The End of Work

Maybe I’m being too harsh with the title – perhaps “the evolution of work” would be better? Well, let me jump into the idea.

TIME Magazine’s May 25, 2009 cover story revealed the rapidly changing nature of the workplace. What was revealed was a stark contrast to how we’d perceive work today, and the story’s authors opined that the change would be quick, sudden, and nearly immediate; the most dramatic changes taking (at most) just a decade to come to fruition. Within ten years, TIME essentially postulated:

• Owning a building, cubicles, or any kind of physical facility would be too costly and anti-competitive; employers eager to take advantage of tax incentives and “go-green” mantras – even the inevitable rising cost of oil – will encourage telecommuting, decentralizing to district-sized remote offices closer to the suburbs, or outsource functions entirely to reduce footprint.
• Many workers will not have nor could expect a full time job from just one employer. Instead, workers will be self-governed contractors, freelancers, capable of engaging in knowledge-based work for anyone, and would therefore be in charge of self-marketing and promotion. One worker may work on contract for numerous of employees, or, for a placement agency that fills gaps for employers. Meanwhile, employees without the luxury of full-time employment, would self-manage their indirect benefits: pensions, retirement planning, medical and dental insurance… roles that have traditionally been filled by employers. Employers would embrace this idea because paying for indirect benefits and full-time labor for some levels of work is cost-prohibitive.
• The future is grayer – baby boomers will be financially unable to retire causing a bottleneck of Gen-X talent who’re reaching their management prime. Without guarantees for promotion or new responsibility, Gen-X may turn to more entrepreneurial ventures in this climate and start up nimble virtual organizations. Meanwhile, organizations will suffer a “brain-drain” of talent as Boomers and Gen-X’ers leave the organization or eventually retire.
• Compensation is less about money, and more about values. If you value time off, that could be part of the new compensation plan. Travel. Home-shoring. If you want more involvement with projects, or with non-profits to work for a cause, that could be your compensation. Money as a form of direct compensation will become less important.

What all of this points to is a re-design of employment; the end of work in the way that we know it. The United States is currently suffering its highest rate of unemployment in over a quarter century; this is by no accident. It is, I believe, part of the re-design. Many of the unemployed cannot expect to find a new job with an employer who is concentrating on being as productive or more with less. Employers will re-design work to remain competitive. Scarcity, and not abundance, will typify the next decade – perhaps even this century – and I think it should give today’s employer, student, and employee pause.

Is what you’re learning in secondary and post-secondary education training you to be independent, financially-savvy, a self-marketer, entreprenural, self-motivated, knowledge-based worker? This, I think, is questionable, particularly in secondary ed: we train students in high school to be good employees, and not good independent business folk, let alone a responsible consumer who can balance a checkbook.

Is what you’re doing right now prone to be disintermediated: replaced by technology or the subject of outsourcing? How are you providing value that goes beyond your functional worth to your company? To your customers? Question: what makes you indispensable? How are your skill sets and experience in working virtually, independently, self-directed, and a base understanding of technology to be valuable to employers in an age of scarcity?

If you’re an employer, how will your competitors leverage these ideas to gain cost advantages? How can you leverage employment both ways – even through hiring and incentives – to retain top-talent? How are you prepared to re-design your employment practices? In my line of speciality, how is your information system ready to cope with mobility, commuting, telepresence, and security?

In short, the changes made from the age of agriculture to the industrial age took a long time; even shorter was the transition from the industrial age to the information age. Now, I think we’re in for an extremely rapid economic and social transition from the age of information to the age of aggregation … it’ll be faster, hit harder, and be more competitively challenging for labor and for the owners of production than any other time in human history.

So the question is: are you prepared? Do you feel your employer is prepared? As a business owner, are you preparing to manage scarcity? As a student, how does what you’re learning today translate into valuable skills you’ll need in the upcoming workforce where full time employment is no longer guaranteed, but, a luxury? What would you want or need instead of money? What values do you have as it relates to indirect forms of compensation? How are our institutions prepared? Our economy? As always, your thoughts, feelings, and ideas are most welcome here – thanks for your time.

R

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