Attracting talent with efficiency in mind may back fire on the long term in a context of higher flux and need for differentiation based on innovation, evaluating the need for specialisation.
When looking at the majority of recruitment advertisements for both in-house and freelance jobs a lot of attention is given to experience. Focus is on acquired experience and tasks well performed in the past by the job candidate, on efficiency and specialisation, confirming the key of modern organisations operating as a well oiled machine. Once on the job, focus goes to a particular job.
This is stressed by the tendency for specialisation and the related engagement of specialised freelance or independent workers, staying only a short period until the job is done, acting in multi-disciplinary teams. This agile or ‘lean’ talent is pushed for specialisation and specific jobs where the experience obtained is repeated at every engagement. This however may lead to narrow mindedness and lack of oversight or even sense of overall purpose. As is illustrated by the banking experience. Now that the need for innovation and customer orientation is increasingly central to the success of a product or service, specialisation will hamper the definition of a broader answer to a customer’s need.
In an economic environment with the instability we know and a growing life expectancy this model may not be sustainable in the future.
The average life expectancy in the Western world hovers around 75-80 years and is expected to continue to increase. Higher education levels make that we spend more time at school. Depending on the education culture more people are coming on the labor market at 23-25 with at maximum student working experience. Under pressure of previous economic downturns and the need and/or will to mobilise youth, retirement age in Western Europe came earlier, in the late 50s on even 50 or 55. This leaves us with 25 to 30 years of economic activity and about 55 years of economic inactive life, of which some 30 years living of state pension or retirement fund. In light of the increasing percentage of elderly, this places an increasing burden on a decreasing group of economic active of which a part will be involved in the care for the elderly. They will have to provide for the funds needed to support retirement pensions.
Added to that, figures of Forbes, McKinsey and Oxford university indicate that the top jobs in demand of 2010 did not exist in 2004 and that nearly half of current jobs are under pressure of automation. This would stress the shorter period of economic activity.
Looking at skill deployment and the structure of job groups it is remarkable that most of jobs are generational. A job is learned in school or shortly after graduation. New disciplines or new jobs get introduced together with new groups of graduates. It is commonly held that you will continue this job until retirement or when it goes out of demand. Given evolution of economy, technology and the job market the latter is increasingly the case.
In the context of an increasing shift to freelance employment participating in specialist tasks as they are engaged by companies on project basis, seems to lead to a dichotomy in the work force. The company manages direct employment contracts with management and coordination profiles. Technical specialists are engaged from an increasing pool of freelancers, consultant and temporary working via agencies. This may result in increased agility on company level and the products or services provided, but it risks to be at cost of organisational sustainability. This trend is in line with increasing specialisation, due to technical complexity or driven by efficiency.
The one trick pony syndrome or at least the expectation of people hiring somebody for a specific task or skill and being convinced that this is and will be the only trick the hired person has on his sleeve is untenable for the future society. Can we permit people having ever shorter careers. In light of the economic and technological evolutions and the concept of stable specialisation (as described above), it is to be estimated that the active period of an employee, freelancer or independent professional is to end far before they come to the age of 50, leading to an active life of less than 20 years. Even when society manages to have enough income for its citizens not to work and provide us all with a basic income, the psychological need of being busy and useful will result in a need for successive re-skilling and learning.
Shouldn’t we be looking at more agile talent as advocated in the HBR interview with John Younger leading to more sustainable organisational, company or team agility. Engage the people that work for an organisation and focus on skills and competences will lead to longer relationships regardless the contractual relationship. People are involved in tasks that evolve with the needs of the organisation and its customers. They need to adapt and learn through time responding to contextual needs.
In their article ‘How Work Will Change When Most of Us Live to 100’ Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott paint a picture of life where we go through as a succession of working and learning periods. After a few years of career we re-enrol to school, college or university to learn new things. The structure of a linear life of growing up and getting through school by the age of 25, working and then retiring will cease to exist. It certainly will have an impact on the definition of wage and career policies and perceptions but also on recruitment and the way we organise and fund education.
Structured education as presented by schools and institutions will and already are not the only sources of gathering knowledge. Already, new skills and trends are not exclusively taught at school. Continuous learning through interacting and observing the environment where we live in, is a corner stone we should look for when staffing organisations and jobs. Experience still matters but will be much less defined by ‘having done the job for a number of years’ and more by being able to englobe experiences and bringing them in the job at hand. A focus on underlying skills and competencies to adapt to new situations and the capability of incremental learning will (have to) end up weighing more. The availability of different learning experiences and possibilities provided by the employer will be included in the evaluation when choosing whom to work for in a still tight and maybe even tighter pool of knowledge workers and professionals.