Occupy Wall Street protestor being removed

Occupy Wall Street didn’t make it. They didn’t really make a difference and the movement didn’t survive. In fact all that the Occupy movement got known for was untidy evictions from their various vantage points. Oh wait. They did manage to engineer the resignation of the Dean at St Paul’s in London. Success? Hardly.

Yet their message was incredibly important. Stop fat cat practices in the corporate world. Those practices that lead to indecent profits, huge CEO salaries and pittance pay to the people who make the organisation function. Those toilet cleaners, PA’s, support staff and more.

And sure. Warren Buffett‘s secretary earns over $100k per year. Seems a lot, but then look at the profits that his Berkshire Hathaway makes and you have to wonder about the unfairness of it. I am going to presume for the sake of the argument that the rest of the non investment broker staff also earn small salaries. Can’t see the cleaner getting more than $100k per year. Can you?

So what happened? Surely the stats of the top 20% of the population in the USA hold 89% of the wealth should be something that would ‘occupy’ the minds of the eighty percent of the USA that fight for the scraps of the wealth.

Perhaps a random idea is that the Americans are so used to thinking that everybody can make it in the USA and therefore if they are poor they can only blame themselves, surely. They just didn’t make it and they better be happy with their fate.

What the disenfranchised people in the developed world are forgetting is that they do have the power. They don’t actually need to think it’s their fault that they are not getting an equitable slice of the wealth cake. And perhaps one should not forget the developing world where the same inequalities are coming to the fore.

It was therefore great to see in Switzerland a move by the ordinary people taking back some of that power. The people voted overwhelmingly against high executive pay. Lead by one individual, Thomas Minder owner of a family-owned business, a tiny outrage ended up becoming a popular vote.

And that’s how it has to be done if you want to change the world. Messy occupy movements where people settle in tents on the fringe of financial district? No. A well thought through campaign that appeals to the ordinary people via legal and regular channels? Yes to that.

It surely applies to all of the changes that people want to make. Violence, riots, uprisings, demonstrations are not the way to do it. Even in the Arab world the uprisings have not really made a difference instead allowing lunatic fringe religious groups to run the show. Talk about a step back into the dark ages.

You want to make a change? Do it within the system. Just like the Swiss did. They changed the law. We can do that too. And with social media allowing us to talk so freely to each other and making it easy for tribes to get together it really isn’t necessary anymore to camp on the doorstep of the stock exchanges.

There have been some interesting developments in the human resources space. The Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in particular has started a strong debate. Her call to bring back telecommuters into Yahoo’s offices has caused a lot of random hot air to circulate.

Whereas some companies have allowed their workers freedom to work from home Yahoo has now decided they want their staff back in the office. It seems positively old fashioned. Going backwards? Do we need to be physically together to produce the best work possible? And what about the cost to the environment and the back pocket for all the commuting to work.

But then another interesting article caught my attention. Reading about an innovative design studio based in Copenhagen and admiring their design work it was interesting to note that this award winning studio consists of two partners and one assistant. Sure they are a division of a larger agency, but their business unit is small.

How does this work? It can only work when the small unit can tap into an available freelance talent pool. And this is where work is ultimately going to. Just as this agency, Mega Design, is doing. They bring in talent when required. This means that you are never at risk with high overheads. You can expand or shrink according to the work load. It’s like having telecommuters on tap. Without the risk.

Of course there will still be the Yahoo, Facebook and Google’s out there who amass people in the hundreds and thousands. But where the big changes will happen will be in the small to mid size businesses. The ones that are most often knocked over by recessions. And the ones that used to employ those millions newly unemployed.

An interesting question was posed in a blog post recently. In response to the unemployment figures in the developed world that are not budging even though the recession is receding into history and the stock exchanges are posting highs not seen since before the crash a question was asked. (Taking the highs as an indication that the economies are doing well.)

And the question was: why are companies not hiring. Even though the economy is moving again and into positive figures. Why is there no hiring?

And probably the answer to this is that companies are going to do the very same thing that this design studio in Copenhagen is doing. Once they require staff they will outsource to freelancer on a per project basis because it’s safer. It’s a matter of keeping your overheads in sync with your project sizes.

The big headache of course is that young people coming out of formal education have been educated for the purpose of slotting into factory style work environments. Note that many hugely successful businesses out there have been started by people who never finished their post high school qualification. Steve Jobs springs to mind.

We are educating our youth for the wrong job market. There are only so many jobs at Yahoo or Google. The rest are going to have to become freelancers. Do they know how to run their own business, how to sell their services, how to keep their skills relevant so that they are marketable, network to find new business and the list goes on.

What else are we not providing our young people with? Relevant work place skills. A degree in English is not going to be enough for a regular copy writing job. And companies don’t have the budgets anymore to train up young people. This means our unemployed out there are the youth. Because on their first day at work all they can possibly do is make coffee for the boss. And there are no longer budgets for these skills.