Are you a quitter? It can help
your career
In the new world of work, people are always ready to quit, and view a job as a good one if it will lead to another job with another company
If you’ve spent five years in a
company, you’re usually considered quite a fossil. Quitting quickly for another
job is seen as not just a means to move up the ladder, but also the best way to
shape a career in a world of work where employers guarantee very little in
terms of stability, salary and growth.
Since the 1990s, companies have
started treating employees as short-term assets, and they, in turn, have they
reinvented themselves as marketable goods, always ready to quit, always on the
look-out for the next good opportunity. So, every person should think of
herself as a business — Me, Inc — and to survive this new world of work, the
CEO of Me, Inc — the employee — must be a quitter, Ilana Gershon, associate professor
of anthropology at Indiana University, writes in an essay in Aeon. The idea of
work has changed so much in the last 20 years that employees are looking to
quit from the moment they start at a job.
It might be hard to believe, but
the shift has its origins in the fall of Communism, and the belief that the
centralized economic planning of communism and fascism were a recipe for
disaster. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Union, US economic
intellectuals threw their weight behind the ideals of Austrian economist
Friedrich Hayek, who believed markets were the only means to order the world
and privatization of all services was essential. Governments should not provide
welfare, but should exist only to organize markets, ensure they function well,
and promote competition and innovation.
This was all very well, but what
about the people who worked in these market-driven systems? As stock prices and
quarterly earnings overtook other measures of a company’s value, the interests
of shareholders took primacy over concerns of employees. To keep shareholders
happy, payments for pensions and other long-term benefits had to be curtailed.
Temporary and short-term workers who took on specific assignments, or could be
fired as quickly and painlessly as possible, became more valuable.
If the company wasn’t making
commitments, employees weren’t willing to pledge loyalty. It was sensible for a
person to pick a job with an eye on learning skills that could be used in
future in another company. In short, a job is a good job if it will lead to
another job with another company.
“People should view themselves as
a business — a bundle of skills, assets, qualities, experiences and
relationships to be managed and continually enhanced,” the writer observes.
So how does work change when
everyone is a quitter? Since company loyalty is no longer a factor, recruiters
look for passion for particular tasks or marketspecific problems. Managers
point out how an employee’s position will be an advantage when he/ she quits in
a few years.Co-workers are more collegial because, well, in the quitting
economy, impressing the manager is no longer as important as getting along with
coworkers who might be allies in the next workplace.
For more: aeon.co
TOI10DEC17
No comments:
Post a Comment