Opportunities for career advancement will be increasingly limited within most organizations.
Organizations will have difficulty providing career advancement for employees due to (1) the growth of small businesses with limited advancement hierarchies, (2) the postponement of retirement, (3) the continuing focus on nonhierarchical forms of organization, and (4) the already glutted managerial ranks. In the future, many of today's managers will have to re-career into non-managerial positions. Job satisfaction will become less oriented toward advancement up the organizational ladder and more toward organizational perks such as club member-ships, sabbaticals, vacations, retraining opportunities, flexible working hours, and family services.
Job satisfaction will become a major problem as many organizations will experience difficulty in retaining highly qualified personnel.
Greater competition, fewer promotions/ frustrated expectations, greater discontent/ and job-hopping will arise in executive ranks due to limited advancement opportunities within organizations. Managerial and executive turnover will increase accordingly as more and more individuals attempt to advance their careers by moving from one organization to another. The problem will be especially pronounced for many women and minorities who have traditional aspirations to advance to the top but will be blocked by the glut of managers and executives from the baby-boom generation. Many of these frustrated individuals will initiate affirmative action cases to open the closed upper ranks as well as become entrepreneurs by starting their own businesses in competition with their former employers.
HIRING PRACTICES AND JOB-HOPPING
Many employers will resort to new and unorthodox hiring practices and improved working conditions in order to recruit and retain critical personnel.
In an increasingly tight job market for skilled workers, employers will use new and more effective ways of finding and keeping personnel: job fair weekends; headhunters and executive search firms; temporary employment services; raids of competition's personnel; bonuses to present employees for finding needed personnel; entry-level bonuses for new recruits; attractive profit-sharing packages for long-term commitments; vacation and travel packages; relocation and housing services; flex-time and job-sharing; home-based work; and day care services.
Job-hopping will increase as more and more individuals learn about the joys of re-careering through the process of networking.
As more job and career opportunities be-come available for the skilled and savvy worker, as pension systems become more portable/ and as job search and relocation techniques become more widely known, more and more individuals will change jobs and careers in the years to come. The typical employee will work in one job and organization for four years and then move on to a similar job in another organization. Within 12 years this individual will have acquired new interests and skills and thus decide to change to a new career. Similar four and 12-year cycles of job and career changes will be repeated by the same individual. Job-hopping will become an accepted and necessary way of getting ahead in the job and career markets of tomorrow. Networking will play a central role in the whole process of successful re-careering.
SMALL BUSINESSES AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP
The number of small businesses will continue to increase as new opportunities for entrepreneurs arise in response to the high-tech and service revolutions and as more individuals find new opportunities to change jobs and start new careers.
Over 700,000 new businesses will be started each year during the years to come. These businesses will generate 90 percent of all new jobs created each year. The number of business failures will increase accordingly, especially during the bust cycles of the boom-bust economy. Increases in self-employment and small businesses will not provide numerous opportunities for career advancement. The small promotion hierarchies of these businesses will help accelerate increased job-hopping and re-careering. This new entrepreneurship is likely to breed greater innovation, competition, and productivity.
As large companies continue to cut back, major job growth will take place among small companies and millions of new start-up businesses.
The best employment opportunities in terms of challenges/ salaries, and advancement opportunities will be found among growing companies employing fewer than 2,500 employees but more than 100 employees. The large Fortune 1000 companies will continue to cut back personnel as they attempt to survive intensive competition by becoming more productive through the application of new technology to the workplace and through the introduction of more efficient management systems. Cutbacks will further lower the morale of remaining employees who will seek new careering and re-careering opportunities through networking strategies.
