Since Charles Handy first defined the future of work in terms of a ‘portfolio’ of activities, mothers and seniors have been the first to find themselves on this new career path – they haven’t had a great deal of choice as the workplace remains less than family-friendly and people over 50 find themselves squeezed out, astonished to find that the workplace eschews their expensive expertise in preference for younger, more malleable minds.
But many have yet to recognise the concept and embrace the lifestyle.
Corporate women, having children later in life, typically stress themselves for the first four or five years of motherhood then cave in under the unremittingly unpredictable demands of their new responsibilities, try to solve the problem by working from home but end up leading very fragmented lives.
Seniors meantime struggle to get back into a traditional career through traditional means, not realising that the goalposts have moved since they found their last job. Or they hope and expect that recruitment agencies will appreciate and market their talents. The reality is employment consultants earn their commissions by finding and filling job vacancies with the easy ‘sell’ – which, as one television documentary famously demonstrated by comparing a father and daughter applying for the same jobs, usually means the young, attractive and promising.
Young people, too, are still given traditional careers advice, with no guidance on how to develop the inner resources to cope with the inevitable and numbing knock-backs. They look for traditional jobs in a shrinking market, lose confidence and heart, then sink into apathy and depression, which makes it even harder to get that first foot on the ladder.
And then came the Recession. Companies dropped staff by the dozen and then the hundred. We know that there are no longer ‘jobs for life’ with a sad, solitary fobwatch or carriage clock to celebrate 50 years in the same company; my father didn’t even get to celebrate with the pension he had paid for all his life, thanks to Robert Maxwell. But post-recession (or is it still a faux-post-recession?), workplace opportunities to replace the lost jobs are still few and far between, especially those offering salaries to match aspirational 21st century lifestyles.
Thus, even the mainstream mid-career professional is being forced to rethink direction and lifestyle.
I hope they’ll alight here and discover the joys of Portfolio working. And join the women who are already treading the path.
Discover and uncover with us how to make Portfolio working work, how to create and manage a portfolio of interests without resorting to the stresses of ‘juggling’ (with the potential for dropping the ball!) and how to present a portfolio career in a way which acknowledges choice and commands respect.
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