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THE END OF THE JOB As a way oforganizing work, it is asocial artifact that has ouch... Page 2 of 5 and farming them out to little firms, which have created or taken over profitable niches. Public services are starting to be privatized, and government bureaucracy, the ultimate bastion of job ® security, is being thinned. With the disappearance of the conditions that created jobs, we are losing the need to package work in that way. No wonder jobs are disappearing. TO AN EXTENT that few people have recognized. our organizational world is no longer a pattern of jabs, the way a honeycomb is a pattern of those little hexagonal pockets of honey. In place of jobs, there are part-time and temporary work situations. That change is symptomatic of a deeper change that is subtler but more profound. The deeper change is this Today's organization is rapidly being transformed from a structure built out of jobs into a field of work needing to be done. Jobs are artificial units superimposed on this field. They are patches of responsibility that, together, are supposed to cover the work that needs to be done. His job is to take care of this, hers is to lake rare of that, and yours is to take care of the other thing. Together you usually get the work done, though there are always scraps and pieces of work that don't quite fall into anyone's job descnption, and over time job responsibilities have to be adjusted and new jobs added to keep getting everything done. When the economy was changing much more slowly, the discrepancies between the job matrix and the work field could be forgotten. If new technology opened up a new area in the work field, new jobs could be created to cover the new work that needed tloing. If a new market opened up, new jobs could be created to serve it. If a new law or judicial ruling required an organization to do something different, new jobs could be created to take care of the situation. But in a fast-moving economy, jobs are rigid solutions to an elastic problem. We can rewrite a person's job description occasionally, but not every week. When the work that needs doing changes constantly, we cannot afford the inflexibility that the job brings with it. Further, at a time when competitive organizations must reduce head count, jobs those boxes on the organization chart, with regular duties, hours, and salaries encourage hiring. They do this by tuning work up into 'turfs which in turn require more turfs (and more hiring) whenever a new area opens up. They encourage additional hiring by giving managers a level of power commensurate with the number of turf areas for which they are responsible: The more areas, the more power. Jobs also discourage accountability because they reward people not for getting the necessary work done but for "doing their jobs." Jobs are no longer socially adaptive. That is why they are going the way of the dinosaur. Organizations. like individuals, will have trouble shifting their expectations and habits to fit the new post-job world. Some will try to get by with job cuts, reducing the number of hands and heads that do the work but leaving in place the old idea that work must be packaged into jobs. Not surprisingly, such organizations find that removing job holders ® leaves holes in the job field and that less work gets done as a result An American Management Association survey of companies that had made "major staff cuts' between 1987 and 1992 found that, despite the reduced labor costs, less than half improved their operating earnings while one in four saw earnings drop. More ominously, said the AMA's report, "these figures were even worse for companies that undertook a second or third round of downsizing." Many companies that fail to get their expected results with the first round of cuts simply repeat the process. Other companies cut jobs and use temps to fill in the spaces or build in staffing flexibility . Tomorrow's organization certainly must turn a significant part of its work over to a contingent work force that can grow and shrink and reshape itself as its situation demands. But note that even the most creative work design begs the question of how unready most organizations are to manage this work force of temps, part-timers. Consultants, and contract workers effectively. A large manufacturer that used office temps extensively found that the temporaries on the clerical staff, lacking loyalty to the organization, had leaked details of the company plan for union negotiations to the union that represented the manufacturing employees. A worker at another company, a concern maker. found that "every time you'd get a big batch of new ((temp factory workers)), you'd start finding more holes in the condoms." Other companies couple job cuts with reorganization. This makes more sense, since it recognizes that you can't just take pieces out of a system and expect it to keep working well. But while the goal may be more defensible, the process causes so much distress and disruption that the change meant to strengthen the company often ends up weakening it. That is because such changes force people to switch jobs, a process that undermines the three qualities that Michael Beer and his Harvard colleagues have identified as the source of competitive advantage. competence, coordination, and commitment. People are moved to unfamiliar jobs (competence declines). they are working in new teams, for new bosses, and with new customers (coordination declines), and they are demoralized by their new insecurity and the loss of co-worker friends (commitment declines). Still other companies seize on one of the cure-alls of the day empowerment, flattening the organization, self directed teams, TOM, reengineering, Flex-time, telecommuting, job sharing and hope it will do the trick. Any of these efforts can improve the organization, but all are compromised by the fact that everyone has a job. For as long as people are expending their energies on doing their jobs, they aren't going to be focused on the customer, or be self-managers, or be empowerable. They won't be able to capitalize on the possibilities of empowerment, automation, or anything else. The answer is to create the post - ® lob organization. It is ironic that most organizations need employees to stop acting like job holders, yet they know only how to hire, pay, communicate with, and manage job holders. Most organizations also maintain policies, strategies, training programs, and structures meant to enable employees to be more successful in their job activities. In fact, a wave of job-free workers intent on doing what needs n~4 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/lorttine_ai-chive/1994/09/19/79751/index.htm 5/8/2009