I’m watching the NHL trading deadline and decided I should finally write something about a thought I’ve had for decades.

What if employees could be traded like athletes?

I’m generally talking about either big organizations where there is a big pool of employees, several offices, departments and such, or sectors where there are a bunch of employees in similar competing companies. It’d be even funner in the latter if they were out there competing against each other, like sales people.

It’d be a good way to move some disgruntled employees around. It’d be a good way to optimize some people’s skills to put them in a position where they may be of more value. You’d have a good reason to trade for them, or trade them off. It might just be fresh, especially if the jobs are relatively interchangeable, to deal with different topics, territory, etc.

Of course, it could leave some unhappy employees. People don’t generally like to be moved out of their control. But hey, that’s part of life. Maybe have people be able to state they’re not willing to move, or check with them before finalizing deals. Have some conditions so the employees have some control, in other words. I mean, not everybody is going to suddenly get traded. Look even at the sports trading deadlines. What tiny percentage of all the athletes in a league are moved? Very few. Few enough you could probably put in such rules that only people declaring willingness to be traded would be traded. I can tell you right now that in government where I work, you’d probably get more than enough at any given time to make feasible the small percentage of actual trades to take place like in sports.

Now, as for free agency, that’s another fun thought.

As well as drafts, though I don’t necessarily mean out of college, but just a reshuffling of employees once in a while. That will like bruise a lot of egos, though, and give some people some bad reps… deservedly or not. Yes, I said deservedly as a choice. Cause some do! But same thing works for the good people. If they were concerned about their reps, then maybe they should start earning it and making it what they want it to be. 🙂