Robert Safuto

Consider the following quote from a news story I saw the other day.

More Americans worked for themselves in the fourth quarter, another sign of the dearth of opportunities in the job market.

Bloomberg - Self Employment in U.S. Climbs, Reflecting Lack of Other Jobs

I think that this news is a hint about how the job market and thus the relationships between employees and employers is likely to change because of the current recession. People who might not otherwise strike out on their own are forced to do so because of the employment situation. I venture to guess that a decent number of those people will find a measure of success outside of the corporate environment. The conditions certainly exist to give them a chance.

While the conditions in the corporate job market stink there has never been a better time to start your own business. If you're a writer you can self publish a blog at a cost of $0 per month using WordPress.com or Blogger. If you make stuff you can use eBay or Etsy.com to set up a virtual storefront. If you want to be a consultant or advisor in the industry of your choice you can set up a free blog to spread your ideas. Spend roughly $70 a month for unlimited cell phone service, $50 a month for high speed internet access and less than $1000 for a great laptop computer and you've got just about all the tools you need to run a consulting business. The same technologies were available a decade ago but today the costs have come down considerably, the features have improved and there are more service providers to choose from. All good things if you've become unexpectedly untethered from the corporate world.

I was recently pointed to the a movie called Lemonade (watch the trailer below) which you can see for free on Hulu. Lemonade is a story about people who lost their jobs and bounced back by doing something entrepreneurial and unconventional. For these people the illusion of security in the big corporate culture was shattered. So they made lemonade out of the lemons. Very moving stuff.

Technology will continue to become more affordable while also becoming more powerful. The success stories of those who struck out on their own during this time will resonate just as the stories of success during the dot com boom resonated with people who chose to leave corporate jobs to start internet companies. Does this mean that solo practitioners will rise up to kill the corporate culture? I don't think so. But it will put pressure on the corporate culture to alter the dynamics of the relationships with employees. After all, the best and the brightest will see another path and be tempted to take it, especially when the economy improves. And while corporations may be slow to act that will certainly want to figure out ways to retain their best talent.

Consider the following career path in the years to come. A person works for a large corporate entity, learns a lot, over achieves and decides she wants something more. Perhaps she wants more freedom, more family time, more creative leeway, etc. So she starts a small business in the same industry, perhaps part time at first. The business eventually scales to the point where she can leave her job and run her business full time. If shet has success and grows over the next few years the time may come when that same corporate company wants to buy her business which would effectively make her a corporate employee again. When the company does that they probably don't want just the business. They want the lady with the drive, determination and smarts that made the business happen. The terms between the employer and employee in that situation are likely to be vastly different that they were before.

The fact is that in the situation above it would have been more economical for the company to treat the employee different from the get go. Many of the best companies already acknowledge this new reality of the workplace. Google allows engineers "20% time" to work on projects of their choosing. Netflix allows employees to take as much vacation time as they like. Yes you read that correctly. What's interesting is that these are very attractive benefits that have nothing to do with salary. Any business can compete on salary. But competing on culture is a very different approach that companies will need to consider if they want to attract and retain the best talent.

This idea of culture ties in to the self-employment trend. Sometimes people leave jobs because they want more money. But often it's about more than that. Many times people just want the opportunity to make more money via more responsibility. Google's 20% time offers engineers just that. If the projects turn out to be worthwhile those engineers get the chance to lead those projects. People also want more control of their own destiny. They want a say in decisions. They want to be able to unlock their creativity. In the dominant corporate culture money is the easiest thing to change while the really important things like opportunity, a voice, creativity and other intangibles are the hardest things to change. Those priorities need to be flipped.