Work Nouveau

Portfolio Worker (Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason, McGraw-Hill, December 1990 ) , whereby independent workers serve multiple clients using their skills in different areas of expertise, indeed in many cases just out of necessity to make ends meet.

A portfolio worker might make 30% of his income from consultancy, 20% from writing, 30% from selling via eBay, and 20% singing round folk clubs. I remember bumping into an IBMer in the early 90s who worked as a consultant some of the time, but also as a landscape gardener which exercised a completely different side of his interests and physique. He exalted the virtues of such a balance in life, and indeed managed to preserve his health and sanity well beyond that of some of his peers.

This also connects back to my post “Too old to rock n’ roll too young to retire” where typically those making the 3rd age switch from employment become portfolio workers, reliant on their clients and contacts rather than employers.

Just as many people will have two part-time jobs to provide full employment, the portfolio worker makes his from a variety of skills. There is nothing new about this, but what is beginning to draw attention is the extent to which this is beginning to happen. The New American Job Newsweek, they refer to it as the Gig Economy. It seems to consider it a passing phase but I am less sure.

In reality many find this portfolio existence more satisfying than the normal employment situation, with the main challenge being finding clients and the evident lack of security in that scenario.With a single employer/customer you are reliant on that source, but spreading the load means spreading the risk.

With the current lay-offs occurring across the board, many people are trying the portfolio approach for the first time and employers are looking to fill gaps in their internal skills inventory with external sources. Of course they have used freelancers and agency staff for ages, but now cash-strapped managers are looking for skills on an individual project basis, sometimes for only a few hours here or there.

How to find them? Independent registers of consultants and professionals have existed on the internet for years, or an open market place such as Bobex now operating in Western Europe, however traditionally these have been price oriented and have no real mechanism for factoring-in trust. This is where the social media plays an important part. Networks such as LinkedIn play an important role, and the recommendation feature is fine up to a point, but it somehow does not convey trust, any more than a reference letter does. More frequently these days the portfolio skills are being recruited via personal recommendation of a friend or an employee, hence the increased value of the social network in maintaining these relationships.

Many new entrants to the portfolio working arena will lack some critical skills to enable them to function totally as an independent entity, if you did all your own accounting, web work, marketing, ongoing skill maintenance, and strategic thinking you would soon find there was not much time to generate revenues – let alone have a familly life. Hence a renewed interest in localised skill sharing. The telecottage or telecentre was touted for years as a technical solution for teleworkers and portfolio workers, giving access to high speed internet and expensive local IT resources. They were successful in some European environments, Sweden, UK, Central Europe (where the community and educational aspect is strong), but in general they did not catch on, partly because the needs to share costly IT infrastructure largely disappeared. However the explosion in virtual contact has also highlighted the benefits of cooperation and sharing physically.

This is leading to renewed interest in places where virtual collaborators can get together on a regular basis to exchange skills, market intelligence, and get help etc. Some of these may be purely informal like a coffee shop or bar, others may resemble a shared office facility. Some SMEs are even considering hosting such facilities during these troubled times, partly to help micro start-ups, partly to use excess office capacity.

The recent success of the Twestival (Twitter users getting together and raising money for charity) highlights the power of ad hoc cooperation at a local level, largely driven bya real desire to share and participate.

The Portfolio Worker is on the march, and social networks are an integral part of maintaining knowledge, contacts, and the very necessary human relationships to build trust and ensure opportunities for their skills are generated.

I’d be interested in hearing about any mutual help activities you know of for independents and new portfolio workers active on a local basis, working with social networks especially Twitter.