“Job-hopping” refers to the practice of holding multiple jobs in a relatively short time. Although there might not necessarily be anything wrong with it, it is often seen as something negative in today’s work environment.
Currently, there are no repercussions to those who ‘job-hop’ but some groups believe that change is needed.
The Federation of Malaysian Business Associations (FMBA) recently suggested that Malaysia should introduce a system to record employee performance to prevent frequent job-hopping.
According to its chairman, Abdul Malik Abdullah, the government should come up with a record system like CTOS or CCRIS, which evaluates a person’s credit score and financial health based on their payment history.
He explained that the system could prevent an employee from leaving a job easily and employers from employing those who are more likely to ‘job-hop’.
“We have a lot of issues with foreign workers not being able to come in so we have been using our local workers but we feel like the employees do not work for a very long time. They work for a very short period and this impacts business terribly.”
“We need a system where we have records of job hoppers or employees who come and go so that employers will know if a person has changed their many times in a year, that way they can be more careful before employing someone,” said Abdul Malik.
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Although he admits that his suggestion might sound harsh, he believes that it would be helpful to employers, employees, and the government.
“We need to implement this type of system so that people will quit job-hopping for an extra RM50 or for some simple reason.”
Meanwhile, deputy secretary-general Dr Sri Ganesh Michiel said that job-hoppers are why businesses are taking a while to recover from the pandemic.
“We have found that some employees lied about their background, for example, some have been involved in criminal activities while some are drug addicts, so this system will be able to help companies before employing someone,” he explained.
Malaysians are outraged
The business group’s statement went viral on social media where plenty of Malaysians slammed the group for their remarks.
One user told the group to stop blaming employees. “What an oversimplistic take. Employees change jobs for various reasons,” they added.
Meanwhile, some users said that if that was the case, then Malaysia should also implement a system to monitor bad employers who are not paying employees enough.
“Can I similarly propose a system that blacklists employers with poor management practices from hiring people?” said one user.
Another user sarcastically said, “Yes! Finally a mechanism to prevent workers from jumping ship too often. Just don’t care about the unfair treatment, low pay, no raise and no motivation from boss.”
What do you think about the suggestion? Let us know in the comments.
