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Friday, May 18, 2012 | Home › Articles
Unionization of White Collar Employees
2012 will see remarkable changes in trends and unionization of white collar employees will be one of them. Employees have become mere statistics in organizations, given the demand-supply pull of talent. The absence of the personal touch in managing such extensive number of people in the white collar employee-base (knowledge workers) will give rise to emerging unions formed by such groups. Employees in such widespread organizations tend to feel isolated at times and unionization of this mass is evidently an upcoming trend in the near future.
Along with unionization of the white collar employees, the coming year will also witness digital opinion forums/virtual unions. The new generation has grown up with social media and other technology platforms, which will eventually result in virtual opinion forums or virtual unions where large scale discussions on all topics will materialize. Talent managers are perhaps not prepared to handle such a situation. There will have to be a change in the perspective to manage this tsunami of opinion through digital forums.
Furthermore, attrition will double in the next year. Increasing business growth will continue to increase the demand for talent and companies will become picky and will seek and prefer specialized skills. As a result, employers will have to create a culture to embrace women talent, be prepared for the multi-employer concept as specialists will want to engage for work and not for time bound employee contract-based hiring. Companies will also have to cater to the new generation worker profile that demands more transparency and ethical values. These changes will in turn impact talent management in terms of goal setting, engagement, compensation, etc.
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Great insights sir...would like to know more about unionization of white collar employees from you. I completely agree with u sir regarding the usage of social media for large scale discussions and I feel that it is the need of the hour to keep pace with new trends and with new generation.
Good read Aquil.I do recollect,we have been taking about such a trend which is in the offing for quite some time. Vijay Rai
Great insights Aquil. The only piece that I do not agree with is the unionisation. To me what you have mentioned in terms of specialized skill workers working on a multi-employer scenario (akin to what we see movie stars doing - working across banners) on projects rather than one employer resonates more with where the new age knowledge workers seem to be heading. And that is dichotomous to the earlier presumption of unionisation. Regds,Vikas
It seems to be that it is equally likely that the conventional office structure will break down - slowly but surely. People will increasingly work from home and screen based controls will gradually oversee the manufacturing as is happening in some places already. Teams will meet offsite - strategic and tactically. People per se will be numbers and photos (if necessary) but the work orientation will be near total. Compensations will at the lower levels be delivery based, maybe with a value add for timeliness. The work as a social binding forca will gradually cease and other human relations will replace - neighbourhood activities or virtual activities ie shopping/movies etc.