Behavioral Economics for Leaders

CHAPTER 12Why Employers Prefer Employees Who Don't Job Hop

The average period of time employees stay at the same company is getting ever shorter. People are changing jobs more and more frequently. At the same time, employers value loyalty when they assess the résumés of potential job candidates. How does this affect people looking for work?

Mobility on the labor market is often perceived as a good thing. People who know how to exploit the opportunities of the labor market and collect experience in many companies are considered to be dynamic. Loyalty to a company, maybe even over decades, by contrast, seems to be an old‐fashioned attitude that no longer meets the requirements of today's labor market. It is without a doubt true that it enriches your experience if you become familiar with different work routines, different organizational forms, different bosses and colleagues, or simply a different activity in another company.

But from the company's perspective, high employee churn entails high costs. New employees must be trained, they must be integrated into existing structures—without too many conflicts, if possible—and they must internalize the routines to make a contribution to the success of the department. It's time‐consuming and costly. So when it comes to hiring somebody, it's vital to a company that the person can integrate in the new work environment and adopt the company's values. Along with the formal training of a job applicant, soft factors such as reliability, ...