Career Coach: Commentary, part 4: Is loyalty extinct?

M y father had one job for 44 years. I've had 11 in 45 years (plus summer jobs), including the one I have now - working for myself for 16 years.

Some difference! The workplace has changed.

In this, the fourth of six commentaries on sweeping changes in the workplace (find them at http://amdurcoaching.com /career-coach), we ask the question: is loyalty extinct?

In May 2009, I reported that I had reviewed résumés from 200 people who were in the workplace for the entire decade, and found that those 200 people held 947 jobs in those 9-plus years.

Doing the math, 947 jobs divided by 200 people equaled 4.735 jobs per person since 1/1/2000, and the 9.33 years of the decade divided by the 4.735 jobs came to 1.97 years - or an average life expectancy of your job of 23 months and 20 days.

In an age of lateral careers, impersonal recruiting, and fleeting allegiances, the deep pain of the recession lingers, exacerbated by rampant mergers and acquisitions, ruthless layoffs, confounding (often, senseless) reorganizations, shrinking benefits, decreased training, routine outsourcing, shortened contracts, blatant inequities, and widening disparity between the powerful few and the powerless many.

For instance, when a global, $40-billion company conducted three rounds of layoffs, shedding 1,400 jobs at its U.S. headquarters - yet found $20-plus billion in the same year to complete a hostile take-over of another key industry player - it was no wonder the results of the next year's employee engagement survey were dismal and the ensuing two years saw many employees willfully pack up and leave, often for equal or even lower jobs. In decades past, this flight was improbable, but two newer characteristics of our current workplace - access to information and ease of mobility - enabled it. Employees fled like escapees.

Routinely, severance packages designed to preempt litigation - not display a scintilla of decency, care, compassion, or responsibility - were accepted resentfully but with little choice. Though outplacement services were offered, everyone knew this was "guilt money" and not concern. And while neutral references kept the employer out of court, you couldn't get a positive word in your support when you needed it most, no matter how much you deserved it.

Not that blame lies only with employers. During the dot-com bubble, for example, countless skilled employees, attracted by freewheeling offers, readily and promiscuously picked up their skills, contact lists, and 401k plans on Friday and moved into their new employers' cubicles on Monday - for considerably more money, which was all over the place in the roaring nineties. Remember?

Employers and employees both proved they could move forward without burdening themselves with the gross inconvenience of being loyal. And this growing disengagement has gone beyond the workplace into society in general. Look at these distressing voting turnout rates by age bracket in the 2012 election (Source: US Census): older than 75, 70.0 percent; 65-74, 73.5 percent; 45-64, 67.9 percent; 25-44, 57.3 percent; 18-24, 41.2 percent. If the relevance of voting turnout to job loyalty is not evident at first, consider that the data suggest that Gen Y and much of Gen X show a disinterest in, disregard for, and lack of commitment to the future. What, then, can they be expected to feel about their jobs?