The decline of traditional employment and the rise of slash workers

In the past 30 years, the global employment model has been a nine-to-five working model, but in recent years, we can find that the traditional employment model has been greatly challenged.

The reason why the traditional employment model has been greatly challenged lies in the rise of the Internet and the advent of the artificial intelligence revolution.

Taylor, author of "The End of Employment"? Pearson put forward three viewpoints in the book to explain why the traditional employment model has been greatly challenged.

1. The rapid development of globalization

In the past decade, the rapid development of science and technology has greatly improved the global education level, which means that today's enterprises can hire people from anywhere in the world, not just local talents.

In other words, our competitors are now from all over the world, and through remote work, enterprises can find other outstanding talents in the world to work for themselves.

2. The rise of artificial intelligence and automatic machines

More and more companies are using big data and artificial intelligence, and many blue-collar workers are gradually being replaced. In the future world, more white-collar workers will be gradually replaced by artificial intelligence.

Kai-Fu Lee, the founder of innovation works, believes that the "five-second rule" can be used to judge whether a job will be replaced by artificial intelligence.

"Five-second rule" refers to:

If a person can make corresponding decisions on the thinking and decision-making problems needed in the work within five seconds, then the work is likely to be completely or partially replaced by artificial intelligence.

3. Saturation

The number of people who have obtained bachelor's, master's and doctor's degrees in the world is gradually saturated, which makes the value of academic qualifications much worse than before. In other words, a high degree of education is no longer the same as in the past, which can guarantee us to find a good job.

Research shows that full-time job opportunities around the world are rapidly disappearing and replaced by fragmented job opportunities, which we call the "odd-job economy".

The data shows that in the past decade, the number of people engaged in alternative jobs in the United States has increased by more than 50%, from 10% in 2005 to 20 15.8% (source: the odd-job economy is coming).

What's the difference between traditional work and odd-job economy? In terms of salary, traditional jobs give stable salary, while the income source of odd-job economy is multiple incomes.

From the perspective of work forms, traditional jobs are stable full-time employment; The odd-job economy does "work", not "employment".

In terms of retirement, traditional jobs pursue stable retirement and rely on job security of enterprises; The odd-job economy relies on personal savings to cope with retirement and vacation between jobs.

The rise of odd jobs economy also shows that more and more people will become "slash youth" in the future.

The concept of "slash youth" comes from The New York Times columnist Marcy? The works of Eberher. She mentioned in the book that more and more young people are no longer satisfied with the lifestyle of "single occupation", but experience a richer life through multiple occupations and multiple incomes.

These people will use "slash:/"to distinguish different occupations in their self-introduction, so the word "slash" has become synonymous with these people.

Since the traditional employment mode of clover organization has been challenged, many people may ask, will enterprises no longer need full-time employees in the future? The answer to this question is no.

Charles Handy, the author of Irrational Times, put forward the concept of "Clover Organization" to explain the possible operation forms of enterprises in the future.

Handy believes that the future organization should be composed of three leaves:

First, the core members of the organization

Second, individuals who have contractual cooperation with enterprises.

Three, experts or individuals have flexible time.

From these three parts, we can find that the first part is full-time employees, the second part is outsourcing personnel, and the third part is * * * employees.

In other words, in the future, the full-time employees of enterprises may only be the core members of the organization, and others are * * * employees and outsourcing employees.

Many people may ask, if full-time employees are only the core members of the organization, can the enterprise still operate? Sure, but it means that the original non-core full-time employees have been replaced by robots.

Clover organization is likely to become the organizational form of future enterprises, which also means that more and more full-time employees will become outsourcing employees or * * * employees. This also shows that more and more people will become slash workers and work for several companies in the future.

If slash workers are the future employment trend, what should we do? The author of Slash Youth puts forward several forms of slash workers:

1. A combination of stable income and hobbies

This model is more suitable for people who are still in the stage of hobby exploration, or those who like to earn enough to support their living expenses.

2. Right brain+left brain combination

This is a model of the common development of rational and creative thinking, such as the combination of engineer and drama director.

3. The combination of brain and body

This mode can make people switch between mental work and manual work, and ensure the balance between physical and mental health and life. For example, fitness instructors are this type of combination.

4. The combination of writing+teaching+speech+consultation

This is a great combination, because the four types of writing, teaching, speaking and consulting are basically complementary. Writing can make you an opinion leader in a certain field. After you become an opinion leader, you may be invited to give a speech, and you can start teaching and consulting. Simply put, this combination is suitable for the development of knowledge workers.

In addition, it must be understood that slash workers do not mean blindly investing and running to find a lot of jobs. Slash workers are based on their own expertise and advantages, and then open up new fields. Diagonal workers need strength support. Without strength as the foundation, the slash cause will be in jeopardy.

If you want to change from a nine-to-five office worker to a slash worker, you should pay attention to the following points:

1. Pursuing income security, not job security.

Full-time jobs are rapidly decreasing around the world, and now enterprises cannot guarantee the lifelong employment of employees. Therefore, we should not pursue job security, but income security.

2. Have core professional knowledge

To become a diagonal worker, we need to have core expertise, and diagonal workers must be based on "core expertise". Only with core professional competence can we stand firm in the trend of odd-job economy.

3. Create multiple sources of income

Slash workers are characterized by "multiple occupations and multiple incomes." If you have more than 5~ 10 income sources, don't worry about the impact of the interruption of one of them. For example, if you are a writer and blogger, you may have multiple incomes at the same time, such as royalties, distribution income, advertising income, speech income and so on.

4. Develop personal brand

In the future, in addition to the odd-job economy era, the power of individual entrepreneurship will become stronger and stronger, and a person can do many things that he could not do before. This is because of the relationship of "Internet empowerment". Under the trend of odd-job economy and individual entrepreneurship, it is very important to develop personal brands.

5. Manage network contacts

The odd-job economy is a case-taking economy, so you have to rely on others to introduce you to work. Research shows that people are more likely to get recommendations by operating weak links than strong links.

6. Seek the empowerment of science and technology

In the face of the revolution of artificial intelligence, individual workers should help themselves become more capable through machines, that is, let technology empower themselves and make their work more efficient.

7. Stay away from bad jobs

This means that we should stay away from jobs with low technical ability and pursue jobs that require skills. Jobs with low technical ability can also be called "bad jobs", which are most likely to be replaced by robots in the future.

Ma Yun, the founder of Alibaba, once mentioned in many speeches: "In the past 30 years, we have turned people into machines; But in the future, we will make machines look like people. 」

In fact, Ma Yun's statement of "making machines look like people" is a trend and a continuous process. Think about it: if machines can become like people, does this mean that enterprises will less and less need to hire people to work?

Therefore, we understand that slash workers are actually an inevitable trend in the era of machine automation, and we can also foresee that more and more people will become slash workers in the future.