Global changes in the job market

In this article I will focus on the global changes taking place today in the labor market and in addition with the strategies available to you as salaried employees.

First, it should be noted that the global labor market changed significantly about two and a half years ago with the outbreak of Covid-19. Following the corona crisis, many companies have switched to working from home and also began hiring remote workers.

Working from home?(Home office) has actually significantly changed the labor market because the situation itself, requires companies to be more flexible towards their salaried employees.

?

Many companies leveraged the corona crisis to their advantage, employed freelancers and preferred to cut the workforce in their company. Is the situation of working from home an ideal situation? Is it good for the salaried employee? Is it good for the company?

?

In my opinion, it depends a lot on your position as a?salaried employee. For example, professions such as doctors, lawyers, nurses, physiotherapists and construction workers are required to physically come to the workplace and cannot work from home.

Also, if we look at salespeople for a moment, it is also recommended that they work directly from the workplace and not from home because they are measured by their output and therefore when they are in a work environment, they will give a better output. If, for example, a salesperson needs to close a certain deal, so when he is located in the office and not at home, he will be able to quickly consult with the coworkers around him and reach a quick decision. In addition, if a salesperson?experiences, for example, a technical problem, that technical problem will be resolved faster because the?salesperson?is already at the workplace and therefore, could immediately contact the IT guy/technical person.

?

Of course, it can be said that almost any role you perform when you work from the workplace and not from home will be more productive, but again it also depends on your character and your work ethic. Can you produce the same output even when you work from home? Do you have the required conditions and?equipment?as a?salaried employee?to work from home?

?

Due to the significant damage to the world economy following the global corona crisis, today there are many companies that require their employees to work only from the office and not from home, because these companies know that when the salaried employees work from the office, they will be much more productive.

?

Now I will address the strategy of building your career as a?salaried employee.

When you work in a certain company, you can usually notice that there is a certain group of salaried employees in this company who have already been working there for over 15 years. In contrast, there is another group of?salaried employees who do not stay for long. These?salaried employees work for a smaller number of months or years and then change to another job and work for another company. The question is which strategy is better for you? Would you prefer to find a certain job and work there for many years or alternatively work for a certain company for two or three years and then change to another job?

?

It is important to understand that both of these strategies have advantages and disadvantages. Let's start with the first strategy which is actually to find a certain job in your profession and stay for many years in one workplace. With this strategy, the more you are establishing yourself as a salaried employee in that specific company, the more opportunities?you will miss out on during your career, such as promotion, a?salary?raise, or perhaps a greater number of vacation days per year.

However, your profit is in the creation of your own employment stability which is particularly evident in Germany. Employment stability actually comes to you after you have already proven yourself and received?unlimited?employment contract from the company you work for. Salaried employees who stay for many years at one workplace are usually looking for job stability and are not interested in starting to look for?job opportunities?elsewhere. They know they will miss out on other opportunities, but they also know that no workplace is perfect.

?

Now I will focus on the second strategy for building your career and that is working at a job for a limited number of months or years and then switching to a new job in a new company.?

Many use this strategy because they feel they are interested in change. Although they love their job, they feel stuck due to the fact that there are no?opportunities for?promotion or salary increases in front of them. It could be that they feel that the atmosphere in the workplace has changed for the worse and they are interested in a new atmosphere that they will find in a new workplace.?

Another possibility is that they are interested in acquiring work experience in another workplace. It could be that they have an opportunity to acquire unique knowledge that they cannot acquire at their current workplace.

The main advantage of this strategy is that when you change jobs, let's say every two or three years, you can renegotiate your terms as a salaried employee and demand more due to the experience you have gained. In fact, many salaried employees who changed their workplace every few years did earn more, but at the same time, with each change of workplace, you will have to prove yourself as a salaried employee again until receiving your unlimited employment contract.

?

If you are new immigrants in Germany, I would like to recommend you the first strategy - finding a certain job in your profession and staying for many years in one workplace. Why must you?be?asking? The reason is that when you arrive in Germany you will have to focus on your immigration goals and achieve stability in your new life.?

You will have to perform many tasks such as learning the German language, finding an apartment, focusing on bureaucratic procedures, etc.. Therefore you must remember that first of all you must stabilize yourself even if it means you will earn less money. You must show to the Ausl?nderbeh?rde (Immigration office), that you receive salary slips regularly and continuously from a certain company, and therefore you can create higher trust. If you change jobs frequently at the beginning of your journey in Germany, you not only endanger your employment stability, but you can also damage the flow of your continuous salary slips.?

Remember that you have to create affinity and employment stability, so don't focus too much on the amount of your monthly salary. Stay humble and get to know the bureaucratic systems in Germany better over time.

?

Recently I was exposed to a term called quiet quitting. Quiet quitting is actually a phenomenon that recently started in the United States calling on salaried employees not to work beyond the working hours expected of them and not to invest above and beyond what is expected of them.?

Due to the fact that, unlike Germany, the United States is not a social/welfare state, there is a situation where the salaried employees work beyond their working hours.?

In Germany, this situation could not occur because the rights of salaried employees are enshrined in law. Salaried employees in Germany have many rights and the law protects them unlike other countries and this is another reason why the whole world wants to immigrate to Germany.

In addition, many salaried employees in the United States dream of work life balance. Since the United States is a capitalist country, their work mentality is to work as much as possible in order to give a higher output. It is important to note that since in Germany the issue of work life balance is a central issue and there is also a situation of preserving personal privacy beyond working hours, the issue of quiet quitting is less expressed.

?

I also read that some define the term quiet quitting as meaning that the salaried employee should not give 100% to his workplace or that the salaried employee should remain at a medium level and keep a low profile. I definitely do not agree with this definition because I think that all of us as salaried employees have a responsibility to perform our job at the highest level as long as we work in a certain workplace and this workplace trusts us as salaried employees.

?

I do think that we must implement the idea of work life balance because that's the only way we can be more productive. The idea of work life balance states that we have a certain, regular and specific time for our job at the workplace, and a certain, regular and specific time for our private lives outside the workplace. When there is a balance between work and our professional life, we can mentally recover from a certain workday and start a new work day the next morning when we are more refreshed.

?

To understand more about the term quiet quitting, watch the next video - Don't Quiet Quit Your Job - Until You Watch This