今年看起來有可能與去年非常相似,而且只會越來越相似。對2018年眾多熱門工作技能的需求依然在上漲(而且甚至比2018年的增速更快)。雇主依然更愿意發放非固定的補償,例如一次性績效獎金,而不是采取漲薪這種會推高自己日常管理成本的舉措。此外,一些經濟學家所預測的早該發生的另一場經濟衰退,在如今看來依然只不過是遠方地平線上的一朵不成氣候的烏云罷了。
然而,如果你一心要與時俱進,抑或甚至為自己的職業未來早做打算,以下五種做法可以讓你在未來12個月中改變自己的工作生活。你不妨:
1. 要求漲薪,或者換一份薪資更高的工作
由于工作機會眾多,越來越多的雇員已經失去了耐心,因為很多雇主在過去十多年以來提供的薪資年增幅只有微不足道的3%。部分原因在于,你可能會覺得手頭比上一年更為拮據,但這并非只是你的感覺:PayScale最新的季度分析顯示,2018年通脹調整后薪資實際上下降了1.3%,該現象幾乎涵蓋除IT之外的所有行業,以及舊金山大區之外的所有美國城市(沒想到吧)。難怪職工安置公司Addison Group在最近對全美約1000名雇員的調查中發現,盡管72%的被調查對象稱他們對其工作感到滿意,但有60%的人正在尋找新工作,他們表示薪資是最大的原因。
想要在這場超大型搶椅游戲中提升自己獲勝的概率嗎?不妨在搜索時關注那些雇員數量在50至499名之間的公司。ADP最新的月就業報告稱,它們在2018年12月招聘了12.9萬名新員工,是員工數量500名以及以上公司同月招聘數量(5.4萬名)的兩倍多。
2. 躊躇滿志地參加眾多的退休人士歡送會
在嬰兒潮時期出生的那一代人中,最年長的(1946年生)在2011年已經有65歲,但很多人推遲了退休,有的是因為財務原因,有的則是因為他們熱愛自己的工作,或者兩者兼而有之。這一現象導致企業出現了頑固的首席級別高管晉升瓶頸,而受此影響,20世紀60年代和70年代出生的人士也就沒法把自己的職位讓給年輕人。這一現象被人力資源部門稱之為“灰色天花板”,它也是那些有志向上發展的千禧一代和年輕人才感到沮喪的原因之一。如果你也是其中一員,請不要泄氣。調查公司Glassdoor發布的一篇新報告預測,嬰兒潮時期人士的大規模退休最終將為美國企業帶來不利影響。該調查稱,這一影響將于2019年開始,而且會延續數十年的時間,因為后續數代人也將逐漸步入退休年齡。
隨著大多數發達國家出生率的下降,美國出生率在2018年達到了30年以來的新低——1.76。這意味著勞動力市場的緊張局面在今后很長一段時間內都會處于無解狀態,這對于雇主來說是個令人頭疼的問題。然而,如果你一直在等待嬰兒潮時期的人掛出“告老還鄉”的牌子,那么這無疑是個好消息。
3. 免費在線學習區塊鏈、高級編程語言Python或分布式系統基礎架構Hadoop
技術員工安置公司Rose International的創始人兼主席蘇·芭提雅指出,人們每天可能會與多種技術打交道,但卻對其內部工作原理知之甚少,也鮮有人考慮“這些技術如何能夠讓自己或同事的工作變得更好、更快,并降低工作成本。”她提到,大多數的知識型工作者會用具體的職業門類來標榜自己,例如“我是做營銷的”或很多人會使用“我不是技術人員。”但IT與其他職業的界限正在迅速變得模糊,而且很快將會消失。例如,IBM預測,在未來兩年中,對技術和數據分析技能有要求的工作崗位的數量將從當前的約36.4萬個增至270多萬個,而且其中很多崗位都與人工智能有關,這些工作需要將IT專長與算法無法提供的“軟”技能(例如同理心、想象力和幽默感等)進行新的整合。
我們基本無法猜測未來的工作到底需要什么樣的技能。(有孩子的人不妨了解一下:世界經濟論壇開展的一項新調查預計,如今65%的學前兒童在未來將從事當前并不存在的工作。)芭提雅指出,可以明確的是,你可以在2019年通過盡可能多地去學習那些顛覆你所在行業的技術,對此進行未雨綢繆。可以從Coursera和edX這樣的在線課程開始。她還表示,不要認為自己并不是學習“科學、技術、工程和數學”(STEM)的料,并以此來為自己設置條條框框。即便是學習Python這類基本的編程語言也可能是十分有用的,因為它可以“幫助你理解編程員的思考方式,這樣你便可以更加輕松地與IT團隊打交道。”
4. 學會適應這一現象:沒錯,老板在監督
如果當前對社交媒體隱私的侵犯讓你感到憤怒不已,那么你必然不會喜歡雇主已經使用或將要使用的一項技術。它通常有一個十分悅耳的名字“傾聽科技”,實為一系列復雜的數據搜集工具,用于搜集和報告有關個人的信息,從工作日期間在辦公室周邊地區移動的頻率和距離,一直到你登錄電腦的頻率和時間。一項名為“電子郵件抓取”的做法通過在郵件對話中植入復雜的算法,來確定你的思想狀態以及對工作的專注程度。你的椅子可能裝有感應器,用于記錄你在桌前坐了多長時間。這類技術還有很多很多。
公司將在2019年加強對員工的監控,而且這類技術“如今不只是觀察而已,還會發揮督促作用”,研究雇主技術使用情況的Gartner集團副總裁布萊恩·克洛普說道。如果你用的是這種“告密”椅子,“你的電腦將在你坐下1個小時之后提示你應該站起來走動走動。”
克洛普認為,所有這類偵測都是出于善意的。例如,員工可能白天都在電腦上,而且晚上也會使用電腦到很晚的時間,但他們又不大愿意在例行雇員調查中對其無止盡的工作時長發牢騷。“在看到這一切之后,經理們可能會做出的反應是:‘好吧,讓我們來調整下這位員工的工作量。’”克洛普說道。這聽起來毫無壞處,但Gartner最近的調查顯示,41%的公司使用了“傾聽科技”來搜索醫療數據,對這一領域隱私權的侵犯對于大多數美國人來說都是無法接受的。
