Another popular theory that has been circulating is that employee tenure is in rapid decline and that in the near future we will all be portfolio
employees where instead of working for a single employer, we will work for many employers at the same time. As someone who has made a living based on portfolio model [I work with over 40 companies a year], I'd be happy to see this become reality, but again, the data doesn't seem to support this direction.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau data Craig Copeland cited, “Data show that the overall median tenure of workers—the midpoint of wage and salary workers' length of employment in their current jobs—was slightly higher in 2014, at 5.5 years, compared with 5.0 years in 1983.”14 Granted the report is three years old, but it's the most current one as of this writing. I find this quite interesting because from all the executives whom I speak with, there is a consensus that employee tenure is not what it used to be and is in fact shrinking. It's hard to look at national averages and then apply those averages to specific companies. As you can imagine if you are in a hot labor market, such as San Francisco or New York, the tenure might be different than if you're in a part of the country like Wyoming or Minnesota.
The industry also has a dramatic impact. Those in the technology industry won't have the same tenure as those in the construction industry. Although the data shows that tenure seems to be growing, many of the executives I speak with would disagree and dispute these numbers as they relate to their respective organizations.
This isn't just an American thing either. According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in the United Kingdom, which published a report called “Megatrends: The Trends Shaping Work and Working Lives”:
While self‐employment has increased in the last 30 years, some four‐
fifths of people working in the UK are still permanent employees. In addition, the average period of time people spend with an employer did not shift greatly between the mid‐1970s and the mid‐2000s, albeit with some changes within the overall average. Furthermore, our evidence suggests that job turnover in the UK has been falling over the past decade—meaning that fewer people change employers each year.15 Are all of these reports perfect and all the numbers 100 percent accurate?
Absolutely not. It's hard for anyone to provide accurate numbers around
how large the alternate work category is, especially the online gig economy portion of that. That's because the U.S. government stopped collecting any data on the contingent workforce many years ago. However, early in 2016 Tom Perez, the U.S. secretary of labor, announced that the government will once again start tracking this data as a part of the 2017 population survey.
This is very exciting because we will finally get some accurate numbers around how big this space really is.
Does this mean we don't need to pay attention to the gig economy or alternative work arrangements? Of course not. Instead of just looking at total numbers today, it's also helpful for us to look at where things might be going. The numbers can sometimes appear to be conflicting, but based on all the research and data that exist, it's safe to say that today the gig
economy as it pertains to online platforms is a very tiny fraction of the workforce. Alternative work arrangements in general (including the gig economy) are growing and adoption rates are staggeringly high. However, today many people are using these platforms as ways to augment existing work arrangements and income. This forces us to ask a broader economical question, “Why is it that so many people feel the need to augment their existing incomes, and if we paid them more, would they continue to do so?”
Data also shows that employee tenure isn't shrinking as rapidly as
previously thought. It may actually be increasing but slightly. It's important to keep in mind that this is simply an average. Although I have personally heard of many accounts of decreasing employee tenure from various
executives at global organizations, they don't represent the average. This is yet another reason why people analytics has to be leveraged so that each organization can understand its own truths. As Wayne Gretzky famously said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
While we are still in the relatively early stages of alternative work and the gig economy, organizations should absolutely stay aware of the changes that are happening in this space.
This should be enough information to get you to think again when you hear someone talking about the end of employment as we know it. This should also help you understand why employee experience is so crucial, because full‐time employment isn't going away in the near future. So the long answer to “Does focusing on employee experience even make sense in a
world that is supposedly going to be dominated by freelancers and short‐
term employees?” is a resounding yes.