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Sankar Radhakrishnan

Thiruvananthapuram , Oct. 6

EMPLOYMENT as we know it is unlikely to exist in a few years. But how different will it be and what are the trends that will characterise employment a few years from now? In an attempt to find some answers to these questions, Totus Consulting, the Chennai-based human resources (HR) consulting firm, launched `Employment 2010 - a participative search event'.

The seven macro-trends thrown up by the study are a "reflection of what will be," says Mr Ganesh Chella, CEO, Totus Consulting. Some of these trends - the increasing work-life imbalance for instance - are already evident, but others are not so visible, he adds.

Employee rights, for instance, are a great source of concern, he says. The issue here is not just who will take care of employee rights in the future, but also what the consequences of not taking care of employee rights are, he explains. "Will this neglect result in white collar activism?" he asks.

Similarly, career longevity is likely to emerge as a major source of concern for those over 45. But the people who cope with this anxiety will be those who embark on a second or even third career in their middle years, he says. Thus, retirement in the traditional sense will soon disappear making it necessary for society to have appropriate coping mechanisms, he points out.

The study also found that women would continue to be under pressure, trying to balance their own needs and expectations with those of society. Women themselves will, however, be responsible for finding solutions to these problems with options such as `free-agency' flourishing because of this, the study adds. The growth in concepts such as `temping' and `free-agency' will also be driven by the increasing work-life imbalance, explains Mr Chella.

With organisations increasingly being driven only by performance, a `no-frills' employee value proposition will emerge, the study states. Most businesses will not invest in developing talent and will instead look at `buying' it. In many cases, organisations will increasingly turn to intermediaries such as professional employer organisations, Mr Chella says. These intermediaries will gain in influence, he adds.

The HR function too will be influenced by the persistent focus on the bottomline and on ensuring performance, he says. Traditional HR skills such as managing `employee relations' will no longer be a part of the HR vocabulary, he adds. Similarly, the study found that education would increasingly become a prerogative of the private sector, with porous boundaries between industry and education.

As part of this process, many young people will join the workforce after completing high school (10+2) and will work for a while before returning to college for a graduate degree.

Developed as a purely qualitative research project, `Employment 2010' focused on the "quality of the responses" and not on numbers, says Mr Chella. The researchers picked the brains of a cross section of managers, consultants, academics and management students from across the country with just one question - What are the significant trends likely to characterise employment a few years from now? The opinions of these 70 or so respondents were then distilled to arrive at the `seven trends'. The respondents or `co-authors' of the study were then invited for an `open house' that discussed the research findings, he says. The organisation is now working on identifying strategies to cope with these seven trends and intends to publish the entire project as a book, Mr Chella adds.

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