即便如此,克洛普稱,在公司調查的雇員當中,也有人對雇主采用高科技進行窺探的做法毫不在乎,而且其比例已經從2015年的10%升至2018年的30%。他指出,如果雇主“直接告訴人們自己在搜集數據,并向其展示該技術對[雇員]的幫助。該數字會升至50%。我們預計不在意這一技術的員工比例還會上升。但公司一直都存在一些核心人員——我們認為這個比例在20%或25%——他們永遠都無法接受這種做法。”因此工作面試中又多了一項需要詢問的事項。
5. #MeToo運動升溫,感受到其熱度了嗎?(但愿是間接的)
Gartner對2019年的最后一項預測是:在去年導致數百位知名人士被掃地出門的反性騷擾運動#MeToo遠未結束,而且其聲勢將進一步發展壯大。克洛普指出:“2019年遭到開除的高管將比2018年更多。我們將看到雇主對這類指控的態度發生重大變化,即從‘我們并不知道存在此事’變為‘我們已經積極地查出了違法者,并進行了相應的處理。’”克洛普表示,由于“三緘其口這種做法并不奏效”,因此新的方法如果不實用,也將成為空談。他在提及谷歌近期的動蕩時指出:“如果紙終究包不住火,那么雇主自然會希望直面這一問題,并將之公之于眾,這樣,雇主還可以借此來控制輿情。”記下了。(財富中文網)
本文作者安妮·費希爾是職場專家,也是提供職場建議的專欄作家。她在《財富》開設“解決問題”(Work It Out)專欄,向讀者提供21世紀的工作與生活指導。 譯者:馮豐 審校:夏林 |
This year is likely to look a lot like last year, only more so. Demand for many of the most-wanted job skills of 2018 is still rising (and at an even faster clip than in 2018). Employers would still rather hand out variable pay, like one-time performance bonuses, than bloat overhead with higher salaries. And another recession, which some economists say is ominously overdue, remains, for now, just a small dark cloud on a distant horizon.
Still, if you’re intent on keeping up with the zeitgeist—and maybe even future-proofing your career—here are five ways you could shake up your work life in the next 12 months. You might:
1. Negotiate for a raise, or change jobs for more money.
With opportunities so plentiful, more people are losing patience with the piddling 3% salary increases employers have been handing out for the past decade or so. That’s partly because, if you feel more pinched financially than a year ago, you’re not imagining it: Inflation-adjusted wages actually dropped 1.3% in 2018, in almost every industry except IT, and everywhere in the U.S. except (surprise) the San Francisco metro area, according to PayScale’s latest quarterly analysis. No wonder staffing firm Addison Group found in a recent survey of about 1,000 employees nationwide that, although 72% say they’re happy in their work, 60% are job hunting anyway, citing pay as the biggest reason.
Want to boost your chances of snagging a seat in this gigantic game of musical chairs? Try focusing your search on businesses with 50 to 499 employees. They brought 129,000 new staffers on board in December 2018, says ADP’s latest monthly employment report—well over twice the 54,000 people hired during the same month by enterprises with 500 employees or more.
