Work Disrupted

CHAPTER 5Plan for Many Careers, Not One: Realistic and Energizing Transition Strategies for Multichapter Lives

Today's workers need to approach the workplace … like someone who is training for the Olympics but doesn't know what sport they are going to enter.

—Thomas Friedman,¹ political commentator, author

Imagine holding the same job for life. This may sound like a quaint notion but it was the norm for many of our parents and grandparents. Loyalty to a single employer was rewarded. Back in the 1940s, PepsiCo started a tradition of giving an 18-karat gold watch to long-term employees upon retirement, along with a generous pension, to encourage employees to spend their career with the company.² The gold watch tradition continued for decades in corporate America. The retirement phase of a career, created thanks largely to labor unions, has shaped everything from work legislation and taxation to financial planning. In that linear career model, the longer employees worked and gained experience, the more they earned. That's the model I heard about growing up, when the advice everyone gave me was to pick a career, then go long and deep. That advice didn't prepare me for the world I am seeing today.

Enter the long and winding career. Today, the average length of employment with a company or organization is just over four years.³ As employees move around more, they are working for ...