Recession or no recession, here onwards stop depending on a single company or a single specialized skill. You may have just collected the best employee award and given the impression that without you the company cannot breathe. However within no time you are called in and told that we do not know what we will do without you, due to some compulsion, we have to learn to live without you… or to some such effect. In short, it is the boot.
General crib of the corporate, no loyalty and the response, you want loyalty, get a dog. A wee bit funny, many companies have team dedicated for retention, attend international seminars on how to deal with attrition, employ engagement, career path and what else ? Simple solution, love your employee, they will take care of you.
Corporations once built to last like pyramids are now more like tent..you can’t design your life around a temporary organisation says the management guru, Peter Drucker.
Be prepared, let this be not an issue in life. One way is to force a percentage of your salary into some saving. Earn, save and spend is a better sequence. This may be an old school of thought. I am not going to argue about this but it is valid for all generations A to Z. Take it or leave it.
The other day someone called to thank me to say how grateful he is for the advise. I am happy, he took it because he was without a job for 3 months and the savings saw him through. And he is employed now.
Morgan Witzel says in ten years time managers will travel lesser than they do now, will see the end of silos, male work dominated workplace will vanish, managers will rely less on data and more on intelligence and thinking. With the advancement of technology video conferencing and teleconferencing (especially in cell phones, smartphones and tablets) will help reduce the necessities of travel, reduce carbon footprints and increase the effectiveness of the managers time. The present vertical organizational structure will be replaced by fast, flexible, integrated teams. More and more women will rise to higher positions.
Just check, besides the skill you have for your current job, what other interests you have ? The other day I met a guy who is a chartered accountant, a professional cook g and a food writer. And another one who is a developer, trainer and singer (member of a musical brand). Then there is this Lady, a professional golfer, associated with the Financial Sector as a Freelance Trainer for Soft Skill development, part of an NGO which works in areas of Empowerment of Women, Child Education, Environment and Heritage Conservation through Performing Arts.
Rajmenon's Blog 
The fact is absolutely true. Thank you
Well said Menon! When you talk of the pyramid now being a tent, I can extend this to a cluster of tents in a desert and the job seeker slogging to reach from one tent to another. Corporate sacking employees citing business reasons are more or less using the opportunity to replace them with better ones (hopefully). Maybe the flip side is opening of more opportunities elsewhere. And job hopping would become easier.
Long back, I wrote an article that was never published with the title, “To retain job, change jobs.” It was on broad category of jobs, their nature and the people with them. As you said, to retain job, one has to constantly look for changes in the environment and adopt to it. Adpoting means, acquiring new skill sets that are in demand. We can successfully retain job in the same organization if we change the job in hand with the new skill. It is easier said than done. Not many are in a position to acquire new skills or willing to do so.
For employee retention, the HR should continuously try to match the jobs to people. One way is organizations should continuously update their job requirements and provide space for employees to update their skill sets. Team should behave like families and departments or divisions like community. If that happens, the words like hire and fire will have no place in organizations.
You have already listed many skills which an employee – specially an IT employee – should look at and see which he or she should acquire in the next year or two to keep one’s options open. As someone who has chucked the technology skill for social activism skills in the last 4 years (albeit post retirement) I would strongly advise your readers to go for social work as a skill in itself. One does so by scanning the NGOs around and deciding to take a plunge by volunteering to work for one. One needs to allocate at a minimum one day of each month or more for the chosen work.
The benefits of getting into the social work ‘tent’ is that there are many options within ranging across many causes that India is inflicted with. The work you will do will bring a balance to your life – all IT and nothing else makes a robot out of you which is ok while you are within but a social misfit outside of the IT tent. Second, it opens up a world which was around you but was invisible to you. It will bring you in contact you with the less privileged and the innumerable problems they face. You will begin to understand the extreme comfort you live in. When you begin to feel empathetic you will begin to value your social work. You will feel you have for the first time become an Indian from being just flag jousting one.
I had given this advice to a 40 year old IT person – of all the places in Amravati. I have not heard from him again which I presume to mean he did not heed the advice. He will feel sorry for himself for not doing so later in life when post retirement there will be a vacuum in his life. But my advice had a caveat. I told him that give your employer all your attention, skill and efforts during the weekdays (hopefully no more than contracted 8 hrs per day). But reserve Saturday for your family who have a right to time with you – the so called quality time. Do not compromise on this under any excuse, pressure etc. Every time you concede you have created a distance from your family. I told him to reserve one or two Sundays for the social work.
I will also narrate something a village social worker from Murbad near Mumbai said. He said ‘If only every villager gave one day of the week for the village, this country will transform itself.” Talk of quotes, talk of simple solution to giant and complex problems, I cannot think of something that will better this prescription.
Go for it young man and woman – go social (work and not media).