How to secure your job

Job security is ‘not’ dead (Fear is okay, pray and hope is not a strategy, complacency kill jobs)

You can future-proof yourself with a secure job and have a higher income at the same time with the unique Triple-A System.

Don’t feel uneasy or uncertain about the future anymore. It’s time to take back control of your future even if you feel incapable of doing so right now.

Let me journey with you as you seek financial freedom for yourself. Sign up below for more information and resources and let’s continue the conversation about this Triple-A System. For action takers, I have a cheat-sheet for you to secure your job.

The Triple-A System

It’s frequently said that job security is dead.

The reality is that I will not have job security if I do not anticipate, plan, and mitigate myself against possible negative impacts on my current and future job, income, and income streams.

I am very conscious that people do not plan to fails but they just fail to plan for the future and protect themselves.

We have to proactively plan to create positive conditions for ourselves. This will enable us to confidently secure our jobs and future income rather than leaving it to chance.

Just hoping for the best is not a strategy.

The hope and pray method will not work!

There are three phases to this unique Triple-A System:

• Anticipating the future requirements for skills and knowledge within the context you are operating in.
• Acquiring the right skills and knowledge that bridge any gaps between future and present state.
• Acting now (that is taking action now rather than procrastinating). ‘Just do it’ will be your motto.

Anticipate the future

I have documented no less than 62 possible threats to our job security in my book, Shocking Secrets Every Worker Needs to Know: How To Future-Proof Your Job, Increase Your Income, and Protect Your Wealth In Today’s Digital Age.

These threats include job losses due to automation and organisational redundancies, inability to pay increasing daily expenses due to low wage growth, and inability to find full-time jobs due to changing demographics.

We constantly read about automation destroying many jobs and livelihoods in workplaces. Depending on which research or publication you read, the results will vary greatly.

Regardless of the information source you rely on to make your mind up or be entertained, it’s inevitable that automation will lead to variable levels of job losses.

Factors impacting the level of automation

How automation will impact your job security will depend on a number of factors. The factors include:

1. The country you live in – e.g., technologically advanced countries like Japan, Germany, Korea, etc., vs. developing countries. The country you live in will also determine how economics, unemployment rate, demographics and underemployment can impact your employment.
2. The industry you work in – e.g., the transportation industry has a lot of innovation like driver-less vehicles, vs. fine arts.
3. The job or occupation you currently have – e.g., if you care for the elderly, then there’s not much automation, vs. a truck driver.
4. The skills and experience you currently have – e.g., if you are a truck driver, then your job could change significantly by 2035, vs. a personal coach.
5. The education level you currently have – e.g., if you have a university degree, then you are better prepared for the future of work and for acquiring high-level skills that will be in demand in the future.
6. The company you work for – e.g., the company you work for must have the capability, capacity, and resources to automate your work, vs. a small family or cash-strap business.

Job loses will be inevitable

We know that over the last century, many jobs have been lost due to the introduction of machines and automation. At the same time, many jobs have also been created or transformed.

What’s so different now is the exponential change that we are currently experiencing. It’s no longer a gradual or straight line change.

Rather, the speed at which automation will be deployed in our workplaces and lives will take many people off guard because of their complacency or ignorance of what automation and machines are capable of doing.

How we respond now to future-proof ourselves from these changes will ultimately determine whether or not our jobs will be lost due to automation or whether we still have jobs after automation thereby maintaining our job security.

The question is this; will we have jobs after automation?

Acquire the right skills and knowledge

The future of work is about being more human, acquiring employable skills that future employers will die for, and being flexible and adaptive to the ever-changing circumstances.

First off, to anticipate the future, we must start by equipping ourselves with the right information and knowledge.

We must be equipped with the relevant information to make informed choices about our future, jobs, skills, pathways to success, and ultimately our financial freedom.

Invest in your education and learning

The right education and learning will significantly reduce our risk of failure. It will increase our job security.

That’s why it’s so important to invest in ourselves first before anything else.

By investing in your own education and knowledge, you can effectively avoid any potential dangers ahead and take safer pathways that you are comfortable with.

Secondly, the next investment that you must make is to continuously upgrade your work skills and experience to meet the future job demands of current and future employers.

The world is changing so fast that it’s really hard to keep up.

For us, it’s about anticipating what the future of work looks like.

It’s about predicting what those job demands are.

Essentially it boils do to three things.

1. Identify whether our jobs are at risk from automation.
2. Identify skills that are likely to be in great demand in the future.
3. Learn how to organise our education, training, and development around the new economy and the future of work.

Use the best available information to make informed decisions

Unfortunately, there’s no crystal ball here.

You need to use the best available information gathered to make informed choices and decisions about your future.

The good thing is that there is so much information out there for you to increase the accuracy of your predictions.

For starters, here’s a list of potential job skills that future employers will most likely want.

