Free Article By Paul Glen of C2
Consulting
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What is a Job, Anyway?
(Originally published in Computerworld USA and
Computerworld Australia, and Techworld Australia)
With the economy ailing, the U.S. presidential election in
full swing and surveys showing cuts in next year's IT budgets, get ready to hear
more and more about jobs. People will lose jobs. Evil corporations will export
jobs. We will need more jobs. We will need better jobs. Not McJobs.
People will become unemployed and underemployed, and they will
drop out of the workforce. They will go back to school with the hopes of
obtaining better jobs. The government will try to "create" jobs using tax
policy, environmental policy, fiscal policy, trade policy, labor policy,
research funding, public works and a healthy dose of prayer.
The discussion will be endless. But it will skip one important
question: What is a job, anyway?
The word has become a central part of the lexicon of personal
finance and career development. For most of us, it's the primary source of
family income. But do we really know what it means?
I'm not an expert on employment history, but it seems to me
that 50 years ago, the meaning of a job was relatively clear.
If you were a man, you joined a company for an indefinite
period, usually assumed to be life. You worked full time and drew a steady
salary, and the firm repaid your loyalty. When you retired, you got a pension
and maybe even health benefits.
If you were a woman, the meaning of a job was probably more
flexible. It may have been a career or perhaps just something to do until you
started a family.
But now, who knows what a job means?
If you worked for a company for five years and it decided to
outsource your department, did you have a job, or was it just a contract?
If you're an independent contractor with an open-ended
engagement with a full-time client, do you have a job?
If you're an employee of a staffing firm that will lay you off
as soon as your project ends, do you have a job?
If you're a full-time employee of a company and you change
from being a programmer to being a project manager, have you changed jobs?
The questions are endless.
It seems that we in IT -- for better and worse -- have been in
the vanguard of the creative reinvention of employment. Consultants and
contractors have become commonplace. What was once clear has become a jumble.
Does this matter?
I think that it does. Morale and motivation are tied in many
ways to whether our employment relationships fulfill our expectations. Employers
and employees come to these relationships with subtle and often unarticulated
expectations that, if not met, become a source of conflict, unhappiness and
unease.
While the idea of the 1950s stable job lives on and the word
job continues to imply stability and security, that sort of employment
relationship has become an endangered species. The reality is much more complex
than a three-letter word can encompass. That seems to leave us all on edge,
always dissatisfied with the employment we have, pining for the fantasy that
reality can never achieve.
So the important question today is not whether you have a job,
but whether you have an employment relationship that meets your needs and
aspirations.
As managers, it's past time for us to become more observant
about what our people want and need from us and more articulate about what we
can realistically offer.
If you want to keep the general malaise at bay and keep your
people focused and motivated, your job includes helping them thrive in this new
and as yet unnamed world.
© Copyright 2008 by Computerworld Inc., One Speen Street, Framingham, MA, 01701. Reprinted by permission of
Computerworld. All Rights Reserved.
