Do you have Employability Insurance? Having a variety of insurance
programs is part of every successful person's risk management package.
Health, life, auto, home replacement, and renter's insurance,
workman's compensation, unemployment and disability insurance are
common forms of insurance that provide a sense of security about the
future. However, with all the downsizings and mergers taking place
these past few years, many workers are looking for another type of
insurance, employability insurance.
What would employability insurance look like if it could be found?
It would be a means of insuring that no matter what happened in the
workplace there would be another opportunity for a job equal to or
better than the one currently held. How much would this cost? Like
any insurance policy, that depends.
Realities of Lifetime Employment
Lifetime employment generally insures a paycheck, but it does not
insure the opportunity to challenge yourself mentally, to do the job
you enjoy, to exercise your leadership skills, or to be rewarded with
a sense of achievement. For many people, collecting a paycheck each
month is all that is asked. However, many of these people have
become slaves to the "golden handcuffs." They have lost the will to
achieve, to extend themselves, to put their potential into motion and
to make a contribution.
Six Areas of Self-Insurance
1. Expertise
It is important to remember that an expertise is not the topic of the
work being done. A person may be an engineer, but her expertise
could be design, or failure analysis, or even development of
promotional ideas for marketing a product.
2. Professional Contribution
3. Organization Perception
We should spend a lot of time on that subject. After all, each
person who works for a company is a major investor in that company.
They may not be investing capital resources, but each worker from the
receptionist to the CEO invests time, energy, emotions, and
creativity. As a major investor, we owe it to ourselves to
understand how that company operates and to understand how best to
make our concerns heard and understood. This is the third area of
employment insurance: organization perception.
Each company works by different rules. Some are healthy and
productive; some are petty and dysfunctional. As part of the
research, each person needs to clearly identify where the
opportunities are to make a difference and when some problems are
part of the culture and will never change. Organization perception
requires a strong understanding and utilization of the internal
political procedures for getting things done. Few people know enough
about their company's culture and the channels for getting things
done.
4. Leadership
5. Networking
The skill that is developed through associations in professional
organizations is networking. However, exercising this skill should
not be limited to conferences, luncheons or committee work in the
professional organization. Practice these skills with people in
other departments, at other sites, with vendors, with customers and
with people in other companies. Use your e-mail to make connections,
solve problems, find resources, and most importantly, to build a
support network for yourself.
6. Strategic Planning
This strategic planning includes a variety of thinking and goal
setting tasks. In particular, it requires the design of personal and
professional objectives and how they will be achieved. Any growth
requires the expression of energy and the stretching of new skills.
An effective strategic plan requires that you look ahead, planning
the choices you will make and evaluating the outcomes of possible
opportunities before committing to them. It identifies areas where
development is needed and it designs a strategy for accomplishing
that growth. Strategic planning may require negotiation with
management to incorporate new challenges. The key is that with
effective strategic planning you become the designer of your career
and the manager of your fate in the employment world.
Addressing each of these six areas of employability insurance
requires discipline and effort. Some of it means a sacrifice of free
time and a sacrifice of energy. However, doesn't any insurance
policy require a sacrifice of immediate gratification for long range
security?
(Dr. Rogerson is president of LYNCO Associates, Inc. Through this
company she assists people in managing the process of change in their
lives, careers and organizations. She is also the Executive Director
for the Network Exchange for Women, a member affiliate of NAFE in
Colorado Springs, CO.
There was a time when companies hired people for life. In Japan,
some companies still hire people for life. However, in America, the
shifting tides of the marketplace are making lifetime employment with
one company not only unlikely, but unattractive as well. Many of us,
still uncomfortable with change, tend to fall into a complacency
about our careers and expect the company to "support" us forever.
This is just not realistic. Nor, if you think about it is it wise
for your own career potential.
So what is the alternative? If we were to design a self-insured
program of employability insurance it would require a regular
expenditure of energy. This energy would include some tough critical
thinking, diligent planning, and some calculated risk taking. There
are several areas that need to be addressed to insure employability:
expertise, professional contribution, organization perception,
leadership, networking, and strategic planning.
Everybody has an expertise in something. Identifying what you do
well takes a little digging. Generally those things that we do
without effort are perceived as an expertise by others, but to
ourselves, they are "no big deal." Identifying accomplishments is a
good place to begin. Make a list of those things that were done both
on and off the job that made you really feel good about yourself. It
doesn't matter that no one else was aware of the accomplishment.
Professional contribution is the next concept and it has two parts.
First, there is the matter of contributing professionally to the
company. It can be a great challenge to find out just how your
skills might best be used in the environment as it exists. It might
also be necessary to do some research to determine how those skills
could be beneficial to the company in a time of economic crisis, or
market shifts.
It is seldom that we take the time to really evaluate the company's
needs, goals, problems, and potentials. In fact, most of us probably
know more about our stock market investments than we do about the
company in which we are investing our lives and futures.
A fourth area, leadership, is tied in with another aspect of
professional contribution. Leadership is not confined to the task of
management within a particular organization. It cuts across company
boundaries and looks at what needs doing within the profession.
Making a leadership contribution to the profession as a whole can
include anything from an designing a new invention to volunteering
for the local and national professional organization.
Professional organizations are an important means of identifying
marketplace trends that could directly affect your future. Working
through professional organizations can provide a great source of
understanding, support and ideas for solving work related issues,
getting a sense of the greater industry needs and for developing
management and communication skills that would probably be ignored in
the workplace. Also, professional organizations provide the contacts
to let us know who needs help, what projects are going on, how the
work is being done, what technology is being tested, and most
importantly, who is hiring.
Developing each of these areas requires diligent application of the
sixth category of employability insurance: strategic planning. It
is easy to get caught up in the day to day activities and chores of
the workplace. However, just as we have insurance premiums taken out
of our paychecks, we need to take time off the top of our work week
to plan, organize, analyze, and develop strategies that will insure
that continuous employment will be in the future.