By John Zogby
First Globals™ are fascinating to me – and actually all audiences I have spoken to. I see heads nodding in affirmation when I describe this group because it captures their children, grandchildren, or themselves. In Prague, our discussion was very practical. The chair of Forum 2000 was the main organizer of our event – an American named Pepper de Callier. Pepper co-owns a major global head-hunting firm based in Prague and writes a column on trends in employment. Pepper was particularly struck by the mobility of First Globals™. Just what does the urge to travel around the world, to seek and actually experience new places and cultures, and to consider one’s self a “citizen of the planet Earth” mean for the future of work, workers, and employers?
First of all, the definition of work will change. Today’s 20-somethings will have had four “jobs” by age 30 and 10 jobs by age 40. Back in my day, that was considered unstable. Today it is a fact of life. Company loyalty certainly isn’t what it used to be and steady employment will actually be a series of projects – independently contracted, for a set duration of time. And the work can (and most assuredly will) be done anywhere. I hear a lot about “working from home”, but where is home? Today it may be in a parents’ home, tomorrow in Bangalore, and the day after in Panama City. Companies like IBM are both leading the charge, and following the trend with their “globally integrated enterprise”, multiple nerve centers and a mobile work force.
Secondly, what about job retention? That also will be redefined. To be sure, personal services employees (eg. restaurant servers, physical therapists, teachers) will be stationery, though they too may look elsewhere for better deals), but today’s 20-somethings employed in a global workforce will be constantly on the move. Employers will need to be sure that they can keep these Globals for the duration of a project and hope that the experience is positive enough for them to carry good will and positive references about their projects and workplace with them – for the next wave of new hires. It may look bleak for Globals at the moment, but in the growth economy that emerges they will be in the driver’s seat.
Finally many rules will need to be re-written. A new generation brings to the workplace a new set of circumstances. For example, a new look at privacy and openness. As I write in my book, The Way We’ll Be:
As to what such a high level of openness portends for society at large, I think I had a glimpse of that future in a chance encounter my wife and I had with a twenty-year-old waitress in Utica during the summer of 2007. In the course of a conversation about YouTube and public access, I asked our waitress about her own limits on what she would reveal.
“My boobs,” she answered, not terribly demurely, “but only on Halloween, and only for my friends.” “Well,” I said, “I’m your friend today, but tomorrow I might not be. Can you stop me from sharing your, um, breasts with the rest of the world, or with the company you’re hoping will hire you?”
“No,” she said, after some serious thought, “but so many of us do this in one form or another that employers are just going to have to adjust or they won’t have anyone left to hire.”
And thus, I remember thinking as she wandered off to the next table, what’s bad for beauty queens and teenage ingénues today becomes business as usual the day after tomorrow.
What do you think?
