by Chuck McConnell, President, COO, Stewart, Cooper & Coon
Part 1

The Rules Have Changed

Working world guidelines are changing rapidly. Many of us already know this because we have experienced firsthand the implications of those changes. Career ladders are disappearing. Upward mobility is a luxury of the recent past. Job security is all but totally gone. We know this intellectually, but emotionally it can be hard to swallow – especially if you’ve spent the better part of your career working under one set of rules only to find that everything you believed to be true no longer applies.

Look at the issue of job security. Up until about 10 years ago, there was a covenant between employees and employers: Security in exchange for loyalty and hard work. If you were a “good soldier” who did what you were told and followed the rules, you could expect a paycheck for life, a substantial pension and maybe even a set of top line Pings at the end of your term of service.

That covenant has been broken. There are no more entitlements. No jobs for life. Few pension plans. No gold watches. In a buyer’s market, the only two things that employers seem to care about are: (1) bottom-line-contributing, transferable skills; and (2) the promise of delivering profitable results. Everything else in your stellar career track is interesting but doesn’t mean much of anything at the negotiating table.

The Bureau of Labor statistics estimates that the average working American will change careers 5-8 times over the course of a lifetime – and have an untold number of jobs. Obviously, none of us can afford to rely on employers, who are themselves plagued by instability, to take responsibility for individual career paths. No matter how hard you work or how good you are at your work, you can still be the next victim of an executive level layoff or reorganization. Even if you manage to survive the cutbacks, you can find yourself doing twice as much work for the same amount of pay – in other words working harder but enjoying it less. It is clear that the workplace is undergoing a massive transformation that is changing both who we are and how we work. We are in the midst of an evolving global economy where it is commonplace to do business with several other countries simultaneously and not even leave your office. Our workplaces are changing, too. Industries that were once the exclusive domain of males have been transformed by gender and cultural diversity. Authoritarian (and sometimes patriarchal) cultures are disappearing. Teamwork and participative management are now highly valued.

Technology is clearly one of the driving forces behind this constant state of change. As it continues to catapult us into the “Information Age,” entire industries – not to mention individual organizations and careers – are being transformed by its power. As we scramble to work with a whole new vocabulary of technology, electronic communications and the portable Internet are changing how we work. And the changes will continue into the foreseeable future.

To be continued next issue with “The Role of the Career Campaign Director (CD).”

Part of the CD role is to help clients understand the complexities of this new workplace from both a macro perspective, as well as the impact these changes may have on individual careers and lives.