We worship WORK.
The average person works between 90.000 and 100.000 hours during their lifetime. Social status, influence, wealth, security, and well-being are tightly connected to these hours of the day in which we produce value for a company or client and get financial compensation in return.
However, work and our dedication to it comes with a price.
We sacrifice a lot to climb ’the ladder’. We constantly fear to fall behind, feel exhausted and stressed after 9, 10, 12 hours of work. And still, the voice in our head never stops questioning ‘What have I actually achieved?’. As a result, a growing number of people suffer from stress and depression, feel trapped in their jobs and crave more meaning and purpose.
And yet … We’re happy to pay this price, sit still and do as we are told. Since we’ve been promised that eventually, our company will reward our loyalty, our peers will acknowledge our contributions and at one point we will have made it ’to the top’.
But if this deal was ever true it is definitely changing now:
With a steep increase in digitalization and automation on the horizon our work is transforming radically:
Uncertainty becomes the new constant.
In a fast-moving work environment that praises flexibility, innovation, and growth as the prevailing virtues of the 21. century, job security and success are now predominantly connected to our capacity to adapt and develop ourselves constantly:
In the next 10 years, more than 200 million people in Western industrialized countries will have to significantly change their skillset or even profession to remain competitive. This is almost 1/3 of our workforce and includes HR professionals, assistants, sales agents, project managers, lawyers, accountants, and so many more white-collar professionals.
‘Skill Gap’ is the hashtag of this new labor market.
But so far, not a single answer on how to facilitate professional development on this scale exists.
Most organizations and governments are neither equipped nor incentivized to carry out this transition. And so, thanks to the Gig-Economy and rising demand for a more flexible workforce, the easy way out seems to put the responsibility to adapt and find a solution on the individual.
The result? An increasing level of stress, pressure, lack of orientation and meaning for a significant percentage of our society. But leaving the burden of this transition on the shoulders of millions of people that might have never aspired to think entrepreneurial, never learned to promote themselves, never established a routine for ‘life-long learning’ is a tremendous risk for the health and prosperity of what we call ‘the Middle Class’. And as a final consequence, the stability of Western democracy.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
To prepare our society for this future of work, we need to overcome the narrative that ‘career is a race to the top’ and a challenge that we all need to solve on our own.
We need to find ways to grow professionally not in competition with each other but through collaboration, support, and shared knowledge. While already today all the information, courses and tools that will equip us to master the digital age are out there, what is missing is a social institution that empowers us to evolve our mental and social capacity to make use of these tools.
Because careers in the 21st century are not based on hard-skills but on relationships.
This axiom is true across every profession. When automation replaces the most repetitive and process-driven parts of our jobs, our human capacity to explore new opportunities, be creative, and create value for others will define the progress of our careers.
We all know that reliable and relevant professional relationships can support, protect and nurture us — independent from any employer. No matter if it’s a conversation that sparked the right idea and helped you solve a problem, a coffee break with a mentor that gave you the courage to ask for that pay raise or an introduction that opened a door into a completely new industry. We all know people that have changed our careers significantly.
Existing private and professional social networks, however, have reached a plateau in their development. They either degraded into platforms of vain self-portrayal or are nothing more than static online resumes with meaningless contact lists. The social institution that is necessary to craft a better Future of Work aims far beyond and actively develops relationships and social competence.
That’s why we are building THE GUILD.
To address the challenges stated above, we’ve re-designed the fundamental concept of local, highly engaged, professional guilds into a scalable, tech-enabled solution for a digital economy in the 21. century — providing development, recognition, and community for the entire workforce.
THE GUILD is a new form of collaborative professional development for millions of people independent from their employers. Our goal is to empower everyone to gain control over their professional development and identity through relevant and reliable professional relationships.
THE GUILD is based on three core elements:
- We actively support each member individually to build and maintain relevant and reliable professional relationships within their profession.
- Through development circles, members can collaboratively gain new knowledge and expand their skill-set.
- Recognition, support and further impulses for their development are provided through peer-2-peer reviews and structured feedback processes.
Through THE GUILD, we can empower millions of people from all kinds of professions and socio-economic backgrounds to gain control over their careers and at the same time, find recognition and stability within their guild.
Our vision for THE GUILD is to create a new social institution that becomes a professional home - for everyone!
ABOUT US
Our mission is to give agency to millions of professionals around the world by redefining what professional development means for blue- and white-collar workers in the 21st century.
To achieve this mission, we require support and feedback from a wide audience of visionaries, technologists, economists, policymakers, and other change-makers who share our determination to shape the future of work, not “one organization at a time“ but on a systemic level.
If you are interested in contributing to THE GUILD’s mission, please reach out to us: team [at] jointheguild.online
Or SIGNUP HERE to receive updates about our progress!
