at any given time.
More companies are looking at employees as commodities; that is, we will pay you for the set of skills that you bring to us but benefit packages, career planning, continuing education, upgrading of skills, and those types of issues are viewed as costly overhead, and the onus to provide for them has shifted from the company to the employee.
The consensus among experts on the workplace is that today, everybody is a temporary worker and the only security you can expect is in having a set of current, marketable skills that are in demand.
The shift to smaller companies
The workplace of the twentieth century, up until about the 1970s, was dominated by large companies. This changed in the 1980s and ’90s to the point where, for years now, the vast majority of jobs and work opportunities are created by small businesses. Small today could mean a single operator who has expanded to the point where he or she needs an extra body on a full-time or part-time basis.
This shift has many repercussions for today’s workers, especially those who have lost their jobs with medium to large, well-established companies. Whether the shift is positive or negative is all over the map depending on how informed the individual is about the workplace and how well they’ve positioned themselves to survive in it.
Many of today’s small-business owners were formerly full-time employees in large companies who decided that self-employment made more sense for them than looking for another full-time job. Also, more young people coming out of college or university are starting their own businesses than at any other time in the past. According to a May 2005 Ipsos-Reid poll, 40 percent of Canadian college and university students would like to be their own bosses by becoming entrepreneurs or consultants.
In the US, according to a New York Times article on May 1, 2008, over 2,000 colleges and universities are now offering courses in entrepreneurship, up from 253 institutions in 1985. The article pointed out that many colleges have turned to active or retired business owners rather than academics to teach these courses. It also pointed out that some people see a strong liberal arts education as a foundation for success in these courses and that entrepreneurship in business schools is often too narrowly focused.
A new set of expectations
While there are no hard and fast rules that define how small and large businesses operate, there are some things that you generally can count on to be different between them. If you lost a job with a large company, you’ve lived in a world where you could expect that your job included a decent benefit package, overtime pay, a nice office, and other perks that you probably took for granted. If you expect to find all or most of these things when you join a small company, you’re probably going to be disappointed. You may also be disappointed if you expect to earn the same salary you did in the past.
The president or owner or the principals of the small company, who often risk everything they have to establish it, may not have many of the things that you may feel you’re entitled to, like security, benefits packages, and so on, so it’s unrealistic for you to expect to have them.
You’ll probably wear more hats in your job than you have in the past, and you could be much more involved in the important decision-making processes affecting where the company is going. You may have an opportunity to pick up some stock options if the company is planning to go public. You may become a telecommuter and perform most of your work from home, and be expected to supply or help to purchase the PC that you need to do this. You may be a contract worker with no benefits included in your compensation and no buy-out or golden handshake at the end of your employment, even if you’ve worked with the company for years.
You may also have opportunities to advance your career — a thing that may never have happened with a large company. Your contributions could have much more influence over the success or failure of the company. You may be expected to provide leadership in guiding the company in new directions, and that could be a new role for you.
No more entitlements
If you’re over 40 or have been strongly influenced by your parents’ experience in the workplace, you may need to make some significant and fundamental changes in your thinking about your career and what to expect in your working life. In yesterday’s workplace, the relationship between the worker and the employer was much more paternalistic than it is today.
The reason why so many people are devastated by the loss of a full-time job often has more to do with other aspects than the financial one. What the individual also loses is a sense of belonging to a community, some dignity and self respect, pride in what he or she does, and he or she often feels betrayed if he or she gave the company all that he or she had to offer. These non-tangible things that come with a job in a large company may not necessarily come with a job in a small company.
How people react to the changes that arise from going from a large to a small company will vary according to how secure they are with themselves, how well they adapt to change, how informed they are about the workplace, and their ability to rise above the day-to-day challenges and view the transition that the workplace is going through from a broader, more philosophical point of view.
A need to take the broader view
As the workplace goes through its current transition, those who have lost their jobs are having a tough time dealing with the realities of the new workplace. In many cases their kids are also looking at them and wondering what they should do to position themselves to earn a decent living. The range of emotions goes from those who feel liberated by the changes going on in the workplace — “good riddance to the traditional job” is their attitude — to those at the other end of the scale, who may be devastated by the loss of their jobs. There’s no quick fix to any of this. We’ll just have to adjust to these changes, as our ancestors had to adjust to the changes that took place in their lifetimes.
There is work available, but if you’re looking for it to come in the shape of a traditional job with all of the benefits and security to which we’ve become accustomed, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Finding the work that’s available is also going to be a lot more challenging. For most of us it will require developing new skills, being much more informed about what is going on in society and the workplace, and finally shedding some long-held attitudes about work, jobs, and expectations.
You’re going to have to become more adept at selling yourself and anticipating and understanding the needs of the employer with which you want to work. That’s a new role for most of us and it won’t come naturally. You’ll have to learn how to do it in a way that is effective for you.
Facing reality
When the realities of the new workplace are laid out for us, most of us, at a rational level, can relate to them. It’s common sense. The big challenge is to psychologically accept that reality and adjust our lives and attitudes towards earning a living. That challenge will continue for the foreseeable future, because many people around us will continue to have traditional jobs. One of the biggest problems facing people who have lost their jobs is looking around and seeing many of the people they know still working in traditional jobs. This leaves them feeling victimized and lost.
Even though the majority of people are well aware that significant changes are going on in the workplace, they can’t really relate to the challenges that people who have lost their jobs are facing. They only get it when it happens to them or someone in their family.
There’s denial
