The future of work

A recent SEEK story on the skills needed in the new economy sparked lots of interest and debate. Here, author and strategist Marcus Letcher offers another view on the changing nature of work and the skills required to manage your life.

We are participants in a revolution in the arena of work. About 80 per cent of new jobs in Western industrialised nations are not permanent positions. During the past decade, full-time jobs have risen by 14 per cent and part-time jobs by 70 per cent.

In the six years from 1990, Australia created only 55,000 full-time jobs and 408,000 part-time jobs. In the 18 months [from May 1998], 22,000 Telstra employees will lose their jobs and Australia's big four banks will cut 10,000 full-time positions.

Australian Bureau of Statistics figures (March 1998) show that the true jobless rate is significantly higher than the official figure. Almost two million people want to work but are unable to find jobs, are discouraged from looking by poor employment prospects, or are otherwise disadvantaged. Standard-hours jobs will continue to decline until at least 2010. Growth will occur in two areas: jobs offering seven to 21 hours work and jobs offering more than 50 hours.

Permanent change

No longer is the permanent, lifelong job the dominant model. These statistics are not wrinkles in an otherwise continuous fabric of stable employment, or temporary aberrations that will disappear once things return to normal. There is no "normal" any more. It has been replaced by a fluid, changing, reactive and responsive work culture with a "tidal" distribution and redistribution of work responding to needs. Part-time, sessional, project, contract and temporary work is rapidly becoming the preferred mode for employers wanting to cut costs.

This is shaking the world of work to its roots, and the implications for unprepared workers are significant. For those at the bottom of the system, those with the least resilience, there is potential for catastrophe.

How did we come to this? With competition now global, companies must cut overheads to the bone, and with a clear trend from labour-intensive investment to capital-intensive, the body of workers in many organisations is indeed becoming gaunt. Some organisations are setting adrift whole departments and concentrating on "core purpose" — outsourcing such areas as accounting, legal, marketing and human resources. This is how they hope to stay in the game. But the game is played at breakneck speed.

Christopher Lasch described the problems arising from this in his book The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy:

"An aristocracy of talent is superficially an attractive ideal which appears to distinguish democracies from societies based on heredity and privilege. Meritocracy, however, turns out to be a contradiction in terms; the talented retain many of the vices of the aristocracy without any of its virtues... Like everything else, obligation has been de-personalised."

Contradictions of meritocracy

The midwife assisting at the genesis of this way of business management is technology. Hyper-enabling technological systems of electronic networks, electronic mail, instant data transfer and robotics are proliferating. All are facilitators of the new-look company. Technology also delivers the new work styles, engineered to answer the company's every need. It is an instant world in which needs must be met instantaneously.

Thus we have the proliferation of modes of work that fit the "instant gratification" model so favoured by today's employers. [In November 1998] the world's biggest temp agency, Manpower, struck a deal with the ACTU, one of the last defences against the new, fragmented work styles. Manpower's managing director said of the historically significant event: "We have actually got the world's largest private sector employer, that employs all its workforce on a temporary basis, talking with the union body in Australia traditionally hell-bent on preventing the casualisation of the workforce."

But what of the effect on those asked to accept the inevitability of declining job security: the workers or aspirants who are told continually that they must be "flexible". The demand of the 1990s workplace is that you bend only one way — the company's. For some, rendered less agile by a skills deficit, personal disability or even personality, it may be a matter of "bend until you snap".

I divide workers and potential workers of today into three distinct groups: the Unders, the Overs and the Outs. The Overs are those who work absurdly long hours because of some internal drive or the demands of a workplace stripped down to the barest staffing levels. The Unders are those whose working hours are inadequate; therefore income is insufficient to maintain a satisfactory lifestyle. The Outs are, as their name suggests, outside the work loop.

What does this lead to? A workforce largely composed of the overworked or underworked; tired, anxious people with too little time or too little money to enjoy their leisure hours, watched with envy by those peering in from outside. Surely this is a description of a society out of kilter.

The skills required

However, certain skills and attributes are over arching and portable and are becoming universally necessary. They are:

Saleable skills: If our skills are to earn income, they must have a value in the market and be up to date. Watch for ways of upgrading and updating.

Enterprising outlook: The right skills create options. How to use those skills? To seek a job in which an employer buys the skills to service his customers? Or to sell them direct to the customer as a freelance, a consultant, a project worker? There are other options than the "job", and people rejected as employees may find they can manage outside the protective but confining world of the payroll. The trick is to develop a radar for opportunity.

Networking: The word became stigmatised after its reign as king of jargon in the 1980s. Nevertheless, networks are a way of connecting to people, information, opportunity, work, jobs, skill-sharing and much more. They can be real, and as close as the immediate locality; or virtual, and as wide as the global village.

Self-management: What will you do with the new realities that are happening to you and your clients? You will need the art of self-management. Paternalistic employers and well-worn career ladders have been consigned to history. We need to cultivate an understanding of our own strengths and weaknesses; looking at where we have failed in the past and where we have known success. Self-knowledge is a necessity for 1990s workers if they are to be their own best managers.

Niche work: The environment of business is harsh and competition within the ecosystem is fierce. If you cannot compete directly with the bigger and stronger species, position yourself in a spot that is out of their reach — even one where you can pick up their scraps.

All of this adds up to "modular work" — drawing together your skills, interests, aptitudes and desires into a synergy that feeds back into the whole in a perceptual self-renewing process. Passion is the heart of the model, the fulcrum and the incentive. Everything feeds into that labour of love, and in return, it warms and sustains the worker through the hard times. It stokes the furnace of motivation.

First published in Management Today, the journal of the Australian Institute of Management. Reprinted with permission.

by Marcus Letcher