I recently had a conversation with Thomas Friel who is the former CEO of Heidrick & Struggles, a global executive search firm, they are the ones who got Eric Schmidt his job as the CEO of Google in 2004 and were at one point ranked by the WSJ as the top executive search firm in the world. We had a long conversation about how the world of work is changing.
Years ago when employees would work at an organization there was an implicit contract between the employee and the employer. The employee would be loyal to the company and provide their labor and attention. In turn the company would take care of the employees for life. Employees used to work at companies for decades and then collect their pensions. They were loyal to the companies they worked for.
Today this employee-employer contract has changed. We don’t see many life-long employees anymore and employees have moved away from committing and being loyal to companies to committing to managers, teams, products, and people. Today employees are willing to provide some labor and attention but if things start going for them they leave and go somewhere else. Employees will also leave if they feel like their talents aren’t being taken advantage of or if they aren’t interested in and challenged by the work that they are doing.
In a few decades we went from lifelong employees and company loyalty to a much more dynamic workforce which has new loyalties, new priorities, and new timelines for how long they are willing to and want to stay with a company. What is your organization doing to adapt to this?
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