1. Managing machines – Automated equipment, robots and advanced control systems are becoming increasingly capable, flexible, and human-like. These machines will need more highly-skilled people to set them up, adapt them to meet new requirements, and fix them when they break.
2. Coordinating networks – The digital world is all about connections. There needs to be continual data flows between machines, between machines and the cloud, and across the value chain between customers, suppliers and the wider world. Building, maintaining, and securing those digital networks and infrastructure will require new combinations of skills.
3. Implementing analytics – As machines gather huge volumes of digital bytes, the transformation of raw data into actionable information is becoming a key source of value in today’s competitive world. To build and run systems and tools that drive these transformations, businesses will need to master a raft of techniques. From smart statistical analysis to emerging machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies.
4. Identify process improvements – Organisations will achieve excellence through processes of incremental continuous improvement. Knowing what to change requires deep functional and domain expertise together with skills to creatively identify waste and solve complex problems.
5. Implement the agreed changes – Ideas only comes to life and become performance improvements if they are adopted and sustained. It requires people who can design and enforce standards. It requires people who can engage and motivate individuals and teams. The future of work focuses on soft skills and the people side of things.

Start a side business to secure your job

Thirdly, the last investment that you should make is to acquire business or value creation skills that will generate additional income for you in addition to your salary or wages.

Here’s the thing.

Research shows that starting a side-business or side-gig while still having a full-time job is the best pathway to success in the long-run.

In a 2014 research entitled Multiple Job Holding, Skill Diversification, and Mobility, Panos, Pouliakas, and Zangelidis investigated the interrelated dynamics of dual job holding, human capital, occupational choice, and job mobility.

They found that individuals are using multiple jobs holding as a conduit for obtaining new skills and expertise. These jobs are a stepping-stone to new careers and self-employment.

From a practical perspective, multiple jobs holding will give you the diversity and security of income, increased job security, and a strong foundation upon which you can have an ongoing career of your choice.

From the evidence gathered by the researchers, individuals doing a side job or business other than their primary occupation are more likely to switch to a new primary job in the following year.

That new job is likely to be different from their current primary employment.

The study also found that self-employed contract work can also be used as economic security and for upward mobility.

Another report reframed independent contracting work as potentially the largest job training resource in the economy. The reality is that we need ongoing job training to future-proof ourselves from possible negative effects.

What you must know is that the research tells us that skill and income diversification undertaken through part-time side-business work will help us gain valuable experience, skills, and knowledge. They can also smooth our transition to higher-paying occupations, hence increasing their job security.

The report also said that mixing side work and traditional employment work could smooth income volatility, which is a growing problem in modern day workplaces.

In another 2014 research entitled Should I Quit My Day Job? A Hybrid Path To Entrepreneurship, Raffiee and Feng examined how workers could reduce the risks and uncertainty associated with their entrepreneurial activity by embarking on “hybrid entrepreneurship”.

This is the process of starting a business while still retaining a day-job in an existing organisation.

What they discovered will be relevant to you as you decide on your next steps in future-proofing yourself and secure your job.

Researchers found that “hybrid entrepreneurs” who subsequently enter full-time self-employment or entrepreneurship after quitting their day-job have much higher rates of success relative to individuals who enter full-time self-employment directly from paid employment without any structured transition.

This survival advantage is driven primarily by the learning and development effect that takes place during “hybrid entrepreneurship”.

Increase your job security while generating additional side income

What’s important to note is that the risk of failure will be decreased or mitigated for individuals with prior entrepreneurial experience gained while in full-time employment doing part-time entrepreneurship.

These findings tell us the following:

1. Entrepreneurship forces us to constantly create value for our customers. Without value being created in exchange for money, we will not be paid. Regardless of whether you are an employee, the mindset of value creation and delayed gratification will become a solid foundation upon which we can effectively secure our jobs in the future.
2. Employees should embark on part-time “hybrid entrepreneurship” while still retaining a day-job if they want to successfully change or transition their career to a better one, improve their prospects of promotion, increase their income, and improve their job security. They could also be self-employed or even starting their own business as a full-time freelancer or entrepreneur later on if they choose to do so.
3. Gaining knowledge, skills, and expertise during the “hybrid entrepreneurship” phase will increase the likelihood of your future success. Knowledge and skills gained will reduce the risk of failure. They will increase your job security while generating additional side income for yourself. It’s an effective risk mitigating strategy because it will significantly broaden the options available to you when you are made redundant or are restructured out of your current organisation.
4. “Hybrid entrepreneurship” will appeal more to risk adverse workers who just want to try-before-they-buy. If you do not like entrepreneurship as it may not suit your personality and lifestyle, you can try other things without the fear of losing your job and income.

So, where do you ideally start to future-proof yourself and increase your job security?

Always acquiring as much knowledge and skills

The key is for you to acquire the necessary knowledge, skill, and expertise by starting and running a side-business while you still have your 9-to-5 job.

Learn as much as you can. Make mistakes.

Take risk.

Know yourself and your limits.

Identify your skills gaps.

Close or bridge any skills gaps that you may have by doing free online courses, seeking out mentors, and networking.

Map out your path to success by developing a strategy and plan. Then execute that strategy ruthlessly.

Only when your income from your side-business consistently matches your current salary or wage, you may safely quit your job and go full-time doing your business.

Risk takers and Millennial

If you are a risk taker and can’t wait to quit your job now, then quit your 9-to-5 job start your own business. But do remember that research has shown that your likelihood of success will be much lower if you don’t take the side-business pathway.

If you are a Millennial, then the following information is important for you to know.

According to Deloitte’s 2018 Millennial Survey, young workers feel unprepared for Industry 4.0. Millennials lack confidence that they can succeed in an Industry 4.0 environment. They are looking for businesses to help them develop the necessary skills including “soft” skills they believe will be more important as jobs evolve.

This could only be done when Millennials acquire the right knowledge and skills and try their hands in starting a side business.