The Problem With Professions – Job Market Woes

In recent months the jobs market has been in the news regularly thanks to improving unemployment numbers and criticism of zero-hour contracts.

This is certainly not a coincidence, with a large proportion of the new jobs being created in the private sector being part-time, shift and zero-hour employment.

Then in the Metro this week (Monday November 18) two letters were published from Kelly-Marie Blundell, a prospective Liberal Democrat candidate in 2015, and Karen Mattison MBE, cofounder of Timewise Foundation, a pro-flexible working action group.

Both claimed the creation of part-time work was a good thing and we should be abandoning the idea of the traditional full-time job for flexi-time, telecommuting and working from home.

This raises two very interesting points, firstly about the nature of the new jobs being created in the economy and second about the concept behind flexible working.

Flexible working and flexi-time have been seen as the trump card in modern work environments for at least the last two decades, but as yet has not taken off as quickly is expected.

With people living further from work, commuting greater distances and having to juggle both a professional and home life, the idea of fitting your working day around your children’s school hours, for example, seems like a really good idea.

The basic concept was people would come into the office earlier, reduce break times, telecommute and work remotely from home.

However, this holy grail of 21^st century human resources has not materialised to the extent many thought it would.

Yes, parents are taking advantage of it to drop-off and collect their kids from work and, thanks to modern telecommunications, work remotely from halfway around the globe in extreme cases, but this is far from the norm.

In particular, working from home is unfairly stigmatised in many office-based environments.

There are many reasons for it not taking off in the way many thought it would.

Firstly, despite the wonders of modern communications there is a significant and quantifiable benefit to having a team based in one place, being able to interact and bond face-to-face rather than email-to-email.

Secondly, people like the routine of going into work. Ask anyone (including this blogger) about working from home and they will tell you it is not as relaxing as it sounds as your home becomes your workplace rather than a place of rest.

Thirdly, and lastly in terms of this blog post (although there are many other reasons), the modern workplace has not evolved as rapidly as people think.

It is easy to claim flexible working sets the workers free, but it is not true in the majority of cases.

Most people still have and work to the traditional idea of what a job and career is and this still revolves around the basic principle of 9-to-5.

Undeniably, more people are working from home or are on flexible hours, but these still make up a minority of the work force and while we have been reliably informed for the last two decades this is the way things are moving there is precious few facts to prove it.

The problem is there are very few hours in the day to be flexible with in the first place.

Almost all professions keep what are essentially office hours, or operate to a much fuller capacity during them. This includes the construction industry, retailing, customer services and event he medical and care professions.

If the majority of people are at work between 9am and 5pm then the majority of business needs to be done between those hours.

In fact, even the single parent, a prime candidate for benefiting from flexible working, still works what are essentially normal office hours, minus 90 minutes at the end of the day.

However, here lies a problem. People get mixed up between part-time and flexible working, when in fact the two are totally different.

Flexible working involves working a standard number of hours, while not necessarily keeping the same office times as other staff. Part time simply involves working fewer hours.

Yes, part-time work has its place in the economy, but it always has, and should always, be taken by people who require this kind of employment routine, for example, students or those requiring a few extra hours to top up wages. It is not a full-time employment substitute.

This is the problem with the current jobs market.

A major criticism of the recently improving unemployment figures is the majority of the newly created jobs are not full-time or even flexible working, but standard, part-time work, which is of debatable benefit.

You can create as many part-time as you want, but if people need to work three of them just to make ends meet then you will need to create three times as many part-time jobs as you would full-time jobs.

It is very easy for us all to get caught up in the technology revolution, allowing us to stay in constant, and all too often unnecessary contact, a think everything else has moved forward at the same pace, but it has not.

For example, the underground system in London has hardly changed at all since the first mobile phone was invented, let alone moved with the times in terms of WiFi, smart phones and tablets.

Yes, the world is changing and in some areas this change is happening at a staggering rate, but it is foolish to think everything is moving forward at the same rate.

We do not currently, nor will we for a while, live in a world where a majority of people require some level of flexible working and the people who require part-time work, like students, will always be able to find it.

So for now the most important thing is to encourage job creation in the way it is actually needed, not in the way a human resource manager’s dream thinks it should be, and for the moment this path is still firmly based around the 9-5 rat-race.