I have seen companies buy latest technology, build excellent plants, raise money from variety of sources, but when it comes to human resources, everyone is really short of ideas - you can't source talented people as and when you want. Human resource managers are trying everything from salaries, designation, lure of foreign travel and training, to retain people (read performers). Loyalty, which has hitherto been considered a fundamental value in an Indian organisation seems to be fast losing relevance.

People, especially younger generation, is highly career conscious - they don't mind changing jobs too often if it helps them grow faster. In the software industry - if an employee doesn't return to his work place after lunch, his manager starts looking for a replacement. It's not a joke - in certain sections of industry, attrition rates are as high as 30 or 40 per cent which means, one out of ten, every two or three employees chucks his or her jobs every year.

Besides bureaucracy, our corporate sector for long has followed a cradle to grave employment system. Switching jobs is becoming a way of life - it looks the pressure of liberalisation and free trade has forced corporate sector to be more close to an American system (in contrast to Japanese pattern) which rewards performers ahead of loyalists. Should the companies hire people who are not likely to leave or talented ones some whom may switch to other companies in the wake of attractive opportunities? Should the companies reward so called loyalists or go purely on the basis of performance? My own feeling is that one should be loyal to his or her profession, offering services to an employer who gives best return for one's contribution.

By returns I don't mean money alone - growth, responsibility, opportunities available for learning also matter equally. I think most of the employees wrongly interpret the meaning of loyalty. Loyalty doesn't mean a passive presence in a company for long. To many employees who claim to be loyal to their companies, I ask a simple question `Did you ever refuse a better job for the sake of your company?' Most likely, a majority of the people never had their loyalty tested.

In my opinion, loyalty is a non issue in the new world of work. Results hold the key. Mobility in contrast to loyalty provides you with the freedom to work from company to company or career to career. The stigma of changing a job, I feel is gone because loyalty is no longer a yardstick for the success. Those who want to succeed will have to change their mindset from being just loyal employees to be effective performers.

In this land of Aya Rams and Gaya Rams, it is indeed strange that job hopping should be an issue. Stranger still is the fact that it took a multinational feud, the Pepsi- Cola war where employees were made scapegoats, mere pawns to proclaim checkmate, to trigger off the controversy. As battlelines between rival soft drinks companies get drawn, one is forced to ponder: Is job hopping a vice to be abhorred at all costs?

As a rule, those who switch channels are motivated by two different set of reasons. Firstly there are those for whom as a great poet once said; `Work is the fulfilment of earth's dream assigned to them, for to be idle is to be a stranger to its seasons'. As their regular 9 to 5 job transforms into dreary monotonous routine, a new job connotes an antidote to stagnation.

Nothing wrong with that. Then there is the more rampant tribe of job hunters whose only raison de `tre is money.

The will shift loyalties for that extra buck, an additional perk or any other monetary consideration. Call it avarice, greed or lust but in times when money is the most potent equaliser, the all significant barometer of one's mettle, is it unethical to bid one's talent, intellect, physical prowess or creative potential to the highest bidder?