'We are too little aware of how well things are going at the moment'. HRM professor Paul Boselie on the future of our labour market.

This Thursday at Utrecht's TivoliVredenburg music palace, it will not be about music for once, but about work. During the meeting The Future of Work The internationally renowned Professor Paul Boselie throwing a big cudgel in the works. According to the author of the international handbook 'Strategic Human Resource Management' workers and employers lack the much-needed sense of urgency about the changing times. According to Boselie, workers need to get and keep moving, be socially adept, have guts, develop skills and keep learning throughout their lives.

That's quite a lot. It seems to me that many employees also just like being in a flow and don't want to be on their qui vive every day.

'That's the standard reflective answer I get after such presentations. I doubt that's true. How many people do you know who sit back lazily?'

Not much.

'That's what I mean. But I also want to talk emphatically on Thursday about the role of employers. My point is: organisations are still too one-sidedly focused on organisational effectiveness. That is not just about profit, but also about quality, productivity and flexibility. They have little or no focus on social welfare and employee well-being. There is an imbalance, even after the global financial crisis.

Does it currently lack vision?

'I am not very positive about the way employers are handling their position. Inequality is only increasing, and huge risks continue to be taken on the backs of ordinary people.'

'It is partly for this reason that I advise workers to take matters into their own hands. The government is withdrawing more and more, so you will have to do it yourself.'

In fact, employees should therefore act more like self-employed workers. Anyway, with the flexibilisation of the labour market, employees are increasingly being treated as self-employed workers. This is already happening in the cultural sector. There, thousands of permanent jobs have been exchanged for poorly paid self-employed positions.

'The cultural sector is very diverse and heterogeneous. There are certainly places where things are well organised, but from a labour market and human resources perspective, it is sometimes a very poor sector. I seriously cannot understand why anyone would want to work there. Mind you, I am a great lover of the arts, and love going to concerts and theatre, but the way some employers behave is nineteenth-century. You don't begrudge anyone working conditions like that.'

This situation is all the more dire because the economy seems to be doing quite well. How about that?

'Right now is very exciting. The economy is booming, companies are not getting the staff. If the vulnerable in the labour market are not given a chance now, things are never going to work out. Then there really is something fundamentally wrong. Not so much with them, on the contrary, I would say. Then there must be real intent and unwillingness on the part of business and government. After all, we are going to have major shortages in the labour market.'

'But what is going on even more, and of course you notice this in the arts as well, is that the half-life of knowledge and skills is getting shorter by the year. Ten years ago, you could get ahead for ten years with the knowledge you had then, now it's only five years, at most.'

Lifelong learning. Never rest on your laurels?

'Lifetime employment is thus a thing of the past. There are still people in orchestras today who have been there for decades. That occurs in very few places anymore. Rijkswaterstaat is one of those places. But that is also going to change, and very quickly. Anyone who turns 50 now and is not yet looking out for new opportunities is vulnerable. That really applies not only to low-skilled people like the people at V&D a few years ago, but also to highly skilled workers.'

That's all very bleak, Mr Boselie.

'We are too unaware of how well things are going at the moment. We focus on small details, worry about nothing. If I look at my parents, they went through the war. My mother-in-law lost her home in Indonesia, went through the war there and had to flee to NL.... Two of my four grandparents lived through two world wars. If you compare all that to now, what we go through is nothing. We are privileged, but it can be over just like that. I find that sense of urgency very much missing in today's job market.'

The Future of Work

Paul Boselie will debate with Mei Li Vos (former member of parliament and Alternatief voor Vakbond director), Edwin van Korlaar (commercial director of IT company Xcellent) and representatives of the National Think Tank on Thursday evening 18 January. More information.