Our financial system and workforce have undergone many changes, and we are all feeling the effects. Locating and more importantly securing a good job can be very difficult, even with proper education. Many of the jobs offered today pay very little or provide no health benefits. Because of these variations, permanent jobs are becoming a less common thing while contingent positions are on the rise. Contingent jobs are temporary jobs, which quite often take place outside of a business. For example, one can work as a sales representative for a company from home and will generally get paid less than those who work in the building, as well as not being provided any health benefits. Although working from home can be appealing to many, there is no real job security. This sort of employment is becoming very common as companies can hire people as needed and pay them a smaller amount; this also allows a lot of the companies to avoid having to do any legal or tax work when their employees don’t work inside their facility.
This shift from permanent to contingent jobs has drastically affected employee communication and relationships. Working in a temporary position creates the sense of being replaceable. Therefore relationships between coworkers don’t seem as significant. In my experience, the morale of contingent workers is always low as family life is impacted. However, A lot of the time working from home can be a great aid to individuals like single mothers, who would have a hard time actually leaving the house to go to work due to their kids. This allows greater flexibility as they can earn money while still being a part of their children’s lives. Contingent style jobs additionally give employees the ability to work as needed and not all year round; this works best with seasonal jobs. This way, if an employee has a summer break from school, they can work a temporary job during it. Although there are benefits to these types of situations, the fact remains that they are usually paid less and provide little to nothing else besides greater flexibility.
With today’s technology, companies and their employees who work from home can stay in contact with each other very easily. There are video chat services like Skype, which allow a live video conversation to happen and numerous other forms of messaging services. Accountability can be handled by having the employees who work from home use a program that logs all of the data of the work being done and sends it to their employers. With all of these tools and the proper education on how to use them, a business and an employee can always stay connected, even across considerable distances. Many companies will outsource jobs to different countries where the employees are paid an even less amount. Due to this, job security is even weaker because if you are working from home at a contingent job in America, there is little to no reason why you should be paid the amount you get when someone in India would do the same job for a fraction of the pay. Although contingent jobs have their benefits and drawbacks, it really just depends on your own individual needs as well as the nature of the position; a job in IT for example.
With this evolving landscape, IT operations are often outsourced to third-party organizations, sometimes eliminating the need to hand an in-house IT team. However, nothing can completely erase the need for an in-house IT team as they are necessary for creating, managing, repairing, and upgrading networks and equipment. Instead of fearing these many changes to the American workforce, one should simply embrace it and allow technology to aid you in obtaining a job that you love and excel at.
Categories: "The Future of" and Various Papers, Random Thoughts
Securing The Universe 