The New World Of Work

The days when you left school, got a job and worked for the same company all your life are over. Social and technological changes are having a major impact on the way we work and the careers we pursue. Going back a few generations the job market was pretty simple. You acquired some skill and used that skill to earn your income or the rest of your life.

The skills were usually protected by closed shop arrangements, preventing other people from entering trades unless they had been trained in a specific way. That was the way of work not so long ago. And it was a good system for most people. They received a regular wage and a pension at the end of their careers.

Those days are now well and truly over. Job security and loyalty to private companies is finished. The jobs that society requires doing are still getting done, but in a different way. I believe the new way is liberating for most of us. There are opportunities to be had that did not exist under the old system.

Under the old system if you left school during a recession and was unable to acquire a skill you were stuck for life labouring. The closed shop prevented older workers from moving into trades or returning to college to learn new things. You were condemned to a life of tedium and frustration, unable to acquire new skills and find fulfilment in your work life.

The internet has now liberated us, along with changes in the norms of work. The closed shop is dead meaning anyone can change careers any time they like if they have the motivation to learn new things. It’s estimated that people joining the job market today will have three or four different careers during their working life.

Learning is now a lifetime commitment. It doesn’t end when you leave college. The most successful people will be the ones who are flexible and happy to keep moving in the workplace. We all have skills that we can use and the internet has provided us a way to advertise our skills. Sites like freelancer.com are springing up where people advertise their skills for everyone to see. Forget about spending a lot of money placing a three word add in the local rag that no one ever saw.

This is a wonderful innovation for us all. It’s not just the big companies that can contract their production and work out. With sites like freelancer,small businesses can take advantage of contracting work out. I recently got some website developing done from a guy in Pakistan who did me a superb job for a great price. He was professional and fast, the job was completed within 24 hours.

He charged me about 25% of what it would have cost me to get the same job done over here. Freelancer is full of people working from home offering their skills. From desktop publishing, bookkeeping, accounts, web development, literally anything you want can be found.

We all have skills that we can sell and the internet is providing us with ways of reaching a market, and it’s not just a local market it’s a world market. The opportunities now are growing all the time.

In the past if you lost your job you had to go to the employment centre and place yourself into the hands of someone who would try to find you another job. Or you searched through the papers of vacancies. Today you have more control. Who wants to trundle to a job centre and be forced to take a menial job? For the self motivated the opportunities to keep working are enormous.

Personally, I like the new ways of working. They are presenting me with opportunities which were not available in the past. You can set up a small business alongside a full-time job and create your own wealth.  You can gain independence from a single income job. How many people, under the old system, frittered away their lives, unfulfilled in jobs they hated, because there was no way out for them?

What about security? Some people say. Looking back it was always a myth that we grew up with and never challenged. There never was any security. If you worked in a factory or office you were subject to constant surveillance about your work, wondering when the next downturn would come, or the next innovation that would jeopardise your job. You may have worked for one company for thirty years but there was always the stress of being laid off.

And when your entire income is based on one job then you are vulnerable. Lose it and you’re out of the game. In the 21 century, people will get their incomes from different sources and not be dependent on one source. If you have a job and run a part-time business you are insulated to some extent from losing your job.

I know people who have a number of part-time jobs instead of one full-time job. This makes sense. These people are more secure that someone depending on one job.

Then there’s retirement. It doesn’t suit everybody. In the past you were forced to retire whether you liked it or not. I remember the personnel department coming onto the shop floor to force people out who claimed that they were younger than they were so they could carry on working.

Today if you don’t want to retire you can utilize the internet to continue working. We’re no longer subject to the draconian employment restrictions that plagued our parents. It’s a new world, the future’s here. You can hide in a corner lamenting about how things used to be better in the old days, or you can take positive action and harness the wonderful opportunities that are now opening up.