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Workplace Trend:
Career Flexibility
While corporations are
busy merging or downsizing -- slimming down their permanent
staffs -- small businesses are multiplying
and building their staffs. The by-product? An unprecedented
growth of "flexible careers."
© 1997,
by Lisa M. Roberts
Consulting, contract working, private
practice, home business...whatever name it goes by, it's becoming
a common interlude in today's career. As former employees of
big firms, many of today's entrepreneurs are using business relationships
established in the traditional workplace as the bridge to cross
over to small business...and then back again.
While big businesses dissolve
and/or slim down their permanent staffs, small businesses
are multiplying and building staffs. Hence a symbiotic
relationship is starting to form between big business and SOHO
business. As the two grow increasingly interdependent, big business
nourishes its smaller counterpart by channeling overflow work
(and sometimes financial investment) in their direction. In return,
small business keeps its larger counterpart afloat by filling
in the gaps through transitional times and beyond.
With this new bridge between
big and small business firmly underway, career flexibility
has surfaced as a progressive and promising by-product. Career
flexibility is based on business relationships that stay intact
even when the parties involved move around to different companies,
as well as on work that is portable (i.e., technology-based).
-- i.e., a career that can begin in an
outside office, ove to a home office, and then transfer back
again.
In the Information Age, it is
no longer enough to learn a trade and practice it for a life
vocation; today the practice of learning itself is in demand.
To stay competitive, companies need performers who can locate,
analyze and apply information, then repeat this process with
every new project.
This type of work lends itself
to computer-based positions -- work
that is portable. That means you can start your career
in an outside office, move to a home office, and then transfer
back again. Corporate management may not be as interested in
controlling your time under their physical wing as they are in
raking in the fruits of your information-processing labor.
So whether corporations act as
employers or clients, and whether you work as an employee or
consultant, careers are growing f l e x i b l e . They
can stretch over several work options as opportunity is recognized
and snap back into place when the time is right.
- © 1997 Lisa M. Roberts, all rights reserved. The above article
is an excerpt from How
to Raise A Family & A Career Under One Roof: A Parent's Guide
to Home Business, a title highly recommended by La Leche
League, Home Office Computing and the Family Christian
Bookclub. Order
your own copy today!
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