Changing Faces Of Employment
In earlier days it used to be ‘Employment’ which has now transgressed as ‘Time’ and ‘Money’. Twenty years before, employment used to mean a one-time activity in life where you used to attain a coveted position after preferably a professional course like engineering, medicine, or management. Things have changed a lot with professional courses gaining prominence once, then subsidizing into commoner or more specific to say into a high-cost degree leading to higher positions and well-paid jobs. Moving to the top is the new buzzword for which various means are now available – All for a day’s work – Jobs, internships, courses – full-time/part-time-online/offline, mentorship, tuitions, peer learning, etc. allowing the transition to highly skilled labor moving up the ladder in the promotion process.
They move to higher positions. In a career, you will generally see the four things that move in parallel and you can adjust them in your way to a limit which is different from person to person. These five factors are employment, time, money, sacrifices, profession, and the last one will be definitely talent. These five factors permutate amongst themselves to balance out your outward environmental conditions and it leads, to according to the behavioral pattern of the individual to “What we call life?”
In our country considering the state of the work here, most people opt for government jobs which is very difficult to qualify for, especially at the higher ranks. Also, the seats are limited. The trend has been going on since the late nineteenth century when the Industrial Revolution started. People gave away their farming profession and got engaged in the industry. Slowly a new class of people emerged under the name bourgeoise which included both white-collared and blue-collared jobs. The concept of industry gave birth to labor laws and since then we are continuously changing the workplace and its associated set of rules under which it functions.
So, from farmers to industrial laborers or executives, we have changed a lot in terms of the work we do for livelihood. Now jobs or profession is not restricted to family history or is hierarchical or is determined by blood, Education has blossomed, and with it, the opportunities to showcase talent has grown manifold. Faster communication, computers or more specifically miniatured fast electronic or digital devices have allowed the world to shrink and with the internet, most jobs are becoming virtual. Just log on to your device and perform ‘What you can?’ and at the end of said period draw your salary into your account. ‘
Technology has made hard things of the past look simple nowadays – everything has been reduced to the ‘click of a button’. Although we are, in terms of employment, taking in the characteristics of the past which had been dominant on us for three hundred years, and already a lot of things we are in possession is taken from the western culture, it includes the forces – structurally as well as functionally, technology – from factories to today’s miniatured devices, literature, education – from primary school education to higher studies, division as per classes – middle class, lower class, and higher class on the basis of income and lavishes and such has been the influence that the Indian’s inherent education system based on which the whole society was based has come crashing down and has been obliterated almost completely by today.
Our basic ‘Indian-economy’ is highly influenced by the Western concept and the agrarian economy in an actual sense on which we thrive has almost been eradicated.
So basically, our technological as well as B-schools with other professional schools including medical colleges, pharmaceutical colleges, and others have shown a change in the nature of employment. Now full-time permanent jobs do not exist and only a few are able to get them from which it exists. Also, the entrance to most of them is through independent bodies serving at the top of the state. Each works in tandem with the state bodies. Apart from these blue-collared jobs at the highest level, we come next to
the high-paying jobs at the top of the multi-nationals or the corporate houses which mostly involve supervisory work and seldom employ work of great skill and competency, especially in a country like India. The entrance to them is through the selected premium colleges or through references and sometimes they conduct their own examinations. But trends are now changing very fast. Lateral recruitment together with inter-departmental transfers on the basis of past experience and contractual basis and also profile-based short-listing has made the recruitment and selection process dynamic and modern.
The older trends in the employment process that had been prevalent are as follows:
1. Contractual-employment: Till you are working dedicatedly for an organization constrained by the rules and regulations under a banner for a sum of money with the association for a definite period. The period is governed by the organisation's policy under the labor laws and jurisdiction of the place concerned.
2. Resource Pool: You remain associated with the organization but do not draw a salary from them but from the clients that you get through them.
3. Part-Time: In part-time most of the workers have other obligations to work for the organizations for fewer hours than the full-time and they do it at their own set time. It has fewer or equal facilities comparable to a permanent job and at times is more suited as the flexible hours and more free time allow more recreational activities and time for other simultaneous activities running side-by-side with the profession.
4. Casual: They are not on the rolls of the organization and are not covered under the standard obligations of the organization but are employed for a particular work or time without any boundaries and by it we mean no legal bindings.
5. Apprenticeship: Newly trained employees who when employed in the organization gain experience in a particular job-work or complete some part of job-work for various purposes which can be as a part of a course or gaining work experience or to get acquainted with the organization for a specific period with limited facilities and for a limited specific time and which can further lead to full-time work employment too based on the calculated performance by the person.
6. Traineeship: In it, the trainee goes through a white-collared job for the purpose of
7. Employment on Commission: The employee is hired for a specific purpose and on fulfillment of the purpose he is paid a commission which is called remuneration.
8. Probation: It is an early period of the employee in the organization where the employee is checked for work and behavior and later confirmed in the organization. It is prevalent in most of the Indian government organizations and after the said period of service, the employee is confirmed in the organization.
Now, we will try to see the newer emerging trends which are partly due to highly skilled resources with technology-enabled suitable environments to perform his work:
On-spot work allocation: Through the head hunters, you are able to take up work and complete it in the defined time for the required compensation. The compensation is usually very high and the duration of work is short usually in countable days.
Online Consultant: This work has especially come into the force due to the technology-savvy need for experts on various subjects and is running in support with the various industries in tandem. People who work here charge their fees as per the timely slots which they give to their pupils.
Ghost-Writer: Here you write for the paid subscriptions through the pupils without having any name i.e. you write on behalf of someone else and you charge money for that.
Blogger: Online writer as you write for an online site for a subscription.
Editor: Editor here means a moderator who is working on various platforms both online and offline catering to his audiences as and when required.
Entrepreneur: A highly skilled extremely talented person with proven capacity to lead and raise contracts through various channels and enabling each of them to succeed. Start-ups are the reality of today’s short-term successful contracts which turn into business over time. In it, we encompass all the e-commerce that has popped up with the various chains of online retail portfolios with a presence in major cities operating through online platforms.
So, we see from the above the earlier longer format of the jobs has now transgressed into a shorter form and is in continuous evaluation mode and feedback with skill-set and money bagging their dividends from the market allowing the quality to prevail. Organizations now have limited communication with their employee and the association between the organization and the employee with the introduction of technology and looking over the factors of time and money made it very short in nature and earlier types of relationships between organizations and employees as stated are now getting limited to both the factors time and money.
The future is of an able-lonesome individual standing alone and successful rather than an organization making the lives of an individual. Most of the supervisory jobs are limited in number and will remain as such in the future and the teaching profession is the coveted profession that will take huge strides in the future because instilling such a level of skill will require a very high level of learning environment where business tycoons-leaders will be born and, on whose vision, will the world will progress.
The coming time is the creation of such a ‘Temple of Learnings’ – the place where great minds will meet and will do great things. Institutions like IIM, MDI, FMS, and XLRI with the IITs in our country hold lots of promise for the future of our generation, and being an alumnus of MDI I can surely vouch for the institution’s legacy in providing the nation with the future visionary leaders who are at par with the industry and are leading in the different fields and with the changing times are also the hope of the people and the nation.
