The conventional position in an organization offers benefits of short
term income, access to group benefits such as health care at preferred
rates and the opportunity to be part of a team. In today’s work world,
disadvantages of the conventional position are instability from frequent
workforce restructuring, and others defining options, for instance
employment location.
A part-time position in an organization can provide flexibility to
accommodate parallel work activities. It suffers from the disadvantages
of likely higher cost of benefits that need to be secured independently,
and a more tenuous link to the organization, with perhaps a lower sense
of inclusion. Securing benefits independently though does provide
assurance of continued availability, which is compromised when leaving
group plans in a large organization.
Contract or consulting work is based on bringing specialized expertise
that others value and are willing to purchase. There is much freedom to
set direction. Disadvantages are the need for a broad skill set that
includes both selling and delivering services, although some of these
elements may be available through partnership. It also means securing
benefits independently
Starting or buying a business offers great freedom in terms of setting
direction, and the possibility of significant wealth creation. Success
here means meeting the challenges of bringing business savvy to the
various stages of business growth, and extensive time demands.
The portfolio career may contain elements of the part time position,
contract/consulting work and buying or building a business, interwoven
to match personal interests. As a result the direction chosen can match
personal aspirations most closely. Potential disadvantages are heavy
time demands and uncertainty about business success, although this is
mitigated by the breadth of activities that are included. Here benefits
also need to be secured independently
How might we assess the relative appeal of each possibility? An
important first step is building self-understanding about personal
aspirations and how they match the various options. Some thoughts about
how to build self understanding are offered in the October 2005 issue of
Bringing Work to Life. Given clarity about personal aspirations, we can
now examine the options from a risk reward perspective. Just as with
financial investments there is a degree of subjectivity in assessing
risk/reward profiles. The following figure shows one perspective on
risk/reward profiles for the five options we outlined:
The conventional position at the lower right side of the figure has an
unenviable combination of high risk as others make determinations about
the future, and low returns as rewards in most large organizations
accrue disproportionately to those at the top. At the opposite extreme,
of high reward and low risk, we see the portfolio career. Here risk is
mitigated by breadth of activities. Reward is retained, being built on
personal knowledge, commitment and execution. Starting/buying a
business at the upper right offers high reward, but at high risk,
particularly if significant initial investment is required. The
contract/consulting position sits in the middle. There is less
opportunity to mitigate risk than with a portfolio career. It does,
however, offer greater rewards than the part-time position. The part
time position at the lower left carries both lower reward and lower
risk. Rewards are capped by the organization, and risk is mitigated by
the ability to pursue more than one opportunity at the same time. One
astute observer recently commented that the conventional position and
the portfolio career have exchanged their respective positions over the
past 10-20 years.
More importantly than the precise placement of these options, is the
process of considering them from a personal perspective. For you this
profile may look different. For all of us it points to a world of new
horizons that extends well beyond conventional full time employment. It
can speak to the opportunity for each of us, as Rich Feller puts it so
well, to change our focus from “being the best in the world” to “being
the best for the world.”
For those charged with workforce responsibility in an organization,
competition for people may increasingly come not from other
organizations, but from alternative forms of work relationship, such as
we have examined, which allow people more opportunity to exercise
individual choice and initiative. Addressing this form of competition
will mean fundamentally re-examining the organization’s offer relative
to individually crafted paths. It will also mean that those charged
with organizational responsibility carefully examine operating practices
such as equitable compensation distribution. It will mean building
depth and continuity of workforce relationships, so that affiliation
with an organization is an attractive option for an individual built on
integrating individual aspirations with organizational needs.
Workforce Trends
The continuing trend of a declining U.S. unemployment rate shown in the
figure below speaks to both growing opportunity for individuals to
explore alternative options, and growing recruiting difficulties for
organizations.
This is particularly evident when we look at the more extreme, recent
swings in unemployment rates in the San Jose area at the heart of
Silicon Valley, as shown in the following figure. We are again
approaching full employment, which occurs as the unemployment rate
approaches 4%
These trends are consistent with our model, developed in the early
2000s for the U.S., that links the rate of change in unemployment rate
to the rate of change in real (in 2000$) Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
per capita (based on the workforce). The line in the following figure
is based on historical data from 1947 through 2000. Subsequent behavior
in each year since 2000 is labeled by year. In 2002 there is some
variation from the trend line due to the awful events of September 11,
2001 causing a disproportionately high increase in unemployment rate.
For each later year, including 2005, observed behavior closely matches
the trend line. If economic growth rates continue at current levels we
can anticipate further declines in unemployment rates consistent with
the trend line.
Declining unemployment rates are partly due to fewer mass layoffs and
resulting initial claims for unemployment as shown in the following two
figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics May 23, 2006 release.
The mass layoff events involve 50 or more people and last at least 31
days.
Compounding these short term trends, we can anticipate further
tightening of labor market conditions due to the longer term demographic
trend of declining workforce growth rates (Bringing Work to Life, April
2005).
Quote/Story
This is a story about a three-year-old girl who was the only child in
her family. But now her mom is pregnant, and this three-year-old girl is
very excited about having a baby in the house. The day comes where the
mother-to-be delivered, and the mom and dad go off to the hospital. A
couple of days later come home with a new baby brother. And the little
girl is just delighted.
But after they've been home for a couple of hours, the little girl tells
her parents that she wants to be with the baby in the baby's room,
alone, with the door shut. She's absolutely insistent about the door
being shut. It kind of gives her folks the willies, you know? They know
she's a good little girl, but they've heard about sibling rivalry and
all of this.
