L&D 2020: Shaping change in learning
Work & Business
Worker expectations
Today’s workers expect a real say in company policy and organisations have been forced to comply. Wikis with chat messaging options are the norm for active employee debate about the company. When young workers perceive they are being treated unfairly, they will demonstrate their talent for organising. Across Europe, they are beginning to revitalise the trade union movement as a pan-European force. The USA too, is seeing the re-emergence of trade unions as a way to lobby an organisation about pay, benefits and working conditions.
The young Gen Xers of several years ago would typically quit and move on when they had a workplace problem. Millennials, on the other hand, are used to staying put and waiting until someone in charge solves the problem. Their values are swinging away from those of Gen Xers, as younger workers are putting a higher premium on job security. Employers are once again finding it easier to cultivate loyalty in a generation with unusually long time horizons1.
Life and work have been overlapping and interacting more and more since the 1980s. Society has been recognising over-work as a primary cause of growing ill health, both physical and mental, for some time. The 20th century's emphasis on salvation through paid work is known to have had an adverse effect on the quality of the rest of a person’s life. But in 2014, the UK government passed new working time legislation. This introduced the kind of legally enforceable individual and collective rights at work enjoyed by our mainland European neighbours since the late 1990s2.
Today’s entrepreneurs expect to work with other like-minded individuals rather than alone as they often did in the past. Co-working facilities – cafe-like collaboration and community spaces – are now available in many U.S. and European cities, charging by the hour, day, week or month. San Francisco's 'Hat Factory' (http://hatfactory.net) has become a common model, providing training programmes as well as traditional office facilities.
The need for flexibility has shifted the way dual-income families expect to organise their careers. The corporate/small office-home office (SOHO) hybrid family generally has one member working in a relatively secure corporate job with access to benefits, especially healthcare. This allows another family member to start a more risky personal business – sometimes so successful the corporate partner joins in3.
People have had to accept the high likelihood they will need to study for their next occupation, even as they pursue their current career. Career changes have become increasingly frequent as jobs, roles, organisations, and even sectors, change and merge. In two-earner couples, one now commonly takes a sabbatical to prepare for a new career4.
1. Managing for the long term. Neil Howe and William Strauss, Harvard Business Review, July-August 2007
2. http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/Images/fow_publication_2_tcm6-6060.pdf
3. Intuit Small Business Future Report, 2007
4. 53 Trends Now Shaping the Future, World Future Society, 2005
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