In the bustling streets of Kathmandu, where the echoes of tradition meet the pulse of modernity, a new trend is emerging among the youth—job hopping.
Job hopping refers to the practice of frequently changing jobs or employers within a relatively short period, typically spending less than two years at each position. This trend is becoming increasingly common for many young professionals around the globe. It so does in Nepal, especially those from Generation Z. Switching jobs is no longer a taboo and a sign of lack of commitment.
Reasons for Job Hopping
Financial Incentives
- Employees, especially the younger generation, don't consider sticking into a single job financially lucrative.
- They tend to switch jobs with better financial incentives in terms of salary, allowances, insurance, and other forms of financial benefits.
- Similarly, skyrocketing inflation has made employees think about better career options to secure themselves from financial uncertainties and maintain quality of life.
Career Advancement
- Gen Z seems to prioritize career growth, and skill enhancement and confront new challenges over stability and monotonous work life.
- They are attracted by the offer of leading teams and learning new skills.
- Similarly, they evaluate their growth over time regarding pay, and the skills gained.
Shift in Priorities
- The younger generation chooses flexible working hours over rigid office time.
- Work-life balance has become a bigger concern for Gen Z. 5 day work week is a trending attraction of employees in Nepal.
- Similarly, employees want to be heard, listened to, and included in the decision-making process.
- Companies with rigid hierarchy and authoritative decision-making are prone to have higher turnover rates.
Company Policy of not retaining employees
- Companies are also shifting policy towards not retaining employees for long.
- When there is a supply of a better work force in the market, it makes less sense to retain the employees.
- The policy of keeping only top talents has amplified job hopping.
- Instead of retaining employees by increasing benefits, companies opt to select fresh candidates for the post.
While this generation is normalizing job hopping, the trend has brought substantial benefits as well for both employees and employers. It has contributed to redefining the priorities of employees and has allowed employers to taste diverse skill sets.
Pros of Job Hopping
Exploration of New Roles
- As the younger generation aspires to learn more, enhance their skill set, and confront diverse challenges, exploring new roles is the way to go for them.
- This contributes to gaining new skills and applying them with a new perspective.
- Similarly, employees get to build their network in different work settings.
- Continuous exposure to different challenging tasks improves the skill set producing an even more competent workforce.
Fresh Talent
- While employees get to explore new roles, the employers also get to taste fresh talent with diverse perspectives and approaches to deal with existing problems.
- This may evolve a better outlook, to deal with the problems that the company is facing.
- Similarly, companies can also get better insight about their reputation and desire to work with them.
Job hopping may seem attractive at first glance, but one cannot ignore its side effects. This trend has brought several challenges in the dynamics of the job market, company culture, and in-depth skill set of employees.
Cons of Job Hopping
Challenges in Team Building and Company Culture
- As the higher turnover of the employees does not let the employers settle their team and groom for the common goal, this hampers teamwork.
- Similarly, having to explain company culture, introduce its values, and align employees with its motto is a tedious job to perform frequently.
- This ultimately hampers the productivity of the company.
Cost of Hiring
- Companies spend a lot while recruiting new employees. On one hand, they lose the opportunity cost of the vacant post and on the other, they need to allocate resources to identify, shortlist, and recruit candidates.
- The trend of job hopping has adversely affected the cost of hiring, in some instances, companies may not even get the services from the employee equivalent to the cost of hiring.
Job hopping has its own course of merits as well as demerits. But one thing that cannot be denied is its growing popularity. The companies now should be focused on retaining their top talents from the wave of job hopping.
Ways to retain top talent from Job Hopping
- Offer Competitive Salaries: Regularly review compensation packages to ensure they meet or exceed industry standards.
- Create Clear Career Paths: Provide opportunities for advancement through training programs and mentorship.
- Foster a Positive Work Environment: Encourage open communication, inclusivity, and recognition of employee contributions.
- Promote Work-Life Balance: Implement flexible work arrangements that allow employees to balance their professional and personal lives, effectively.
- Engage Employees in Decision-Making: Involve employees in discussions about company policies and changes to make them feel valued.
The culture of job hopping has made the role of Job portals like Merojob more significant. Employers need to have faster recruitment support to minimize the opportunity lost from higher turnover. Similarly, they need a reliable applicant pool to ensure better recruitment. On the other side, job seekers look for reliable sites from which the best companies hire. Merojob is there to fulfill the requirements of both the parties.
- With Merojob AI Applicant Tracking System (Merojob AI ATS) Merojob caters to employers to streamline their recruitment process with Four times faster recruitment.
- Similarly, with Nepal’s largest job seekers pool, Merojob ensures better applicants, competent enough to justify roles assigned to them.
- For job seekers, Merojob offers job opportunities from top employers in Nepal.
- Merojob posts job vacancies from entry to top-level jobs from diverse fields facilitating every level of job seeker regardless of their field to find a job for them.
For better or worse, job hopping has become the trend for Generation Z, having its own reasons, merits, and demerits. Job seekers should focus on their skills and opportunities to enhance them. Similarly, employers should revise their policies, as per the aspirations of this generation.
