IT IS THE START of a new year and employees are restless. Bank accounts are fat with annual bonuses. After time to reflect during the holiday period, workhorses are fuelled with fresh ambition.
This time last year, employees were grabbing the chance to work in new-economy companies. Many felt they would get left behind unless they picked up new skills.
The old way of doing business was disappearing. It was a new century, a new economy and old-economy workers would soon be extinct.
Twelve months on, things are a little more rational. Many who followed the dotcom dream were disappointed as companies were forced to rationalise in the fourth quarter. But the job-swapping scenario still exists and carries lessons for employees and employers.
'The job-switch season is the end of the first quarter and beginning of the second quarter. More than 60 per cent of companies pay their bonuses in January, with others paying in March or April,' said Eddie Ng, external affairs director at the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management.
Felix Li, measurement consultant at Hewitt Associates, said Chinese businesses traditionally balanced their books at the end of the year, rather than the Western method of once a quarter. 'That is why the bonus has been paid at the end or beginning of the year. It is when firms have been financially capable,' he said.
