Post pandemic work the fairytale is over

 POST CORONA—WORK MIGHT REALLY BE A FOUR-LETTERED WORD?

First—all the caveats— no wait..you can supply your own.  Now, let’s  start with a set of fairly safe assumptions.  

1. Not everyone views work and career matters through the same set of lenses—in fact that’s something  that one might  really need to be aware of PDQ.
2. Next What our culture has  taught us about work will influence how much awareness must be stretched.
3. Transgenrational challenges in parent/child, student/training, and employer/employee relationship and career  narratives and going to be sticky and slippery all at once

this post is going. To make some general representations based upon long standing notions. Regarding  work and careers and how many people think of them...  The implications for seeking peace and joy in several contexts are going to be thrown out. In the form of descriptions and questions for your consideration... Here we go...

Pre-Corona  Career  “development”  notions.  There  have been three dominant  conceptual frameworks used to understand and in some cases predict career choice and development as well as how employers view employees.  Most people and actions/thinking  surrounding  work/career life  was dominated and is still dominated by the “”matching” framework.  Theorists give this  “matching” idea fancier  names like “trait-factor” theory or personality/job congruence.  In this kingdom we have been taught that jobs fall into certain. Types. Based upon tasks and work environments while people  fall into categories based upon skills, interests, and other personality “traits”.  We have been taught to “stereotype  certain. People as “just the type for that or this. Job and that we will find peace and joy in the world of work if we can identify and achieve. Our perfect match.  On the employer side efforts are made to recruit the right type of person for each job because you don’t want an artist in charge of accounting or an engineer  leading public relations or a clown in charge of government?  So ..in post corona land jobs, work environments, and skills sets  will be changing at light speed.  By the time some folks figure out what type of. Person they are and what types of jobs they. Will be great at...the job is likely to change or disappear completely and the person may change too—but that’ probably  a bit less likely unless learning takes place....the topic for another entry. Coming soon.  

Now this matching formula  worked well  for most people for a century beginning with the industrial revolution which means every one of our grandparents, parents, and some of us believe in this idea and are probably walking around with these lenses on.as we try to mentor future gbenerations.   This model assumes stability  that just doesn’t exist anymore and probably hasn’t for  at least a generation but we cling to it because. It seems to make sense and  doesn’t produce anxiety...but believing doesn’t make it so.  Chances  are your parents think or though He’s a Round Peg and Let’s get him  trained. To find a round hole job.  They also thought  every round hole job would  be there to pound you into and that you would be happy.  Trouble is...just as you are recognizing and perfecting your  roundness (my diet strategy) the holes are wobbling into at best ovals and sometimes protractor shaped things with one curved side and one long straight side.  These shape shifting and disappearing holes will be shifting and disappearing at an alarming rate because the COVID changed the work. World forever and the employe/employer relationship in. Terms of a network has been diversified.  Most office workers. Don’t have to work in offices and many food servers only see Toyotas instead of tables.  Car mechanics are  more like electronic repair technicians than “grease monkeys.” Working with your hands  will mean “pointing, clicking, and typing ...or dictating more than cutting, welding, painting, and the like.  

The seeking peace and joy impact here is that  we will will have to find a new working  narrative  for career stability or abandon it as the speed of change will not ever be slower than  our capacity to change shapes again.  It will be a generation or two. More before. Our culture catches up with this so when seeking peace and joy expect  a bit of turbulence  in the force for a while to come.  

Another popular framework in career development  is the “development”  idea where a person sort of starts at the bottom of a career ladder and continues to learn and grow (much like a tree grows from a seed) and so seeking peace and joy means  keeping on the path—moving step by step up the. Ladder.  You know. A pre-schooler  becomes an elementary student and then a junior high kid then high school then work or college and if you enter a “profession” its junior associate, associate, supervising associate, assistant department  manager, department manger etc. etc. etc.You pick up some skills and social trimmings along the way and your self-talk narrative is one that encourages you to compare where you are to where “people  like you” are in the employment  setting.  

