Revisiting Job Hopping

I am going to play Devil’s advocate here for a second.

What if we considered job hopping to be not a negative thing (generally) but a positive thing and an indicator of the type of economy we are going to be seeing for the next decade? The world around us is changing and companies are starting to value those who change. Change is everywhere and to err on the side of ridiculousness, change is being taught in the change education, change economy, change employers, change employees, change leaders, change evangelists, change … well, you get the point.

So if we are going to start emphasizing change and flexibility, why wouldn’t we expect a more fluid workforce? More importantly, what happens if those people that are so well adept to change and are your typical job hoppers? What happens if they are actually better employees? They become productive quickly and stay incredibly productive throughout their term and instead of spending the next five years doing mediocre work, they went on to the next exciting project. What happens if the best and brightest aren’t the guys that are going to be in your office in five years? And what happens if these people are bright and have adapted to learn more quickly, their cost of hire goes down and therefore the cost of turnover goes down because you know you could hire on another person who is going to be hungry for something new in two years? What happens if realize an ROI on a new employee in the first MONTH instead of the first year?

Would all that change our perception of turnover, job hoppers and that flaky Gen Y I keep hearing rumors about?

Would your company be ready for such a change in ideals? Could they ever be?