2. Raise a glass at lots of retirement parties.
The oldest Baby Boomers, born in 1946, reached age 65 in 2011, but many have put off retiring, either for financial reasons or because they enjoy what they do, or both. That has created a persistent bottleneck of C-suite positions and other senior roles occupied by folks in their 60s and 70s. Dubbed the “gray ceiling” by HR types, it’s a source of frustration for millennials and other young talent itching to move up. If that includes you, take heart. A new report from Glassdoor predicts that a tsunami of Boomer retirements will finally hit corporate America, beginning in 2019 and continuing “for decades to come,” the study says, as successive generations in turn reach retirement age.
Combined with falling birth rates in most of the developed world—the U.S. birth rate hit a 30-year low of 1.76 in 2018 — this means no end in sight for tight labor markets, which will be tough on employers. But if you’ve been waiting for a Boomer to hang out the “Gone Fishing” sign, it’s unalloyed good news.
3. Learn Blockchain, Python, or Hadoop online for free.
You might come across several types of tech every day without understanding much about their inner workings, or considering “how they could serve you and your coworkers better, faster, and cheaper,” notes Sue Bhatia, founder and chairperson of tech staffing firm Rose International. She notes that most knowledge workers pigeonhole themselves into narrow categories—”I’m a marketing person” or, significantly, “I’m not a tech person.” But the boundaries between IT and everything else are blurring fast and will soon disappear. IBM forecasts, for instance, that in the next two years, the number of jobs requiring tech and data analysis skills is set to explode, from about 364,000 current openings to more than 2.7 million; and many of those roles are related to artificial intelligence, which calls for new combinations of IT know-how and “soft” skills that algorithms (so far) lack, like empathy, imagination, and a sense of humor.
Exactly what form work will take in the future is nearly impossible to guess. (Got kids? Think about this: A new World Economic Forum study estimates that 65% of primary-school-age children today will eventually have a job that does not yet exist.) What is clear, Bhatia says, is that you can future-proof yourself in 2019 by learning as much as you can about whatever technology is rocking your industry. Start with free courses from sites like Coursera and edX. “Don’t set limits on yourself by assuming you’re ‘not cut out for’ STEM,” she adds. Even studying up on a basic programming language like Python can be useful, since it will “help you understand how programmers think, so you’ll have an easier time interacting with your IT team.”
4. Get used to the idea that, yes, Big Brother is watching.
If the ongoing flap over social-media privacy has got your dander up, you’re not going to like the technology your employer either already uses or probably soon will. Often called by the friendly-sounding name “listening technology,” this is a range of sophisticated data-gathering tools that collect and report information about you—from how often, and how far, you move around the office during the day, to how often and when you log onto your computer. A practice called “email scraping” applies a complex algorithm to your email conversations, designed to determine your state of mind and your level of engagement in your job. Your chair may contain sensors that record how long you’ve been parked at your desk. And the list goes on.
2019 will see more monitoring of employees, and now it “will go beyond observation and start nudging,” says Brian Kropp, a group vice president at Gartner who has studied employers’ use of the technology. If you have one of those tattletale chairs, “your computer will notify you after an hour of sitting that you should get up and take a little walk.”
Kropp contends that the intent of all this spying is benign. People who hesitate to complain about their endless work hours on traditional employee surveys, for example, might be logging on to their computers not only all day but far into the evening too. “Seeing that, a manager’s response could be, ‘Okay, let’s look at adjusting that person’s workload’,” says Kropp. Sounds harmless enough, but a recent Gartner study found that 41% of companies use “listening technology” to ferret out medical data, an intrusion into one area where most Americans consider their right to privacy to be inviolable.
Even so, among employees the firm has surveyed, Kropp says the percentage who claim they’re not bothered by employers’ high-tech snooping has climbed from just 10% in 2015 to 30% in 2018. That rises to 50% if an employer “tells people up front that they’re gathering the data and can show how it helps [employees],” he notes. “We expect that comfort level to increase. But there will always be a core group of people—we think 20% or 25%—who are just not ever going to be okay with it.” One more thing to ask about in job interviews.
5. Feel the heat (if only indirectly) as the #MeToo movement picks up steam.
One last prediction from Gartner for 2019: Far from winding down, the #MeToo anti-sexual-misconduct movement that led to hundreds of high-profile firings last year will gain even more momentum. “More executives will be ousted in 2019 than in 2018,” says Kropp. “We’ll see a major shift in employers’ response to accusations, from ‘We didn’t know this was going on’ to ‘We’ve actively sought out wrongdoers and dealt with them.'” The new approach is nothing if not pragmatic, since “trying to hush things up doesn’t work,” Kropp observes. Pointing to the recent turmoil at Google, he adds, “If something is going to come out anyway, you as an employer want to get out in front of it and address it publicly, so that you control the conversation.” Noted.
Anne Fisher is a career expert and advice columnist who writes “Work It Out,” Fortune’s guide to working and living in the 21st century. |
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