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I am one of Charles Handy's portfolio workers, armed with a laptop, a modem and some contacts.
There is a premium on networking and self-promotion, and portfolio workers have to be ultra-organised as they usually have to keep several balls in the air.
In fact, a key tip in the book is for portfolio workers to get jobs from their former full-time employers and use that as a stepping stone.
Often dismissed as being middle-class lefties and luvvies by detractors, the overwhelming social makeup of this group is drawn from what Guy Standing has labelled "the precariat": young, educated, insecure, portfolio workers.
Parents, carers, downsizers, portfolio workers – there are many reasons and ways to work flexibly.
Moreover, in many cases, the choice to combine two or more jobs is driven by an individual preference for independence and a self-managed career, as in the case of portfolio workers who "contract their skills and knowledge to various individuals and organisations, in effect creating a 'portfolio' of work activity for themselves" (Fenwick 2006, p. 66).
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His books have titles like "The Empty Raincoat" and "The Elephant and the Flea", and he talks of phenomena such as "the shamrock organisation" (companies with three leaves of employment: full-time workers; subcontractors/outsourcers; and part-time specialists) and "the portfolio worker" (people who have a number of "jobs, clients and types of work" simultaneously).
In his book The Age of Unreason, Charles Handy (1998) predicted how the world of stable, long-term employment would come to an end and how this fundamental shift in the workplace, would result in the emergence of the "portfolio worker" and the "portfolio career".
Some call this a "portfolio worker".
It's interesting that freelance and portfolio career workers, those largely without so-called "good jobs" with benefits, are at the cutting edge of change.
The stock market decline has struck hard against retirement savings, but we can be confident that most workers' portfolios will recover.
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Justyna Jupowicz-Kozak
CEO of Professional Science Editing for Scientists @ prosciediting.com