Goodbye Job Security...Hello Career Resilience!

Fred C. Hopkinson

Most people require little thought to agree that job security is a myth. However, employers and employees can contribute to future workplace stability by directing their energies to influence results for themselves.  By discarding job security as a goal, and recycling it into the more pragmatic target of a career-resilient workforce, both those wishing to remain in long-term employment, and employers wishing to retain adaptable, versatile people, will benefit.

If there is any job security, it exists in your employability and ability to manage yourself. Expectations, plans and careers will flourish, or fail, more because of responses to economic events than from the events themselves. Yes, they do sidetrack personal plans and progress. Similarly, however, a cherished job can become available even during a deep recession.

Career-resilient people look for opportunities and make preparations for them. Those who are unprepared when opportunities arise often discover that satisfying work is much harder to find. Present conditions simply highlight what we should always have been doing i.e., giving regular attention to our career development.

Employers offering work cannot guarantee it into the future. Employees who own their careers cannot be "absentee landlords" and neglect personal career management.

Few employers who bury their heads in the sand escape the shock of today’s technologically driven world and its revolutionary workplace. It's not easy to leave a comfort zone of established work practices and do business differently. Now, however, is an ideal time to build, or re-build, an organization. Call it re-engineering, restructuring or whatever, but you can now genuinely reorganize to make real gains.

A former C.E.O. of 3M Corporation declared, "It's tough to fire a lot of people and then ask the survivors to be innovative." His predecessor said, "Hire good people... let them run with an idea and give them the room they need. If you put fences around people, you get sheep." A career-resilient workforce will press for organizational success for their own personal reasons, but everyone will benefit as a result.

With a career-resilient workforce, the basis of employee relations is honesty, not loyalty. Today sees a much more honest and open rejection of the "we've always done it this way" excuses.  Employers encourage people to enhance their skills, work independently and willingly contribute to achieving improved results.

Instead of having employees be career dependent on the organization, support them in the pursuit of career resiliency. You both will find excellence! Help them to understand that staying employable by keeping competitively skilled is their responsibility. Promote and support their efforts to grow and reinforce the right to be free agents. After all, if you want only the best people working for you, then expect your competitors to covet them.

 Strategies for Employees

• Conduct regular personal reviews of your present status; document pluses and minuses.

• Create turn-up file reminders of "to do" tasks to assess your status and next career development steps.

• Learn the "early warning" signs that reveal a potential threat to your job or career.

• Undergo reliable assessments of your skills and interests for appropriate career choices.

• Review educational and training programs that may help your career.

For Employers

• Let employees know which skills & traits are key to succeeding in your various positions.

• Regularly inform employees how the organization is doing and where it is going.

• Seek accurate employee feedback on how well they feel the organization is doing.

• Build a learning resources network of people and places and help employees connect to it.

• Conduct career awareness workshops to show employees how jobs are becoming more diverse.

Career resilient employees are willing to take planned risks but do not do so lightly. They commit to ensuring they can survive in a variety of activities and business environments and guide their future rather than reacting to it.

Career-resiliency must be win-win in order to be effective. It's a relationship in which both parties give and take with mutual respect in a spirit of cooperation. The realities of today's business environment require individuals to take the leading role in their career development and advancement. To do otherwise is to have no real stake in what they do or become.

You can create your own dust or follow in someone else's. Which do you prefer?