The Onus of Open Employment

Mike Donoghue is a member of a multinational information technology corporation where he collaborates on the communications guidelines and customer relationship strategies affecting the interactions with internal and external clients. He has analyzed, defined, designed and overseen processes for various engagements including product usability and customer satisfaction, best practice enterprise standardization, relationship/branding structures, and distribution effectiveness and direction. He has also established corporate library solutions to provide frameworks for sales, marketing, training, and support divisions.

  Career Development   Talent Management  

For many in today’s IT workforce, we operate within the concept of open employment--the understanding that both the employer and the employee are free to do as they wish, to retain talent for as long as they are needed (in the case of the employer) or the freedom to leave for other opportunities (as pertains to the employee).

Often, though, this “openness” is not commonly acknowledged, let alone discussed--and it is in each side’s quiet thoughts where this understanding really resides. Unfortunately, the loyalty that once existed between both groups is gone and the idea of lifelong employment commitments that was prevalent in earlier generations is rapidly becoming a faded memory, never to return.

While an open employment concept has its merits, it still breeds a common ground of distrust between the parties. Limited agreements between the two are, unfortunately, limited--depending on the merits and honesty of both sides while maintaining a constant state of suspicion. And if work environments with impending layoffs have taught us anything, it is that these situations create conditions for poor work ethics to flourish and productivity to falter, not to mention greater employee turnover. It is akin to the principles behind being a perpetual contractor--but without the contractual guidelines, obligations and protections that come with it.

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