Leon Gettler

Ten Ways to Survive the Corporate World Leon Gettler

Publisher Marketing: Surviving the office world is a big challenge these days. Be prepared. Have fun. There is no such thing as a permanent job anymore. The future of work will be an increasing variety of contractual arrangements between a worker and an employer. We are now seeing the development of many hitherto atypical forms of employment, such as temporary agency work, fixed-term contracts, casual work, civil contracts, zero hour contracts, job sharing, on-call work, telework, and working from remote locations. The twentieth-century employment relationship was based on merging the needs of the manufacturing-oriented economy with mass production, full employment, collective behavior, and strong trade unions. All that has changed. Society is in upheaval, moving towards a knowledge-based economy. As a result, we have seen a progressive increase of individualistic behavior. People have now become brands. Welcome to the age of me.com, where there is a big focus on developing personal brands where people communicate what makes them unique and differentiated. This trend will prompt a clear change in where, when, and how people work. At the same time, it will enable organizations to be more agile and innovative. At one end of the scale, large multinational companies will consolidate and become even more global. But at the other end, temporary or "virtual" small- to medium-sized enterprises will be set up for the length of punctual and targeted projects. These companies will have smaller regular workforces. And increasingly, they will rely on networks of contingent workers. The model used today in the construction or entertainment industries could become the norm rather than the exception: individual workers will be moving in and out of a company's doors on a just-in-time, on-demand, project-by-project basis. The brand of me.com has now taken over the workforce.