The New Work Movement — Where Does the Journey Take Us?
The meaning of freedom
Work…We spend the majority of our adult life doing work, being at work, finding work, talking about work. Work allows us to define our identities: “I am a…”; “I work at..” etc. In the last centuries, work has drastically evolved and changed from an industrial to a knowledge-based society. Firstly, work is now usually less physical and taxing; secondly, we now have much more freedom to choose our education and later work in an area that we find rewarding, ensuring our status in the society (and get paid for it!) The lines between personal and work life have blurred. We’re in many ways freer to decide how we spend our time more than ever. Or so we think.
On the other hand, with the digital economy, the work-life requires our full attention as economic growth is entangled with our ability to create, sell, innovate, produce, consume. In order to adapt to the velocity, there is a continual discussion on how to permanently close the gap between “Old Work vs New Work”. Endless concepts fill the bridge and keep us busy talking about “new business models”, “future of work”, “digital transformation” etc. However, when we overuse the terms without much profound understanding, they become rather empty-shelled “buzzwords”. (Here’s a great manifesto on what New Work is NOT).
By doing so, we are always in constant motion in a search for something better, always improving and shedding off the old. “New Work”, I agree, does sound better and promising. But do we even understand what is behind that concept?
Few guiding questions for us: Are we as free as we think we are? Do we know where we are heading towards? Do we even want to go there?
That’s where I’m heading today.
Rewind to the 1970s: The concept of freedom
“Free? Really? For the last 200 years? If we are free, then freedom has certainly not lived up to the expectations it once so gleamingly raised.” Frithjof Bergmann
If you’re coming from a non-German speaking background, it’s very possible that you have not heard about the founder of the original New Work movement. (The guiding book was originally printed in 1984; English edition was released only in the summer of 2019). Founded by the Austro-American philosopher-anthropologist Frithjof Bergmann during the 1970’s while at his academic tenure in the States, he studied closely the philosophical notion of human freedom. Based on the assumption that the work system is outdated, “nothing seemed to make people less free than work”. (Source)
“Bergmann’s concept starts with a critical assessment of the American understanding of liberty. He does not consider liberty the option to choose between two or more, more or less better or worse options; his understanding of liberty is the option to do something that is really, really important (decide what you want to do because you believe in it)” (Source)
In the current social configuration, however, he says that people are not free, because they are dependent on the income in order to survive, pay rent, buy food, etc.
This led him to call for a radical change in the world of work and develop a counter-proposal for the capitalist-dominated work model. Finding a work that one “really, really wants” became his central pillar of study and practice.
That was four decades ago.
Counter-proposal against laying people off
To understand the context, let’s go to the next decade: 1984, Flint, Michigan. Already back then, digitization was advancing dramatically. With the arrival of computers, the small car manufacturing town of General Motors was facing mass layoffs affecting their assembly line workers — that would eventually have had a ripple effect on the majority of the town’s livelihoods and economy. Bergmann was given a green light to propose a solution: the first practical concept for “New Work” was developed.
“Digitization doesn’t eliminate all the work, it just shortens it.” Fritjof Bergmann
He suggested General Motors management do a “horizontal cut”, so that employees could be kept on the payroll, but work only six months a year: half of the work is done on the assembly line and the other half is spent finding out what you “really, really want”. To support employees in this quest, they built dedicated “New Work Centers”, providing a place where employees could fundamentally prepare themselves for the radical new ways of thinking, and to experience work in a new manner: doing what you “really, really” like (sidenote: it’s an actual coined term by the founder, to emphasize the meaning). There, the people would be able to earn money with their newfound “side-job” pursuits, and eventually, this could also benefit the company financially in the long term. Why? Because people would be genuinely happy having found their real callings and could also more meaningfully do their previous “binding” jobs, at the allocated time of the year.
Bergmann explained: “As a negotiator, I emphasized to the management that this is not just about preventing redundancies. In the free time that workers gain from digitalization, they should have the opportunity to find their vocation with a lot of support.” (Source)
The project at General Motors was a catalyzation of the concept — from then onwards, a larger concept for New Work was crafted.
New Work Movement: From a system of wage labor to the “New Labor”
Bergmann’s understanding came from seeing wage labor being “invented” only since the Industrial Revolution, therefore it’s not “a law of nature”. As humans were able to invent it, they can also reinvent a “New” Labor.
In wage labor, Bergmann says in his book “New Work, New Culture”, “the task to be done was the goal”. For this, man uses “himself as a tool, as a means to achieve this end”. Man, therefore, submits to work. The New Work wanted to reverse this state of affairs: “We should not serve the work, but the work should serve us. Work (…) should give us more strength and energy (…), support our development, help us to become more alive, more complete human beings.” (Source)
His alternative to the system of wage labor was built around the values of the New Work: “Freedom, Autonomy & Community”:
- 1/3 paid work of the previous wage labor
- 1/3 “high-tech self-providing and smart consumption” (self-supply and smart consumption by people organized in smaller communities that are self-sufficient in the production of the basic needs, such as food, tools, materials, etc via modern technology)
- 1/3 work you really, really want.
He does touch a pain point: do we even know what we really, really want, or are we clinging to our jobs to secure a place in the society? Are we seeing work as a means to an end, something that Bergmann calls “a mild illness” — it doesn’t kill you, but weighs on your health in the long term. In his opinion, people nowadays are suffering from “the poverty of desire”: our lack of ability to deeply understand our own yearnings, real talents, and potential. His main reasoning is that humans should be smart enough to use digitalization in our own favor, and use the “freed-up” time to reconnect with work that is truly meaningful to us.
New Work is “whistled from the rooftops”, yet empty in actions
In a recent article given by Bergmann, he was not happy about today’s world, saying: “New Work in Germany is “whistled from all rooftops” but without really introducing it”. (Source)
Even though there has been a renaissance of the New Work concept in the course of digitalization in the last two decades, it is still far off from its actual idea — and I could only understand why it is rather utopian to see this come to life any time soon. Advances have been made in small parts (flexible workspaces & times, smaller autonomous teams, work-life balance, etc), but Bergmann admitted in the same article, that he cannot name any company that truly understands or has implemented the concept of New Work.
Where are we heading?
What I came to notice in the research is that there are two caveats:
- The questionability of the existence of the support-providing “New Work Centers” that have disappeared from the map;
- The openness of new companies willing to attempt the same as General Motors did back in the 1980s. More is now on stake.
In the coming years, new concepts of work will become a reality, without a doubt, and we will be needing to adapt to them as they develop. But until we take the time to understand what the meaning of “New Work” actually entails, it’s hard to reach that specific destination.
So, how to overwrite a job system? Today, I am not able to provide an answer, but I hope it stimulates reflection. Having seen Bergmann’s “cult-like” following stay alive throughout four decades, even if not fully realized, could already be seen as a good sign. From Bergmann’s side, he argues that the capitalist system does not give people the much-needed freedom of action required for New Work, because capitalism requires growth. This is the reason why employees sell their time as labor, never fully able to have the proper time to discover a work they really, really want to do.
To conclude: even though the original concept hasn’t been completely distorted, we must agree that New Work is not possible to be realized only on an organizational level — but societal. There is too high of a role in the economic system for our current work configurations, which cannot be changed by individual companies but only by society as a whole.
This raises more questions: is the answer in education? In politics? What needs to happen in order for the real movement to begin? And are we willing to make the fundamental changes needed? Time will tell.
I am Liisi from 1789 — Beyond Revolution. We are a group of experts who are fundamentally rethinking the ways future organizations are designed and led in the digital age. Do you agree or disagree with my thoughts? Do you have some new insights into the article?
