Recent years have seen huge reductions of employees in most large organizations. Through redundancy many people have been forced to reappraise their careers. Once brilliant careers have stalled. Traditional, secure, 'proper' jobs have decreased in numbers and, perhaps as importantly, in the opportunities they provide. The days of a job for life and steady progression up a career ladder have gone. Many full-time jobs have simply disappeared. This is happening throughout the developed world. From 1992 to 1993 the US economy grew by 2.6 per cent. This apparently signaled the end of recession and seemed to be good news. For many people it undoubtedly was good news but, at the same time as the economy started to grow again, over 500,000 clerical and technical positions disappeared, probably for good. Many jobs just no longer exist.
Of course, we have all witnessed the disappearance of many traditional jobs. Shipbuilders and miners are nearing extinction -joining a lengthy list including the men with red flags in front of cars, horse dung collectors, hangmen, scribes, music hall entertainers and stone wall builders. This time, however, the changes are more far reaching. In particular, jobs in management have been made redundant on a huge scale. A swathe has been cut through what was once the safest place in the business world - middle management.
A survey by 3t in the United Kingdom found that early in 1994- again after the worst of recession was supposedly over - two-thirds of companies expected a further reduction in middle management numbers. In a survey of 50 top UK companies in 1993, recruitment company Cedar International found that a massive 86 per cent had implemented redundancies in the previous year and, in addition, 36 per cent were operating rolling programs spanning a number of years involving a significant proportion of the workforce.
You don't need to refer to research to discover the extent of the changes now under way. Take a typical day's news. Today is 11th November 1994: Royal Insurance forecasts a 10 per cent reduction in its workforce over the next three years in spite of tripling profits; BT announces it is on course to reduce its numbers by 15,000 during the year; and Ladbrokes is to reduce its head office and central staff by more than half. This is the news from a single day and it is only the big names which make the news. Countless other companies are making similar, less heralded announcements.
The brutal truth is that technology enables companies to do more work with less people. The successful companies of the future, says management guru Charles Handy, will be able to employ half as many people paid twice as much to produce three times what they now produce. Cynics might observe that companies have, so far, missed out the middle element while trying to achieve the others. The trend towards flatter and leaner organizations looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. Technology moves ceaselessly forward and, equally importantly, companies are becoming more adept at using technology to work more flexibly and quickly. Tomorrow may literally find any group of workers made redundant.
The message is clear. Change is now endemic in the business world. It doesn't matter what the business is or where it is located, but it will be affected by continuing processes of change - technological change; changes in markets, products and services; changes in the expectations of employees; and change in many other manifestations. In such a climate, people must change their attitudes, skills and behavior if they are to survive and prosper. For many the solution to all these challenges is self-employment.
Meeting the new challenge - Forging your own brilliant career is not easy. There are substantial risks in starting your own business, but self-employment is something an increasing number of people are turning to. Instead of allowing organizations to dictate their careers they are creating their own through self-employment or more flexible working arrangements.
It is estimated that there are around 2.9 million people in the United Kingdom who are either owners of small firms or who are self-employed. Self-employment nearly doubled in the 1980s - by the end of the decade one in eight of the working population was self-employed. Of these, women accounted for more than a quarter (compared to a fifth in 1979). An increasing proportion of new entrants to self-employment were people under 35, with an even sharper increase among the under 25s. This suggests that the people starting and running small businesses are becoming younger.
This is not yet another short-lived trend. In fact, the old ways of work are fast disappearing. As many as 38 per cent of Britain's workers are no longer in full-time employment. Instead, around 9.7 million people are either part-timers, in temporary jobs, self-employed, on a government training scheme or are unpaid family workers, a rise of 1.25 million since 1986.
