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Working and ageing
46 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

3.3. The changing world of work

Internal (enterprise) and external (societal) labour markets are changing. At
present there are two socioeconomic trends, which mutually complement each
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other. Company tenure ( ) is becoming less common for employees (caused
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by dismissals, reengineering, outsourcing, etc.) and job tenure ( ) is also
decreasing. Thus, a guarantee of a lifelong workplace as well as lifelong
employment in the same job is becoming increasingly unrealistic. Many
traditional workplaces in the blue-collar sector (declining importance of
manufacturing) and even in the white-collar sector (such as banking) have
already disappeared or are disappearing. Enterprises are increasingly forced
to produce goods and services using fewer and fewer employees to remain
competitive. There is a tendency in many enterprises for core employees to
do the regular work, while more discontinuous activities are contracted from
the external labour market (such as temporary workers or employees with a
fixed-term contract). This will dominate employer-employee relationships and
will have a strong impact on unemployed persons in the future (Booth et al.,
2002; Cappelli and Neumark, 2004; Pfeifer, 2005; 2009). The future labour
force will probably consist of:
(a) core employees: a small group of highly qualified experts, technicians and
managers; and a core group of skilled/unskilled employees;
(b) a quantitatively important group of highly qualified external experts, who
will temporarily work for enterprises on a contract basis. This group will
take on many tasks formerly done by middle management;
(c) a temporary labour force of semi-skilled employees for peak times;
(d) short-term unemployed persons;
(e) long-term unemployed persons.
Such a labour force distribution seems ideal from the viewpoint of enterprise
costs. However, just-in-time production going on in enterprises is consistent
with just-in-time work and, in many enterprises, even just-in-time training. This
more vulnerable future ʻemployment relationships modelʼ may, however,
disrupt continuity of production of goods and services in case of difficulties
(such as supply bottlenecks, shortage of qualified staff). It is just as much in
enterprisesʼ interests to maintain continuity of production of goods and
services, which implies more or less stable employer-employee relationships.

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( ) The German expression is Betriebsbindung.
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( ) The German expression is Berufsbindung.