The Future is Here, Until it Isn't

The Long March -1983 Company Man to 2023 Distributive Worker

Author: Forbes J. Rutherford, Principal, Rutherford International Executive Search Group Inc. , Managing Director, NEXTalent Marketplace & Job Board , T: 855-256-5778 or Chat

Introduction: This article is part of a series of commentaries that examine potential threats to the commercial real estate industry, post-pandemic workforce dynamics, and the probable impact on knowledge employment and workforce design.

Navigating life/safety protocols has been a challenge worthy of Solomon. Pro or con, the longtail outcome of COVID-19 has led workers to lose confidence in government labour regulations and collective agreements to protect their future employment interests. This socially sobering realization by the workforce will be evident in future collective bargaining agreements with organized labour. Employment lawyers should plan on being very active in 2022/23 amending employment contracts with pre-determined severance clauses for all full-time hires.

"COVID-19 Has Changed the Rules of Engagement."

The idea of a prospective employee negotiating their exit in parallel with their arrival may leave the employer questioning the reliability of the new hire, but this has become de regur. It is today's reality. Still, they must recognize that COVID-19 has changed the rules of engagement. Inserting a severance clause in an employment agreement, which is commonplace with executives long before COVID-19, may mean nothing more than this future hire is prudent or possesses a low-risk tolerance and a strong need for security.

Alternatively, it may also mean the new hire is aware through platforms such as Glassdoor.com that the hiring company marched a long-term employee out the door over a vaccine policy without compensation. Negative news travels faster via the internet than positive. The unintended consequence of enforcing arbitrary mandates without an alternative hybrid accommodation has broken the circle of trust productive employees seek from their employers concerning job security.

A precedent for breaking the employer/employee circle of trust occurred during the recession of 1983. The worker philosophy of the time was to remain with an employer for life. This employment ethos was destroyed in the early 1980s when organizations opted to follow modern management theories designed to increase productivity by flattening organizations. The unintended consequence of this organizational design strategy obliterated the idea of the "Company Man."

The Antecedent of a Storm – The Fluttering of a Butterfly's Wings

"Chaos Theory - is a branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behaviour is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences." Even within the cracks of chaos, one can find purposeful patterns grounded in systems theory. The same is true in describing the long chaotic march of the Company Man in 1983 to what has become the Post-COVID (Hybrid/Remote) Distributive Worker of 2023.

"COVID19 Unmasked the Quiet Dissemblance of Western Society"

This undoing of the Western worker was complete in the 1990s when these same management theorists promoted outsourcing their country's means of production to a distributed global footprint. Internationalists sold Globalism and free trade to the remaining vestiges of the Western Company Man as a selfless act to increase the workers' standard of living in emerging countries. It did not. The effect was to diminish the Western workers' capacity to manufacture, concentrate corporate wealth, expand the Administrative State and convert the West into a consumer-driven society financed by rising sovereign and personal debt. The Western manufacturing industry is losing its ability to make, which coincides with a societal inclination to take. The hollowing out of Western countries' means of production was disturbingly evident in our inability to produce personal protective equipment during the peak of COVID-19.

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, COVID-19 drew back the Wizard's curtain, exposing the machinations and manipulation of an intellectually bankrupt and spendthrift technocracy and leadership class. The longtail outcome of this wholesale treatment of human capital, which began in the 1980s, gave rise to the commoditization of blood, labour and an ever-expanding wealth gap.

"Some of the Brightest Minds Will Embrace the Escapist GiG Work Lifestyle"

What can we expect in a post-COVID world of work?

We should not expect the current Western leadership to repatriate our means of production. Apart from learning that the people are easily shepherded, the lessons of COVID-19 will soon be forgotten, its history revised. Supply chains will reconfigure and shorten for a time. But only temporarily. As in fluid dynamics, capital and labour, the prime factors in global production, will always seek lower input costs. The newly coined trade policy called 'friend-shoring' is an exercise in deflecting semantics. COVID-19 weakened Globalism, but it's unlikely that national populism, a movement of the private sector worker and middle-class, will prevent it from reasserting itself. The corporate world's profit orientation and capacity to make things will remain globally distributive. And in so doing, the importance of the high-performing critical worker's distributive and transnational nature will be influential.?

We believe a patchwork application of COVID-19 mandates by corporations in 2022/23 and the acceptance of a digital currency to conduct business will serve the corporate's ability to access talent from all parts of the world. Access to talent is already fully distributive. Aggregating talent into a single project team is rapidly approaching a metaverse probability where personal avatars and holographs become an accepted worker interface in semi and entirely virtual environments. This distributive workforce trend should impact the application of and career direction of Gen-Y and Gen-Z human capital. Some of our brightest minds will embrace the GIG work lifestyle, leading to a further scarcity of high-performing talent interested in full-time leadership positions.

"The Future Is Here Until It Isn't"

The future is here until it isn't. The long march of the 1983 Company Man has given way to the hired gun, the 2023 Distributive Worker.

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