Scooby don't
It was not a personal attack - it was a very valid observation. My idea of loyalty, how it is gained and how it is given must be vastly different than yours!
There is absoultely nothing wrong with broadening your horizons - but thats your lookout - not the companies. You want to do that, thats fine - you can't expect any company to take you back when you're done just because you think they should.
NATS is my second career - I left a perfectly good service career because I wanted a change... I gave a hell of a lot more to the Armed Forces by way of big chunks of my life, than anyone in NATS gives away... I did not expect to be taken back into the fold if things did not happen to work out with NATS though!
Spitoon - As I have said in my last 2 posts - I agree that it is NATS loss to say what they did to Scooby (though that does not make them disloyal, just short sighted).
What NATS should have in place is a laid down system whereby people can opt to leave the company for whatever reason (i.e. just for the hell of it) and they will be taken back a set amount of years later
(there's got to be some limit to ensure a fairly high liklehood of revalidation... it's not guaranteed just because someone was valid years before... NATS has more than enough ATCOs kicking round already who for one reason or another cannot re-validate).
They also have to set out laid down Ts and Cs for this e.g. if Jo Bloggs leaves on Pay spine nine which happens to be £45k, then he will come back into the company on a commensurate scale... either pay spine 9 again with the annual pay awards added on, or a lower pay scale which, due to pay rises, now equals what he left on.
These people leave on the whole for their own benefit, often to pick up a barrowfull of cash in the Middle East etc, NOT for the benefit of NATS... they should be given the option of returning, but to set terms and conditions. This set of Ts and Cs will need to include a 'failure to validate' clause to protect the company.
It is the only way to run a company... if ATCOs are too precious to see beyond their own self inflated worth to understand this, then that's their problem (and no Scooby, that's not a personal attack, its a generalisation)!!
Setting out a defined set of guidelines is the sensible way of doing it and it then becomes fair on both parties.