Prepare for the New Permanent Temp
by Michael Schrage  |  12:00 PM July 15, 2013
http://blogs.hbr.org/schrage/2013/07/prepare-for-the-new-permanent.htm


Growth is about growing value in a business. This article touches on how companies try to optimize their value creation via dramatically different human resource approaches. This has a huge impact on our current state and the future. This is extremely important and probably very personal
either for us or our kids. This is truly a major leadership issue going forward!!

The fastest-growing segments of America's job market — by far — are temporary and part-time employment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of US part-time employees hit a record high of 28 million. Temporary employment has jumped 50% since the depths of the financial crisis… 

...More companies want far greater flexibility with far fewer people. Their greatest human capital concerns have shifted. They seem increasingly focused on productively cultivating that core 20% to 25% of people who reliably generate the 70% to 80% of enterprise value. They're rethinking their economic relationships with the rest… 

..Have people been commoditized? Of course not. But the ways people's knowledge, skills and expertise get plugged into the workplace has been. For roughly half of America's workforce, the role, rules and requirements of "the job" are dramatically different than they were even a decade ago… 

..It's not that troubled economies and disruptive innovations inherently shed more jobs than they create; it's that ongoing global restructuring of markets makes temporary and/or part-time employment more attractive for more organizations. Outside of the enterprise core group, bringing full-time employees onboard is increasingly seen as a riskier and less rewarding business bet….. 

…Most people looking for a job today aren't competing against each other. They're competing against alternative ways to getting that job done. For most organizations, people are a means and medium to an end. They're not hiring employees, they're hiring value creation. If they can get that value — or most of it — from contingency workers, outsourcing, automation, innovative processes or capital investment, why wouldn't they?