Two challenges  here in the Post Covid Career Jungle.  The big one is that your ladder may have crumbled  as your place of work exported or experiences massive organizational chart revisions.  Steps are getting removed from  ladders all the time and it often means the difference between step  3 and 4 that was once a  two year process becomes  the difference  between step 3 and step 7 and let’s dace it you’ll need a helicopter to bridge the gap.  

The matching story...seems to be an external; one as People in general see the work world that way while the growth/ladder style of thinking often becomes internal because you are doing the comparing  on your own most of the time.  

No matter —post Covid —neither of these may function without some real cognitive behavioral gymnastics—otherwise known as learning to lie to yourself.  

Unfortunately most employers operate using one of the “stories” above neither of which functioned great pre-corona and are even less useful now.  The chasm between reality and these cultural  work concepts leaves employees feeling inadequate and employers feeling like employees aren’t engaged or traditional motivation schemes to accomplish team building and loyalty  don’t work.  Well guess what?  The employees and the employers are both  right.  

More Bad  News—

The most  wealthy  employees in this country now make 312 times the least  compensated ones make.  This means that decision makers live in a world where their work story is just fine.  There is little if any incentive  for the rich to care about  the poor interns  of pay because the class of labor is likely to change. In job task so long term employees are not needed and therefore these short term employees are represented in their spreadsheets as “labor cost” instead of human capital.  Then  add to this the notion that “what one does and where you work” are social labels we  have been taught to use when we build profiles of people and snap... we’ve got employers devaluing workers who then present themselves as low paid and disposable and uninterested.  Since advancement is uncertain and  mostly impossible co-workers aren’t talking to each other’s about that—they are talking about  what they can—common complaints.  Yep..there are a lot of folks running around feeling confused because they were sold a fairy talethat can’t come true and that’s on the inside...while on the outside they are expected to tie their identity to work in the eyes of the world.  

So How  to we seek peace and joy in the post-corona era?

Well my closet economist says “break up the monopolies” so real competition exists...but not only competition  in terms of product....competition in terms of employing  diverse workplace environments, organization structures, and of course there must be a way to redistribute work related wealth because we are near the end of the monopoly game right now and in fact the rich players are lending money  to the poor players just so they can keep collecting enough rent so that the poor  player gets around to  go (payday) one more time.   Yet THAT IS NOT ENOUGH 

To walk with each other seeking peace and joy we are going to  have to exhibit  the strength needed to value “non-work” characteristicss in ourselves and others.  We are going to need to admit that the matching and ladder  stories don’t work with the way work is conducted  post-corona and a collective effort is going to need to be made to help employers admit that too without blaming employees.  Seeking peace will  mean finding people who you can hang with outside of your. Workplace and your work mentality.  In short for the large majority of people who are not working for a cause —work may be best thought of as less who you are or what you are and more what you are doing right now... thinking of work as temporary may not please employers, but many of them have created this need to begin with.  Thinking.of work as temporary however may allow us to assume personal growth that can be focused on a variety of work tasks  may be helpful and teaching each other things so that we all can connect to accomplish things outside of job titles  could empower folks that have been squashed and will be squashed by work for half a century.  

In summary let’s quit spreading these narratives about work culture that will never work post corona... there is no back to normal there.  These just create internal and external stress.  Let’s treat  each other more “holistically” and demand that employers quit using these useless  narratives to structure  work settings and incentive programs.  What if you got paid for the number of co-workers you helped learn a task or for helping someone with an art project outside of the office?  How about we get real about “big business” and admit that our system is bought and paid for by monopolies in all major sectors of our economy?  Social media is controlled by two  global. Companies...Big Pharma  has about 5 players.  Health care and health insurance is dominated by a clinical care model and a handful of companies that set rates and rewards for services and thus premiums.  There is no free market as large retail and nationwide retailers like Amazon control supply side production and distribution through pricing  and processing .  Higher ed financing  creates a ass  of people tied to the company store due to debt.  In short, we are chaining  people to uninspiring things because our traditional narratives don’t work and we don’t want to admit that we have created wage slaves.  

So to seek peace and joy we will need to be curious and experiment liberally with work  environments and attitudes.  Helping each other will be a key.  

Conclusions?  Well those will come when Jesus talks with Buddha in about a week on the blog..