From Forbes, John Winsor recounts the key points of a conversation he had with Jon Younger, Ph.D., a writer and advisor to HR tech startups. John writes: .
1. The employee base will look very different when companies begin to scale.
Imagine an organization staffed almost entirely by freelancers. A few years ago, Accenture predicted that, other than the C-suite, a Fortune 500 company would be entirely staffed by freelancers. Whether or not that scenario is realized, many organizations are drawing closer; Google, for example, now has more freelancers than full-time employees. So does Apple. In a recent Forbes article, I described outstanding businesses that had few or no full-time employees.
2. For employees, keeping skills up to date is key.
Instead of getting nervous or fearful about it, understand that it is happening and prepare. And, of course, keep your own skills up. I recently wrote about how employees can skill-proof their careers the way that top freelancers do. We know from research that the “half-life” of expertise is shrinking. For example, the half-life for engineers is 2.5 to 3 years. Freelancers get it. They have to go out there every day and sell themselves and do the work, so they are more attuned to the need to keep their skills up to date. Employees typically are less focused on remaining technically up to date for several reasons: for many, their career ambition turns from technical to managerial, so they shift their focus away from remaining technically strong. But that’s a mistake. In the final analysis, whether you’re full-time corporate or not, technical or not, you must anticipate a future that is different from today and requires change in your skill set—quantitatively and qualitatively—and plan accordingly.
Read the full story at Why Every Employee Should Think More Like A Freelancer
