The Change Ahead

I think it is relevant to write about career and workplace in an issue about the best T-schools in the country. It is natural for fresh graduates to have stars in their eyes about their careers and the kind of organizations they would want to work for.

An unfettered life, earning and spending one's own money, and chasing dreams and wishes - they are all possible with a well-paying job in a good company. If one is lucky to graduate out of a ranked institution, it all boils down to chasing that good company.

Our recent report on Best Employers in IT and BPO bears this out strongly.

But the future is going to be different. The comfort in working for a good company will be short-lived.

I recently spoke about the forces of change and its impact on career and workplace to a group of students in technology and management at ABV IITM Gwalior. Organization models are fast changing; the number of retained full-time employees is reducing in most industries. Companies are increasingly contracting specific skills. This is much different

from the concept of temporary staffing because one will be hired to deliver the outcome of a process and not function as an input to the process.

Companies would seek out individuals with specific package of skills and hire them for that. Especially in knowledge industries, individuals would need to showcase their capabilities and constantly reinvent themselves to be relevant. One would be viewed as a package of skills and not as a unit of labor.

In such a world, one would work for multiple organizations in different roles. Having ‘a' job at one company would be passé. For instance, a marketing professional would be hired as the ‘marketing manager' managing the marketing budget in one company, as the ‘product

manager' in another company, and as a ‘customer experience manager' in a third one. This would require workers to constantly re-skill themselves and market their skills.

Marketing and branding would need to be done at an individual level. Already, one can see that social media is an enabler for this.

In summary, institutional functions would get personalized. That is, what the company used to provide in the past will have to be provided for by the individual in the future - tools, training, branding, experience, and many more.

We need to be prepared in thought and action to embrace these changes. Else the chasm between the old and the new will swallow us.