Strategy #7: Take Advantage Of Work Getting Worse

I contend that work is getting worse for most of us. I know that this might sound negative or overly-dramatic but I’d ask you to hear me out before you leap to judgement. You see, I firmly believe that most employed people are getting an increasingly bad deal when it comes to work and I want to explain why I’ve reached this conclusion, why it matters to you and how to do something about it.

Straight off, I want to be absolutely clear that I’m not suggesting that everyone’s work is getting worse. I fully recognise that many people are doing great jobs that are well-paid, secure and completely fulfilling. There are plenty of excellent employers who care deeply for their workers’ welfare and establish employment protocols that ensure the best working conditions. However, plenty of others are caught in a bad-work trap and countless employers facilitate a variety of dismal working practices. It’s these factors that are testament to work getting worse for a large tranche of the workforce, which might become a major motivation in searching for a better job.

Once upon a time, the way working lives unfolded was very different to how things operate now and we don’t have to look back farther than a couple of generations to see evidence for this. When I left full-time education in the 1980s, I reasonably expected to follow a predictable career path with all of the associated benefits that come with full employment, and without any fear of being dismissed unless I did something pretty stupid.

It was the same for my father who worked for one highly-regarded employer for his entire working life and took advantage of early retirement in his mid-50s. He enjoyed cast-iron job security, regular promotions and a full-scale pay-out at the end of his working life. Those truly were the days of milk and honey. Within 20 years of him retiring, we calculated that his index-linked pension had already paid out more than he ever earned during the preceding 37 years of work.

It's a very different matter today, which is where the concept of work getting worse comes in. There are myriad reasons for this situation but most of them are based on the fact that our jobs are changing in a profound way. For starters, an increasingly globalised environment is leading to a staggeringly different way of doing work compared to the one that my father would recognise, and it’s very far from what most of my contemporaries experienced when we joined the workforce. Maybe you’re old enough to relate to this too. If not, just ask your parents!

So, what’s going on to make work worse than it used to be? There are lots of reasons, some of which are these.

If someone in a distant country can do your job cheaper, faster or better, it’s bad news for you. If your customers see a benefit in sourcing materials or services from a supplier the other side of the globe to where you work, it’s also bad news for you. If political, environmental or commercial factors make your job role redundant, it’s really bad news for you. Whatever the upsides of a global workplace, this is the reality of many people’s working lives.    

Employers are becoming more demanding by the day and it’s their workers who are taking the heat. As competition for business increases, as the demand for making money ramps up inexorably, as shareholders prioritise the value of their holdings above all else, the more the pressure is heaped upon the employees who deliver those contracts, profits and dividends. Maybe it was always so but it’s certainly even more so nowadays.   

Short work contracts and the gig economy are becoming symptomatic of the prevailing hire and fire business culture. A job for life is an unknown quantity for all but the rarest breed of worker. Long hours and excessive workloads which are overseen by managers who display command and control leadership styles are the norm. These things, incidentally, lie at the heart of the problem I spoke about in strategy article number 5, according to the authors of the Gallup State Of The Global Workplace report.   

The radicals amongst us might point to an expanding gap between business that’s carried out by some notoriously hard-nosed companies that are driven by making maximum profits and paying minimum taxes, and business that’s done in the interests of a company’s workers, not to mention societal wellbeing and cohesion. These freethinkers would probably agree that money has to be made but wonder if increasing levels of employee stress and disengagement are really worth the pain.

If you’ve only recently entered the world of work, you probably don’t have any hard-won experience to compare yesterday’s workplace with today’s. However, if you’ve been around a while you might recognise some of these factors, and possibly agree with me that they’re making work significantly worse than it used to be in terms of security of employment, workload expectations and company pension provision amongst others.

I’m not going to make a case for a return to the days of lifetime contracts, gold-plated retirements and the rest. That ship has sailed. I’m simply describing many people’s working lives, particularly if they circulate in the private sector, and doubly so if they work for an aggressively commercial employer.

But we needn’t see current work practices in an entirely negative light because the takeaway from work getting worse is that the current employment arena presents absolutely fantastic opportunities for people who can exploit these challenges. That’s where my training programme comes to the rescue and if you can adapt to the new working landscape, you’ll be way ahead of the pack.

Let’s move on with a few ideas about taking advantage of work getting worse. Remember that this situation might be true for a lot of people but work is getting a lot better for others, even though they’re in the small minority, so make sure you’re one of them. Here’s how. I’ll start by making some general observations before offering three strategies for making the most of a new work order.

For better or worse, thriving in today’s chaotic and insecure workplace puts the onus on you, the employee, as never before. You can forget about looking in the direction of a benign employer when you need help, especially if you feel yourself sinking. You must be as self-reliant as possible if you want to keep afloat, let alone surf the crest of a fast-moving wave.

My observations as a teacher, before I shifted across into professional training, is that young people are not given the sort of necessary vocational education that prepares them for what work will throw their way when they graduate. The same goes for the bulk of the adult working population, which partially explains the value of a programme like this one that aims to fill in these gaps. Anyway, here are my suggestions.   

First, you need to adjust your way of thinking about the value of work contracts, job security and how beholden you are to any one employer. Instead of hoping that the organisation that pays your salary will always act in your interests, you should break any practical and psychological dependence on one employer and see yourself as a self-contained business unit who subcontracts your time and expertise as it suits you. In the introduction to many of my training materials I talk about hiring yourself a new employer and it’s precisely this scenario that I’m thinking of. 

View yourself as a free agent who jumps between employers whenever the need arises, and don’t be reluctant to do this as and when it suits you. This requires you to monitor your employment situation on an ongoing basis, and the wider industry that you’re operating in. Good information is essential to help you play this game as effectively as possible. I talk more about future planning in an upcoming Vocation Cast.

Work diligently to become a linchpin. In case you’re not familiar with this term, take a look at the book of the same title by the author Seth Godin in which he speaks of people who manoeuvre themselves into positions of strategic influence. Becoming a linchpin means being an employee who’s central to the smooth operation of an employer’s business, someone who over-delivers or makes a consistently powerful contribution to a company’s ongoing success.

This is a solid way of creating a reputation as someone who delivers solutions to business-critical problems, and to do so when it really matters. Having a can-do attitude and becoming indispensable will serve you well at all times and will insulate you against the frailties of today’s employment market. Give yourself the leverage to make these leaps between employers as painless as possible by building your work skills and your job-search techniques.

Each of these are core strategies of, or directly related to, my job-hunting strategy which gives you the skills to not only survive a bad work situation but to thrive in it. To make quickest progress, just follow my Job Interview Secrets or Job Search Masterclass courses.

In the next article I’ll be talking about the nature of good work and bad work and how choosing which path to take is super important when it comes to your career success. Too many people inadvertently do really bad work, so make sure you check in with this strategy to discover why doing good work is much easier then you’d imagine.

Neil Grant, Vocation Master

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the issues I raise here, I invite you to contact me personally. Please get in touch via LinkedIn;

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