The cover story of Time magazine last week was “Out of Work in America”. The writers came to the conclusion that double-digit unemployment may be here to stay. It appears that the economic theories and trends of the past are not a guideline to what’s happening today. As pointed out, “something new and possibly strange seems to be happening in this recession”.

Breakdowns

This job crisis is forcing us to rethink work and the role of the employee. In a previous blog I wrote about the idea that “you need to have a breakdown to have a breakthrough.” I wasn’t talking about divorce! Whether you look at healthcare, the environment, the economy, or the workplace, you can see that there are major breakdowns occurring that hopefully will lead to a breakthrough that is something new and better.

New Thinking Needed

I practically jumped for joy when I read the Time statement “…The problem of how America works needs to become the focus of an urgent national debate. The job crisis offers an opportunity to think in profound ways about how and why we work, and what makes employment satisfying…”

A New Employment Model

I suggest that we need to come up with a new employment model. But what is it? Lateral thinking uses brainstorming-like techniques to come up with new, out-of-the-box, ideas. One technique requires you to ask a preposterous question, e.g. “What type of car would cats drive?” So my preposterous question is: “What would happen if companies could not have ‘employees’? I’ve got a page full of answers and the questions they generate.

As human beings we need an income to pay for our external needs and wants. We need healthcare benefits. We want to do some kind of work/activity that satisfies our internal needs for achievement and personal satisfaction.

I’ve been thinking about a new employment model for weeks now. I’ve been looking at management theory, biology, sociology, and even consciousness studies. Here’s where my thinking has taken me as of today:

1. In order to be in control of what we do and where we work, we need to be self-employed.
2. We need multiple options for finding work, possibly coops or online job shops.
3. We need portable healthcare benefits, not connected to an employer.
4. We need flexible work schedules and work locations.
5. We should be paid for results, not for showing up.
6. We need some way to remove the fear of losing work/income without rewarding those who are lazy or unethical.
7. We need to make a more conscious choice of work based on both our economic needs and our internal needs for achievement and satisfaction.

Each of these 7 ideas is already in place in some fashion, though most are not robust enough. And the parts do not work together as a system or are a full fledged model. But I am searching and thinking!

Evolving Employees

Many of us are “evolving employees” with work expectations that only a comparatively few companies are successfully meeting. One such company, in Brazil, is Semco. If only its CEO, Ricardo Semler, could influence a shift in an employment model that meets the needs of our changing economy, our changing businesses, and most of all our evolving employees.

The search continues ….

Tags: employment model, Semco, Semler

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 am and is filed under Good Workplaces, meaningful work. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.