The rules for employment have changed. No one of my father’s generation thought that the concept of a full time staff position until retirement was anything more than the goal of every working man and woman. But the laudable notion of four, or five decade service to one organization, of joining a firm out of school, and retiring from that firm at the end of a productive employment life, is simply gone.
On both sides loyalties have been tested. On the employer side, we’ve seen with cyclical regularity, economic downturns that forced the standard of lifetime employment to be dropped. The increase of consolidations and mergers have meant that redundant employees and departments have been let go. Those displaced feel betrayed. Likewise, employees are more than ever receiving recruitment calls, with key employees enticed by better offers elsewhere. This is today, and while perhaps both camps wish for a more stable employment relationship, it’s not to be. The long stigma of the “job jumper” is gone. In fact, if you haven’t changed jobs on a reasonable basis, employers grade you as a Grey Man, someone without the assertiveness to seek greener pastures.
I provide contract or interim employees as the main part of my staffing practice. I have done this for twenty years. During the course of this I’ve discovered not only that the bonds of employment have changed, but the very nature of a work relationship has changed with it. More positions than ever are based on the concept of temporary, though in some cases temporary may mean a longer term than those on staff. In some cases the “Temp” has not only a better wage, but has acquired better benefits than his full time staff counterpart.
People who have never worked on assignment (as a contract, or consultant employee) sometimes ask me how folks who do work this way can ever feel secure. I tell them that rather I don’t see how anyone can blindly accept that their employer will be able to provide wages for the rest of their life. Simply put, we are all on a temporary basis. There is no surety in employment any more than all other things (excluding death and taxes). To not emotionally prepare yourself for the inevitable changes in the course of business is to be naive in the face of today’s economic reality.
As one longtime associate of mine commented to me once with regards to his counterpart staff colleagues, “the only difference between me (a contractor) and them, is that I know that this job will end.”
In my next post, I’ll point out the advantages and disadvantages of interim employment, as well as some of the ways to reduce the anxiety of being in charge of your own employment destiny.