What May Emerge - Guilds as Personalized External HR Department

What May Emerge—Guilds as Personalized External HR Department

It is impossible to predict what might eventually emerge to take the place the firm in providing job security, benefits, career support, community, and identity for workers operating outside the old employment relationship. Among the factors that will shape the outcome are the individual preferences of workers and the circumstances of their work.

Regarding workers' preferences, an analogy to the varying styles exhibited by investors is useful. Some investors insist on handling every penny themselves, down to the last stock trade, while others are willing to hand over their affairs entirely to a financial advisor and not be bothered with any details. Many operate somewhere in the middle. Similarly, independent workers in the future are likely to have different styles in handling work-related benefits and careers. Some can be expected to choose self-reliance, researching to find the best temporary agencies and insurance providers, cultivating many affiliations to forward their career prospects. Others are likely to align primarily with one professional association or staffing firm, but maintain other affiliations as well. And still others will link up with a single organization that can meet all their needs.

Similarly, the extent to which workers of the future rely on guilds will be shaped both by the industry and by the part of the production process in which they are involved. Flexible employment practices are likely to have the most impact among workers involved in knowledge-intensive sectors and also those with a role in innovation efforts in traditional industrial sectors.

A likely future scenario is the emergence of networked guilds, in which a series of specialized organizations work together to provide a full range of services to workers. This is the model being pioneered by Working Today, which is linking up dozens of professional associations with providers of services needed by independent workers, like health insurance.

Regardless of how they obtain it, what workers will need from guilds will be a portfolio of services that replicate what the human resources department of a traditional firm provided under the old employment contract. Except this HR "department" will not be part of the firm, or more likely, firms, where the person actually works, but will be provided by guilds and be tailored to meet the requirements of individual workers. If this system works well, temporary workers—and even those who hold jobs on a more long-standing basis, but choose to align with a guild—will have access to personalized services that find them the best deals on health insurance and the right asset allocation for their retirement funds; determine which assignment will get them to the next stage in their career; and help them to land it through a dossier of recommendations and performance evaluations from past work.