Changing Places

The company I work for, I’m in the HR side of it. I’m still an assistant to the manager but these are something that’s making our jobs difficult and not allowing our company to progress.

I’m sure this is a problem in most companies.

What I’m talking about is employees who keep changing jobs. For us it’s a big problem these days. It goes on an equal level, 10 leave and 10 want to join. If we could keep the leaving low and the joining high that would be just right.

I know friend of mine who use this trick to jump to higher pays and higher positions. That it fine on the individuals level but it’s not fair to the organisations. It is a big problem for us to hire, to train, and to create workable teams. When a person leaves it starts again, which put a lot of pressure on us, from the higher management.

I advise all those in the recruiting business to look closely into your new employees history. For all you know is, they would work for 3 months, and then leave with all the knowledge you have given them. This is also a trick used by some companies to gain knowledge of their competitor, which is very unethical, but in a country like ours, who cares when leaders don’t know nothing about ethics.

I enjoy working at my company, but every time we have to recreate teams, it sets back the company. It’s great for the leaving employee as they are going for something better, but for all the other employees he leaves behind, they are set back and their futures are threatened.

I would like to know how other companies in Sri Lanka deal with this problem. How do you screen your employees ? Do you also have a lot of jumpers ?

It’s not fair also to bind someone to a company, but maybe it has to be done. Larger companies may be able to do that as they have a large demand but what about the smaller ones ? It’s not fair also to take away a persons opportunity but if a company is to survive drastic actions may be required.

There is this one person I know who went through 5 companies in less than a year, at each new job he got higher pay and a higher position. I was just wondering the companies that recruited him, did they do a background check on him ? how much did they invest in him ? How much did they lose from him, jumping to the next company ? Were they companies he jumped to their competitors or did they take him just to get information about his previous employer ? Who makes these decisions ?

If someone has gone through these same problems at their company if they are not totally trade secrets please share with us, as this is a problem for all our companies in Sri Lanka.

I’ve been with my company for 7 years, it’s the new staff where all these jumpers come from, which for someone who has been an employee for this long, it saddens.