what they learned with us, and how they have taken this and our organization's mission forward into their subsequent professional journeys.

By capturing each story, we become stewards of an important part of the institutional history of the World Economic Forum, and we keep it alive by sharing these stories with Forum employees and alumni, to build a collective understanding of our contributions and impact by weaving a continuous thread between the past and present.

We also take time to commemorate the alumni who have left us too soon. Even if someone has passed on, their contributions are often fondly remembered by those who spent many hours working alongside them. Paying tribute to their achievements and legacy is a way to make sure they continue to be part of our organization's story.

How alumni networks can provide continuity

From the vantage point of employee exits, an ending is not necessarily a closed door. It can be the start of a new type of relationship between a former employee and their former employer.

In interacting with our alumni and translating their experiences for our employees, I've seen how alumni networks help reveal what endures about organizations.

In this way, they offer a lens for understanding continuity over time, even as roles, careers and institutions evolve.