The concept of life-long employment as a specialist in a single company comes from a time when the relationship between an employee and an employer could be measured in decades until retirement. Today's workers are finding it in their own best interest to favor personal development, attention to the marketplace, and a strong network over traditional job security. A friend of mine, a web developer in a high-tech San Francisco startup, recently wrote an article about not feeling connected to the customer in the modern workplace. Having worked in retail, he now finds himself frustrated by a specialized role within an organizational structure that keeps him from seeing the people who actually use what he works to build, and interacting with them face to face. It's not an unfamiliar problem to many people today. But historically it is a relatively recent one. It's only been a little over a hundred years since the Industrial Revolution moved the average worker out of the home and the family profession, and into a specialized role that only makes sense in the context of a larger organization. When the majority of the workforce was in private professions, we had constant insight into the actual needs of the customers who benefitted from the products and services we provided. It was expected that part of our responsibility was to adapt to the changing needs of our customers, so they would continue to value what we had to offer. The 13th century shoe merchant whose shoes were not pointy enough for the fashion trends of the day had to adjust his inventory or go out of business. But industrialization hides the changing needs of the marketplace from the workers, in favor of a hierarchy that favors a specialized workforce. And specialization brings with it the expectation that people will isolate themselves in their own niches, rarely venturing outside of their areas of expertise. Unfortunately, that means that in most organizations there will be some people who specialize in dealing with the customer, and some who specialize in dealing with the product. It is rare to find an organization that trains its employees to consider how those objectives can and should relate to each other.
Falling Barriers to Entry
Stories like my friend's highlight some of the problems with that arrangement. The traditional structure of the modern organization grew out of the assumption that every worker would be exclusive to one company; all the products of their labor would be directed toward the efforts of the company. In exchange, the company would reward the employees with an identity, a lifetime of work, and ultimately a retirement with security. Changes in the economy, improvements in mobility, and advances in networked communication have presented a potentially terminal blow to this paradigm. In the early 20th century, building a company to serve more than a small local market was a matter of gathering and organizing vast resources. The barriers to entry for new companies meant that an established company with deep pockets could rely on minimal competition and a relatively stable market. Therefore it was safe to construct organizations around a hierarchy, with faith in the company's ability to provide lifelong employment and pensions to the workforce. In the modern economy, there are so many vectors through which a new company can reach the customer that, even without anti-monopoly regulation, no single company can possibly expect to own the customer relationship anymore. But organizational structure has been slow to adapt. The security associated with working as a specialist in a large company is quickly disappearing. The bigger and more hierarchical a company is, the less likely it is to be able to adapt to the changing needs of the marketplace. At any moment, a smaller more agile company with a new solution can swoop in and steal away the customers that a company might have relied on for decades. This is a danger to the livelihood of any workers who have bet their careers and their retirements on the long-term viability of a highly specialized job within a particular organization.
Specialization and Insecurity
Workers can no longer count on the security of working at a single place with a single specialization for the rest of their lives, and then retiring to a safe pension. But this model still seems to dictate the expectations of both the worker and the manager in the traditional workplace. Full-time employees of a typical company today are artificially isolated into their areas of expertise, and not given the opportunity to see what the impact of their work is on the actual customer. Without that insight to help workers understand the practical value of their efforts, it's easy for them to let their skills to become focused on the temporary and specific needs of one employer. Over time, those skills inevitably drift further and further away from the changing needs a constantly evolving economy. And workers who notice these changes, and feel powerless to adapt, may find themselves feeling disconnected from the work that they're doing. A specialized and hierarchical approach to organizational structure insulates the worker from society, and does damage to both the organization and the individual. It keeps the company rigid and inflexible, and makes the worker with a niche-specific specialization less prepared to adapt as the needs the customers and the marketplace as a whole change.
The Rise of the Adaptive Shared Labor Resource
Meanwhile, a growing class of outsourced and temporary workers is emerging to fill the changing needs of the marketplace. While full-time workers optimize their skills to the needs of one particular role within an organization, the freelance contractor is able to move from company to company, developing an adaptable skill set that changes to meet the needs of the market as it evolves. But the companies that follow the model of the industrial revolution frequently see contract workers as less committed to the organization. These independent resources may not be valued or compensated as well by traditional companies, so many workers in these roles do not find themselves in that position by choice. http://youtu.be/RFqOtRdN7CI Without the sense of belonging that comes from full-time employee status, temporary workers may see their roles as less secure. That puts them at a disadvantage when negotiating contract terms with a larger organization. Despite their importance to the growth of the new economy, social protections for people in these roles have been slow to emerge. In fact, the temporary worker who moves around and adapts as the marketplace changes may be in a much more secure position than the full-time employee whose career is tied to the decisions and actions of others. Unfortunately, as the US Bureau For Labor Statistics reckons, the skill set needed to succeed (pdf) as an unaffiliated worker is not one that is taught in our schools.
Staying Connected to the Customer
For workers to feel connected to what they're doing, it is essential for them to see how the work they're doing affects the lives of the customers who pay the bills. Isolating workers from this can only result in a sense of dissatisfaction and disassociation, and ultimately lead to products that don't really satisfy the needs of the customer. The sharing economy has emerged as one of several alternative approaches to employment, offering workers different models for how they relate to their jobs and their marketplace. A sharing approach to labor encourages individuals and collectives to focus on the skills and resources they can bring to the market, and adapt as the market needs change. It also recognizes that we are both the consumer and the producer. As the market for labor becomes more turbulent, such concepts will have the opportunity to gain traction, and be tested in real-world circumstances. To my friend, and others who may find themselves working in a company where they feel isolated from the customer, I hope that feeling inspires you to do some research of your own. Talk to the people who buy the products your company sells. Read trade journals and newspaper articles, to find out what the public is saying about you. Take the time to consider who your customer is. Think about how those customers interact with the company, and what their expectations are. Consider the rules the company puts in place to prevent you from communicating directly with a customer. If you are not a customer for your company's products, and you don't have a clear idea of how your work translates into a product, how decisions are made to adapt as the market changes, or why somebody would want to buy what your company sells, then you may want to consider just how secure you really feel in your job today. Guest post written by M. David Green.
Online social networking has been a strong interest of mine since I started researching the subject more than two decades ago, while studying the Social Sciences at UC Berkeley. What I saw in those early online communities showed me that the human instinct to network is vital enough to thrive in any medium which allows one person to connect to another. Credit picture: Mashine factory of Richard Hartmann in Chemnitz, 1868 -- scanned by Norbert Kaiser for Wikimedia Video: Panel discussion at OuiShare Fest, Paris, May 2013