Then they remember that they've recently installed an intercom system in
preparation for the arrival of the new baby, and they realize that they
can let their little girl do this, and if they hear the slightest weird
thing happening, they can be in there in a flash.
So they let their little girl go into the room. They close the door
behind her. They race to the listening post. They hear her footsteps
move across the room. They imagine her now standing over the baby's
crib, and then they hear her say to her two-day-old baby brother, "Tell
me about God. I've almost forgotten."
From Marcus Borg, Listening for the Voice of God, attributed to Parker
Palmer
Upcoming Elsdon Organizational Renewal (EOR) Events and Recent
Mentions
Upcoming Events/Publications
·
Webinar for Project Management
Institute
o
August, 2006, “Becoming Career Fit in Turbulent Times”
·
Chapter titled “How Can You Grow
Your Practice with Purpose?” for National Career Development Association
Monograph
o
Likely publication date: late 2006/early 2007
Recent Mentions
·
Reviews of “Affiliation in the
Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization.” Ron Elsdon.
Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT (2003)
o
Harvard
Business School
·
HBS Working Knowledge: Organizations
o
Global Diversity Institute
·
Global Diversity Institute - The Journal of Diversity Praxis
o
Journal of Asian Economics
·
ScienceDirect - Journal of Asian Economics : Ron Elsdon, Affiliation in
the Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization, Praeger
Publishers, Westport, CT (2003) 280 pp. (hardcover), ISBN 1-56720-436-8,
$49.95.
o
Greenwood Publishing Group
·
Affiliation in the Workplace — www.greenwood.com
·
“Building a Strong Workforce
Through Affiliation.” Chapter 26 in “On Staffing: Advice and
Perspectives from HR Leaders.” Eds. Nicholas Burkholder et al, John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken NJ (2004)
o
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471410691,descCd-tableOfContents.html
·
“Reaching for Our Deep Gladness”
o
Article in May, 2005 NCDA Career Convergence Magazine
·
http://209.235.208.145/cgi-bin/WebSuite/tcsAssnWebSuite.pl?Action=DisplayNewsDetails&RecordID=625&Sections=6&IncludeDropped=&AssnID=NCDA&DBCode=130285
·
Review of MBTI Step II workshop
o
CCDA News, April 2005
·
California Career Development Association - Articles
·
Recent mention in article on
cost of turnover
o
East
Bay Business Times,
April 2005
·
Turnover costs exceed employers' estimates - 2005-04-25
·
“Worklife Survival: Finding a
Fit”
o
Article for HR West, February 2005 (Northern California Human Resource
Association)
·
http://www.nchra.org/StaticContent/Download/EXT0205007.pdf
·
Recent interview in the
education field “Affiliation as a Unifying Principle in Education”
o
Career Pro News
·
Affiliation and Education
·
Review of ICDC Global Issues
Forum
o
CCDA, January 2005
·
California Career Development Association - Articles
About EOR: Our Value Contribution
We enhance your workforce,
leadership and organization by:
·
Using proprietary approaches to
understand workforce and leadership challenges
·
Creating tailored action plans
and solutions to strengthen workforce and leadership practices
·
Building individual capabilities
and contributions
We enable you to focus on
external results and building value, confident that your organization
and leadership are operating at peak effectiveness.
Our Mission
To support your organization by
enhancing performance, productivity and effectiveness through
revitalized workforce relationships and leadership practices.
Our Approach and Values
We tailor our engagements to the needs of each organization with a
process designed to surface critical issues, identify root causes, build
effective solutions, monitor progress and implement.
With a scope that ranges from system and organizational interventions to
work with individuals, our focus is on the heart of the relationship
among the individual, the organization and the community. We believe
that organizational and community prosperity are built on enabling each
person to fulfill his or her potential.
Our Services
We work with individuals and
groups in your organization to drive performance and development for
both the short and long term. As a result people will choose to work in
your organization and will prosper there.
We bring solutions when you need
to:
·
Reverse declining revenues and
performance
·
Revitalize your workforce
·
Stem the loss of key talent
·
Redirect your organization to
new areas
·
Stop losing customers or market
share
·
Penetrate new markets
·
Combat aggressive competitors
·
Handle major change
·
Break down communication
barriers
·
Energize your leadership team
·
Successfully build on an
acquisition or merger
Our proprietary services
include:
·
State-of-the-art tools to take
the pulse of your organization and then move to action
o
Web enabled systems
o
Experts to gather and analyze information, moving your organization to
action
·
Individual leadership coaching
to give you world class leadership capabilities
o
Leaders who know themselves and their aspirations, build their
capabilities and become catalysts developing others
·
Workshops to build interpersonal
skills in your organization so that:
o
Communication is timely, concise, accurate and personal
o
People listen to each other
o
Negotiations are quick and effective
o
Differences create rather than destroy value
o
Teams move forward, get results and quickly commercialize new products
and services
o
People understand and link their motivations to your organizational
needs
o
Your teams understand what it takes to create a committed, energized
workforce
o
People use their time well
·
Systems that make it easy to
drive performance and build capabilities by:
o
Linking objectives throughout the organization
o
Strengthening key competencies
o
Making sure you have the bench strength where and when you need it
o
Giving people tools to take charge of their own careers and development
and have a major long term influence on your organization
·
Proprietary simulation and
modeling techniques that let you explore how to maximize the value of
your workforce
o
Move from guessing what might happen to looking in depth at the
financial impact of different approaches
