Nowadays, we see that a lot of jobs no longer exist in the market, or they are about to disappear. If they do not disappear, they will change tremendously.
In the future, there will be more people that are self-employed than employees. Flexibility and life-long training will be more and more needed as it will be necessary to switch from a competence to another one, depending on the project or job.
Besides your own professional network, you will need to develop a professional identity. The more it will be clear and coherent, the more your competencies will be noted.
To build a professional branding, you need to act on two levels:
- Professional: knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA);
- Personal: values, purpose of life, engagement (no references to your private life though unless it has implications on your job or project).
Whether you are an employee or a self-employed, the future belongs to those who train themselves not only with new technologies, but also strengthen their own abilities to act in diverse and complex situations.
By participating in training courses, managing a new project, starting a new job you may learn new KSAs. Try to anticipate trends or find a niche to develop.
Working with the uncertainty of the future (temporary contracts, fixed-term contracts, and self-employment) will mean not only knowing how to manage your own finances between one salary and another, but also a certain inner anxiety caused by your vision of the future, your personal identity and the reflection on your values. You will therefore need to develop your intuition, learn or improve project management and quickly direct your experiences, transforming them into added value for others.
To sum up, to be able to work in the future you need to learn regularly and to develop great resilience, so that you will be able to influence your environment, the organisation you will be working for and even the society, by developing:
1. a strong professional identity;
2. appropriate meaning and values;
3. continuing training.
Do you think you have the right professional branding for your future job?
Please, visit my blog at crisbiecoach.blog for more on work and the workplace.
I don’t know if I agree with that! When living in South Korea many people were self employed and yet their businesses were struggling because of it.
Yup! I lived in South Korea, too, and experienced the same. Now I am in Japan and see the same struggle among self-employees here.
Glad it’s not just me!
I think it depends on the culture. I have never been in South Corea but from what I heard it is a very competitive society.
Think of it this way, if everyone works for themselves… there’s just a bunch of small businesses everywhere. Which would be fine if the economy could handle it. Many people end up not having enough customers and not having enough help so it actually causes more damage than it helps. If that happened in America there would be a healthcare collapse because people wouldn’t be able to afford to pay the outrageous healthcare premiums. Larger companies get discounts for the number of employees they bring into a health insurance company. The company makes more money because they’re insuring more people while the employees get discounts. If you don’t have stuff like that anymore you’d see a massive collapse of life flight companies, hospitals, and the people that hospitals staff. That’s just a small example of what I’m trying to say. So in places like Korea and Japan, many can’t afford to pay rent or feed themselves because so many people work for themselves and it basically causes a lack of growth in the economy. So it’s not really just about culture, it’s more that we can see examples of how that sort of a system wouldn’t work by looking at countries who’ve already attempted it.
The example you gave about healthcare doesn’t match with Europe as our healthcare and social security systems are different. The same is for education. So, maybe it is not the culture that makes the difference but how society is structured. But I see your point.
I was referring to countries who’s citizens predominantly work for themselves and who don’t have as many large businesses. The UK and Europe don’t really fit into that category like China, Japan, and South Korea do. There’s a lot more poor communities in those countries because of it. It wouldn’t work for places like the united States or Europe. I lived in Germany and traveled all over. They have some really cool healthcare benefits that we don’t have here. I’m only reiterating because I think you misunderstood me. Again, there’s more than just Asian countries doing this.
While both examples I gave you are of asian countries, there are others that aren’t in Asia. I’m only speaking on those that I’ve personally been to and experienced first hand. Also, my husband works in Life Flight ✈️. It’s a nice idea but taking out rich large companies won’t save the economy, it will damage it and in some instances turn them into third world countries. Feel free to do your own research on this topic though! We’re all just learning as we go. ❤️
I agree, we’re all just learning as we go! Thank you for commenting!
Thank you, Cristiana, for sharing your insights with all of us! Greatly appreciated. I’ll be looking forward to your next post!
Thank you Art!
You’re welcome! 🙂
Please accept an apology in advance for a bit of a ramble. I essentially agree with what you’ve written, seeing it in a different context.
Self-employment with a small number of exception usually equates to a lower income and standard of living. For some thats a conscious tradeoff of income for quality of life. For many, I suspect, its an unconscious choice and source of frustration. Schools don’t teach life planning.
Actually, historically, the independent path isn’t new. The first airplanes and cars were created by self-employed people who made bicycles and wagons — “mechanics” who could apply skills to an array of problems.
Those “independent” types didn’t go away with the rise of the big corporations. Some for example morphed into database techies who knew all of the major DB standards and looked for the next big thing. If their company wouldn’t support learning, they moved. They viewed themselves as hired guns, not loyal employees, and corporate hiring practices reinforced that. Some companies even laid them off and then hired them back at higher billing rates. AT&T was famous for that.
Now we have an era of big corporate downsizing, with businesses spinning off activities and R&D to small independent firms to get the cost off the income and expense statement. When an independent or small firm achieves something of critical value, the big firm can buy the patent or company, treating the purchase as a capital investment rather than an operating expense. Again, this is tax policy shaping our world. The independents or micro businesses who can produce something exceptional get rich; most don’t.
Large corporations aren’t extinct, yet, but like the dinosaurs before them, they are cumbersome, slow and inefficient. Gates tried to “reinvent” Microsoft for the virtual era and only proved how difficult if not impossible that was to do. The big business version of life support is government spending, access to capital and tax policy.
I believe the next big challenge to the survival of large companies will come from a declining human population. Japan was the canary in the coal mine, with the caveat that they could import workers, which may not be feasible in the future. (The US is very close to zero growth and Covid may have pitched us into negative territory.) The decline will build demand for people with flexible and transferrable skills and savage the unskilled and the narrow skilled. Your point about continuous learning is dead on.
Thank you for this thorough comment Vic! Of course the labour world is complicated but I don’t understand your point about a declining human population. In Europe there are thousands of young competent and skilled people who perform jobs for which they are overqualified. And if they would give up on life long learning they will carry out even lower qualified jobs. Nowadays we are asked to learn continuously to be able to keep up with the fast changing jobs.
Clearly, I need to do a separate post on population trends. Japan already has negative growth, and the US and China are on the cusp. Another virus or two and other countries will slide that way as well. Negative growth triggers a number of challenges that current economic and social systems are unprepared to handle.
Oh I see what you mean now! Thank you for clarifying!
I like your description, “You will therefore need to develop your intuition, learn or improve project management and quickly direct your experiences, transforming them into added value for others.” That is very descriptive of the things I’ve had to do to be self-employed for the last 20 years. Thanks, Cristiana!
Oh really? So it means that it works! Thank you for sharing your experience Wynne!