The Employed Person’s Guilt Syndrome

An article by Latoya J. Williams    4 Comments

Guilt shows up in some interesting places. This week, as I began a short-term
contract position, I encountered what can be described as “The Employed Person’s Guilt Syndrome“. My graduate studies in psychology along with my career development training made identifying lively names for career-related syndromes inevitable. Holding both career and human developmental perspectives required that I also create a “treatment plan” for this identified classification!

After engaging in a very pleasant conversation with one of the company’s permanent employees, this person stated something along the lines of “I really admire people, like you, who are “unemployed” and do temp work . In that moment, I felt compelled to reassure this individual that my “plight” was not so dire as assumed.

By trade, I have worked in the role of a “consultant” for the past 11 years of my career. Working for an international consulting firm, immediately after finishing my undergraduate studies, conditioned me to a certain “normalcy” associated with working with multiple clients and going from project to project. Also, as a young employed professional, I started taking on independent contracts with non-profits to help them identify their business requirements and developed technology tools to meet their needs. So, this latest “temporary” position feels no different than any other project or assignment that I have had (employed or freelance). I have balanced the roles of being an “employee” and being a “free agent” throughout my professional path.

In the summer of 2009, I was shocked to hear a career development professional emphatically communicate that there are two types of workers:

1.) Owners
2.) Temporary workers

According to Dr. Rich Feller, Professor of Counseling and Career Development with Colorado State University, “If you’re not an owner, you’re frankly very much a temp!”  Dr. Feller provides a lot of valuable insights and perspective in his video segment 10 Lifelong Career Rules. I eventually accepted the truth of the tough reality statement that, if I am not the owner of a business, then I am a temporary worker (even if my status is “permanent” or “full-time”).

Dr. Feller’s perspective indicates no need for “The Employed Person’s Guilt Syndrome.”  We all work in an “at-will” employment environment. I feel as though many workers do not truly recognize what “at-will” signifies. “At-will” means that a company has no responsibility to keep someone employed and that a worker has no obligation to stay with a company. Essentially, the traditional company-employee loyalty paradigm no longer exists! According to the new career model, my current office mate is simply a temp with better benefits.

However, “employees,” like this individual whom I spoke with, continue to hold an “old-school” career belief that there is some wide distinction between the work of a “temporary” employee and the work of a “permanent” one. Admittedly, a certain level of “confidence” about regularly receiving income and benefits is enjoyed by permanent employees. Free agency has contributed to a certain level of increased “anxiety” in my life, which has required that I develop an improved level of working through and tolerating the natural uncertainties of the job market!

A couple of months ago, I finished Daniel Pink’s book Free Agent Nation: How America’s New Independent Workers Are Transforming the Way We Live, published in 2002. Any professional, most especially a first generation professional, with an intention of being proactive and driving their own career, needs to read this book along with Pink’s book A Whole New Mind. Pink offers a map of what and who “Free Agents” are and how the new economy has drastically shifted from the now obsolete “organization man” (i.e., employee) structure to an increasingly dominant project-based career.

Notably, I have experienced multiple clashes between the old “employee” and new “free agent” working models. Earlier this year, I encountered an older professional, who voiced skepticism about my ability to exist as an employed professional and a free agent professional. I call this encounter an indication of a “Work Status Fallacy.” [I have discovered a certain joy and fun by putting some new spice into career development lingo!]

Despite the reality of balancing career statuses throughout my professional life, I feel like an underlying pressure to choose between functioning as an “employee” or working as a “free agent” still exists. And you know what? I know with certainty the falsehood of that choice. I can now see that throughout my career, I will chose more traditional employment, continue with freelance projects, and possibly experiment with a full-time entrepreneurial lifestyle later in my career. In this new economy, it makes sense to be as flexible as possible!

No one knows what fate has in store for any of us. However, to give myself, you, and old-time career skeptics something to chew on, I created a roadmap to help provide some milestones for developing out of the “employee” fixated model with its associated “guilt syndrome” and into the new and more relevant professional mode of navigating a career. I call this roadmap the “Employee-Professional Developmental Continuum”. I hope that you find useful insights and some humorous moments in the intermingling of my psychologically-oriented mind and career development training.

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