Will We Ever Get Back to Normal?

The economy is treacherous and the outlook for the near future is not so bright. The aviation industry has bright spots but there are few celebrations. News reports flood in with rare signs of improvement. It’s tempting to wonder – will we ever get back to normal? In a recent survey by Sharp Resources, Inc, 83% of respondents in aviation indicated that this recession will fundamentally change the way we design organizations. Only 8% believed there would be no change with the rest believing some change will occur. Why such a dramatic result? Economic historians point out that after severe recessions, a fundamental change in the structure of how we organize ourselves occurs. Consider the change from farm to factory. Prior to the industrial revolution most people were independently employed – growing food, hunting or caring for their families. The industrial revolution attracted people to the new cities in droves with the promise of better jobs and the ability to buy what they used to grow or make. As time progressed through economic ups and downs, companies became pseudo-families in their own right – providing lifetime employment, benefits and a solid retirement. Perhaps the biggest thrust toward that model followed the 1929 crash and depression. In recent years, companies have been divesting employees of benefits. The trend started in earnest in the 1980’s and has since been accelerated by off-shoring and outsourcing. Lifetime employment is very rare and most jobs last an average of only five years. Additionally, the recession following September 11th, 2001, had a ‘jobless’ recovery where the economy recovered but employment did not come close. Economists predict the 2010 recovery will be substantially jobless again. The official US unemployment rate hovers around 8%, but when the best estimates of under-employment and people no longer bothering to seek jobs are included, that number is 15.5%. So, will we ever get back to normal? I suggest the answer is an emphatic “no” and it’s a good thing too. The implication for people in the work place is immediate. We need to develop ourselves as Me, Inc. This is not a new concept – career coaches have been espousing it for over twenty years. What has changed is that we no longer confine marketing ourselves to within a company – we all plan, from the day we leave school, to be self-employed at some point, and to be ready and able to move between freelance and corporate jobs as the market dictates. Aviation will, or should move this way too. Our choice of career will modify the extent to which this is true. If our chosen career is a pilot, then there is only one type of job. However we may move among employers and contract buyers throughout our career. This will become the more stable type of role. It is a core activity. For those in non-core activities, careers from now on will be individual, moving from employer to freelance and back. So we are moving back to the pre industrial revolution model of freelancers (although we only need move back to the country for lifestyle reasons). Thanks to modern technologies we can do our work from almost anywhere – and here is the enabler, as big a change to industry as the introduction of the aeroplane itself. If we do not go back to ‘normal’, then how will people cope with the new work marketplace? Social networks become more critical than ever. There are internet-based solutions developing that will allow anything from building a business network (eg LinkedIn.com) to complete marketplaces where freelancers and project buyers make a match (eg ki-work.com). The age of the virtual freelancer and virtual freelance teams is finally here. These teams contain some of the most talented individuals in the industry and they work for the very companies that used to employ them. No wonder that 83% of the survey respondents believe the current recession will make dramatic changes in the way we organize work.