CAREER/LIFECOACHING 103
Barbara Moses
Career Activism and the New
Employment ContractT
he leading edge of what’s being done in career planning today hinges on
the tenets of the new employment contract. On the one hand, job secu-
rity is dead, and traditional loyalty to the organization has died along with it.
On the other hand, organizations still need to attract and retain talented
workers. In response, savv y organizations emphasize employability over job
security while providing workers with the skills they need to manage their
own careers. Those same employees embrace that training, knowing that
personal career activism is the only way to achieve any sense of security and
control in their lives. It may be an uneasy truce, in the middle of a tense and
uncertain economy, but in the best scenarios it seems to be working.
I help organizations respond to the career issues of employees. I think of
myself as a coach, but I do my coaching by providing tools, information, and
capabilities. Through my speaking engagements and the occasional work-
shop, I coach people at all organizational levels. I also work directly with
human resource practitioners and line managers, responsible for career plan-
ning and programming in their organizations, to show them how to respond
to and coach staff on contemporary career challengers. In the career plan-
ning sense, I coach them on how to coach.
My personal fascination is with the broad social trends that are expressed
in the host of contemporary workplace issues. There are huge tensions today
in employment. Work demands are relentless; lives are over-committed; or-
ganizations can be thankless. Everyone is grappling with work-life balance;
everyone needs to take responsibility for their own employability by ensur-
ing that their skills are up to date. People feel stuck. They’re looking for a
Dr. Barbara Moses is the best-selling author ofWhat
Nex t? The Complete Guide to Taking Control of Your
Work Life, Career Intelligence,and The Good News About
Careers: How You’ll Be Working in the Next Decade.Her
Career Planning Workbookis a corporate best-seller and
has been used by over a million people. She is a profes-
sional speaker on contemporary work issues, a frequent
media commentator, and President of BBM Human
Resource Consultants, Inc. (www.bbmcareerdev.com). She can be reached by
e-mail at [email protected] or via the Internet at http://www.bmoses.com.