Business Maverick: Learners, Leavers and In-Betweeners: New Work Identities Are Taking Shape

Three years after Covid-19 ushered in the most tumultuous period in the history of modern work, it isn’t just the place of work undergoing a fresh identity crisis, but the person doing the work. The working assumption is that the way people define themselves at work doesn’t need changing. I think it does and here’s why.

Before the pandemic, the identity of the office itself was relatively stable: There was no controversy over going to the office, flexible hours or working from home because none of it was mainstream. It is true that possibilities for working differently began to emerge most notably over the last 15 or so years when the internet, the iPhone, and co-working spaces like WeWork made mobility and working flexibility visible and desirable.

The lockdowns flipped this stability on its head, and ever since the office itself has borne the brunt of the identity crisis engulfing the world of work. Fixed locations have come to be seen by many as an unwelcome constraint, almost like an outdated uniform. Why “wear” a commute if you can “clothe” yourself in work from a laptop anywhere?

Fashion is also a useful prism through which to observe the changes in working identity because it shows how the rigidity of what people wear at work has loosened as values shift. Note the loss of casual Fridays, which used to be an office mainstay but disappeared when every day became casual, and the growth of the “These trends around the place of work and its dress code demonstrate a lessening of constraints on workers.

Those in the early stages of entering the workforce are the “Learners.” They need mentoring and immersion into the culture of office life more than the cohort who are mid-career. “Leavers,” on the other hand, are typically older and not looking to build and stay in their careers in the same way as Learners.

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