by Jimmy Nightingale

Created on: July 02, 2009   Last Updated: December 21, 2009

Thirty years ago, it was not unusual to find people who retired after spending their entire working lives with the same employer. These people typically started in the lower echelons of the business and worked their way up to a level that they felt comfortable and capable. And there they stayed until retirement. There was job security and that bought a considerable degree of staff loyalty. The work environment generally had to be very bad to make someone want to change jobs.

The main reason tended to be lack of promotional opportunities thanks to a little thing called seniority. Also known as experience, this was the principle that someone in a job for a long time would know the job better and perform that job more capably than someone who had not been there as long. In extreme cases, you could find yourself stuck on the corporate ladder waiting for those higher up the ladder to die before you could move up a rung.

How things have changed.

Having a job for life is very much the exception rather than the rule nowadays. The average employee now will work for 8-10 different employers over the course of their working lives. Some of the job changes will be forced upon us, as the last 20 years or so has been an era typified by company mergers and re-structures. Jobs come and go as the tides of these changes occur. Duty statements are similarly fluid. Where once they were as immutable as though they were chiselled in stone, yet now you are lucky to even have one. The duty statement is more often than not a vague list of mutually agreed items, meaning you are told and asked to sign off on, that set down the broad scope of your duties.

To be fair though, the economic landscape has changed considerably during this time. Companies need to maintain sufficient flexibility in their operations to manage the endless changes to the environment in which they operate. Companies are much more aggressive in acting on opportunities and threats. It seems the only constant in this ever changing world is change itself and this flows down to the reasons why people change jobs.

There are hundreds of possible reasons why people do change jobs; however they usually boil down to one of the following:

1. Better remuneration

Money. It is often considered the root of all evil, but many of us will jump ship for the chance to earn a few extra dollars. This also includes benefits or perks - better office, free parking, company vehicle, study assistance or allowances, health insurance, child

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