All worked out

NEXT time you're turned down for that dream job you so desperately wanted, take heart. The smirking manager who decided at interview that you didn't fit the corporate image could soon be a creature of the past. We're entering a new world of work: and it's one where the employee is king.

So at least says Richard Donkin, the Financial Times journalist who has written a 350 page book about the world of work. And he should know: after all, he gave up work for a year to spend time finding out all about... work.

As the 21st century gets into its stride, we're entering what Richard calls a "free agent society". Modern communications technology has brought the world to our fingertips, says Richard, who was born in Dewsbury.

The result is that we're becoming a society of free agents - workers who shop around from one employer to another, doing a six-month contract here, a year there, often working from home and always with an eye cocked for the next lucrative opportunity.

The result of this sea-change in working habits? "Employees are in a more powerful position today than for a long, long time," Richard says excitedly.

"I think employers have up to now thought they had a right to employees. They are going to have to start thinking again on that one. They are privileged to have employees."

You may not have noticed this change in your employer's attitude yet, but the revolution in working habits is already under way. Look at the US, where one in six jobs are already 'contract' work and where the average time spent with one employer is now two and a half years, compared to 20 or 30 years a couple of decades ago.

It's taking off less rapidly here, Richard admits: but the free agent society is coming. And not only employers will have to pull up their socks and spruce up their thinking. We're all going to have to change the way we think about work - and it won't all be a bed of roses.

The old idea of a job for life may soon be gone for good. We're going to have to be much better at marketing our skills, spotting opportunities and seizing them. For most people, job security will be a thing of the past as we flit from short-term contract to short-term contract.

Traditional jobs won't disappear entirely, Richard says. "We are still going to need policemen, firemen, ambulancemen. But people are going to have to stop thinking they can just sit back. We're going to have to think of work as work in the future and not as a job for life. We're going to have to work at work, start building skills earlier, building CVs earlier."

Change is never easy. Richard once spent time with the mining communities of the Rhondda valley. "I cannot think of anything worse than going down a hole in the ground and mining coal for a living," he says. "But the people who did developed a real camaraderie, a pride in their jobs. It was very difficult for people like that to come and work at what North East ship-builders called women's work."

But change is inevitable, too - and for Richard it can't come soon enough. We're all middle-class now, he says. Free agent society will give us just the opportunity we need to take a long, hard look at our middle-class working culture and establish where it has all gone wrong.

He has no doubt it has. We are all wage slaves, he says - trapped in a corporate culture we can't escape. His language is uncompromising. "We may not be in chains," he says. "But we are privileged slaves, manacled to long hours and our material needs, failing to savour the delights of everyday life."

So how did we get into this mess? It's partly the result, he says, of our endless greedy appetite for the good things of life. "We're in this mad, crazy pursuit of material goods. We live in a culture of manufactured consumerism inspired by advertising and the media."

Ironically, the long hours we work in pursuit of material wealth often leave us no time to enjoy the fruits of our labours, he says.

Not only greed is to blame for us being shackled to out jobs, however. There is, Richard says, a subtler but no less powerful influence at work too. Guilt. Somewhere beneath the surface of our brave modern world, 16th century Puritanism is alive and still kicking.

Back in the days of the Puritans, Richard says, good honest toil was seen as a road to salvation. The work ethic was developed then, gradually became ingrained in our culture and is with us still. Today, the religious element of that work ethic has largely gone - but the ethic itself remains.

A strong work ethic isn't necessarily bad. The trouble is, Richard says, in the absence of any religious element it's been transformed by capitalism into a corporate ideology that controls our lives. Not only has work taken over our lives - the corporate culture of needing to seem busy is so strong many of us spend long hours doing work of little real value.

Now is the time, he says, to take stock.

"We need to ask ourselves why we work at all," he says. "Nowadays, people primarily work for a living, a salary. But we need to transcend the notion that work is solely about pay day.

"We should be developing a value system that concentrates on the needs of society. We need to take the old ethic, dismantle it, analyse it, and then reconstruct something which makes more sense."

This is where the new opportunities heralded by free agent society may come into their own, he says. Work should entail making use of our personal and professional skills to make the world a better place - and it should see us doing something we enjoy.

Whereas in the past our parents may have encouraged us not to dream and told us to keep our feet planted squarely on the ground, in the future we may all be able to pursue our dreams.

The world of free agent employment will be a dynamic, uncertain one that may not be for everybody - but it will be full of new opportunities. If there's something you really want to do, he says, you'll be able to do it, and make a living out of it.

"My advice would be, don't be practical," he says. "Dream - and make that dream a reality. There will be fantastic opportunities: and if you really want to do something, then do it."

Blood, Sweat and Tears, by Richard Donkin, is published by Texere on May 14, price £18.99.

Updated: 12:18 Wednesday, May 02, 2001