Wired life puts paid to career ladder

THE concept of a career that is pursued throughout your working life is in "unavoidable decline", according to one of the Prime Minister's leading policy gurus.

In a pamphlet published next week by the left-of-centre think tank Demos, Professor John Gray, of the London School of Economics, argues that the government is promoting a concept that no longer exists: stability and continuity at work. "The very idea of a career makes less and less sense of people's lives," said Gray, who flirted with Thatcherite politics during the 1980s but is now a key member of Tony Blair's inner circle of advisers.

Gray argues that the successful post-career worker can take advantage of the opportunities in the so-called "knowledge economy" by sticking their fingers in a number of tasty pies. He calls this the "wired life", which prizes flexibility and personal growth over steady career progression.

"We are not prepared to make these sacrifices in terms of long hours to climb the ladder," he said. "It doesn't make much sense to follow these hierarchies if the whole company disappears or some of the steps in the ladder disappear in corporate restructuring."

Instead, the wired life means going it alone in order to follow your interests. Nice work if you can get it, you might think, but Gray warns that this portfolio approach - which frequently means operating in the virtual world of email and the internet - will have a detrimental effect on the social fabric of the nation. Basically all this juggling means there is little or no time to put anything back.

"What they should be doing is balancing the wired life with something that is more embedded in the community because in the long term it would more fulfilling," he said.

What we need more of, apparently, are entrepreneurs who use their knowledge skills in a socially beneficial way. Like wired workers, entrepreneurs are big on networking but their goals are less self- centred. Gray cites the Body Shop's Anita Roddick as a classic example of a social entrepreneur.

At a grassroots level, the social entrepreneur has been identified as a catalyst for social change. Glasgow even has its own school for entrepreneurs, which is helping local people to start useful projects in areas such as Drumchapel. "They have networks and an idea that will be of benefit to their community," said project co-ordinator Sandra Duncan.

Maud Marshall, a senior executive at Scottish Homes who combines her job with several seats on boards including the Scottish Arts Council and the Lighthouse design centre in Glasgow, is another example of a social entrepreneur who networks tirelessly. "My work is in different spheres but with the persistent theme of reaching individuals," she said. "I see all of them as engines for revival."

That she lives and works in Renfrewshire, where she is also a member of the local enterprise company, fits the Demos definition of an entrepreneur. Except that, confusingly, she also has a career.

Gray and his co-author Fernando Flores have argued that there are two substantially different styles of post-career work. However, few individuals the Sunday Herald spoke to fitted neatly into either category.

Wired people often turn out to be socially useful, while entrepreneurs can be wired. John Moorhouse worked in marketing for Shell in Aberdeen for 30 years, but left his job six years ago to become the classic wired worker, with business interests as far apart as Johannesburg, California and Livingston. He was also behind last week's launch of Irvine's new science-themed visitor attraction, the Big Idea.

"I do 12 things and each year I finish doing two or three of them and start another couple," he said. "Every five years my CV reads completely differently without having to go through the pain of changing jobs."

He also uses email and owns a mobile phone. By Gray's definition, Moorhouse is totally wired. However several of these "jobs" are done without payment, while the Big Idea was conceived as a way of creating jobs for local people. It seems he is a social entrepreneur too. Moorhouse also refutes the charge that because he travels a lot he is not part of a community: "I live in Edinburgh but I'm as much a part of Glasgow or Oakland or Irvine or anywhere else I work."

The idea that wired workers juggle several jobs because they have short attention spans and no longer term commitment to a job is contradicted by Nick Lyph, a design and marketing consultant who has run several companies, including an unsuccessful venture into selling alcoholic tea.

"None of the companies allow me to earn enough money to keep myself and my family in the way I would like," he said. "Everyone I know who is a wired executive is doing it because they have been made redundant or can't find a decent job. Scotland is like a frontier economy - if you lose your job you have to live by your wits."

Lyph is typical of the middle-managerial classes who found wiredness thrust upon them. Whether they are less socially useful than the salarymen who remained in big companies is moot, however. A "portfolio" is the polite term for what is the middle-class equivalent of ducking-and-diving.

The question is whether this is a real social trend, or something that effects only a handful of people. Chris Warhurst, a human resources expert at Strathclyde University, doubts that we really are witnessing the end of the career.

"These people who write about portfolio work like John Gray are portfolio workers themselves and they are writing about their own lives," he said. "University lecturers are the archetypal knowledge workers. The evidence just doesn't bear this out and there has been no significant change in the length of time people keep jobs."

But Demos is confident that Gray's polemic raises important questions about the changing nature of work.

"The truth is that most government policies are based on an idea that the career is still sustainable," said Tom Bentley, director of the think tank. "If they keep offering that as part of a political package then there will be a backlash when the economy turns down."

Entrepreneurship and the Wired Life, Demos, #6.95

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