“Jobs for life.” Where did that concept come from and what does the term
actually mean? How many people do you know who believed that their job was for
life?
My parents certainly didn’t believe in it, and neither, as far as I know, did
my grandparents – and that probably covers nearly the last 100 years! Certainly
I was not brought up to believe that. Nor do I think any of my peers felt that
employment meant a life-long commitment. So did HR believe it?
Given that hiring, firing and attrition have always been part of the HR mandate,
I do not believe they did. I cannot help thinking that “jobs for life” was a
phrase coined by a creative writer as a contrast to “the new employment
contract” that came into being as the marketplace became more competitive and increasingly
people became a cost that needed to be managed more efficiently. Thus it is
actually more of a retrospective ideal than a historical fact, perpetuated by
widespread use after it caught the imagination.
Thus its significance may actually lie in its position on the HR timeline,
because it may effectively be the first concept that underpins the importance
of people within the organisation. Since then, as the emphasis on people as
costs has largely dominated management thinking and behaviour, the intuitive
knowledge that people are more than just a cost has led to a number of different
HR programmes to compensate and enhance productivity. These include such things
as “cafeteria” remuneration packages, flexitime, remote working, etc. with
employee opinion surveys being used to gauge their success. More recently,
however, these have evolved further and now terms such as employee engagement
and employer branding are becoming “hot” issues.
You need to ask yourself, however, whether these are any more substantial
that the concept of jobs for life? Do you think people who, ostensibly, had a
job for life were any more engaged than the disengaged employees that surveys
report today? I very much doubt it!
Certainly surveys indicate that the levels of engagement are hardly rising
and in many cases are declining, despite all these initiatives. That may not be
very surprising if you go back to the concept of jobs for life. While it may
not be an accurate portrayal of employment, it at least implies a link between
a person’s life and their work: some kind of vested stake. Valid or not, nothing
else even comes close to that.
Even if “jobs for life” doesn’t mean “jobs for a lifetime” it still implies work-life
integrity with some kind of recognition that people are investing their lives
in their work. Even being a good employer brand doesn’t imply this. Yet the
fact is that a good employee is somebody who acts in the best interests of the
business – in other words as though the employer’s business is their business.
That suggests that there has to be an overlap between the business brand and
the employer brand. After all, it is your employees who shape your brand.
Consequently, if you want to engender the kind of engagement that is impossible
from contracted employees you have to give your people some kind of employee
ownership.
It cannot be token ownership, though. Employee ownership means giving every
employee an equitable stake in the business so that they act as though it is
their own business because it is their own business. That is the only way your organisation
will fulfil its true potential. Maybe then it will be a job for life. It’s certainly
possible and, who knows, may even be more likely!
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Thank you for your positive feedback. It is always great to hear that someone has found what I have said helpful. It is why I write the blog in the first place and genuine responses like this help me to keep at it.
Kind regards
Bay
Can you tell us more about this? I’d like to find out some additional information.
You can find out more about this from the main website. Very briefly, I am proposing a new 3 step model of employee-ownership that creates the line-of-sight that builds the synergy and strategic alignment that offers a realistic and viable alternative to “jobs-for-life.”
Kind regards
Bay
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Thank you for your encouraging comments. You can find me on Twitter at bayzeal.
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Kind regards
Bay
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Kind regards
Bay
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Thank you. As a matter of fact I have written a book about it. See my books on my website.
Bay
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Bay
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Yes – I am on Twitter. You can follow me at Bayzeal.
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Thank you for this comment. I am afraid I cannot answer your first question, but I am happy to answer the second. I am on Twitter at Bayzeal, and I do have a Facebook account which I use badly (basically only to advise of my blog postings.) You can, however, find out more from my website (www.zealise.com) of which this blog forms a part or from my new website, http://www.bayjordan.com, launched to promote my books and in particular my latest book, “The Democracy Delusion” which expounds the total solution for which these ideas are just the basic starting point.
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