Unemployment must be the workers’ worst nightmare. Work is central to life and losing one’s job normally means a degraded lifestyle. It can mean relative poverty and could be a cause which drives a person to depression, particularly now that we are accustomed to the lower and the middle strata of the “middle class’’ lifestyle.

It is surely tough, if not impossible, to cope with a loan and providing to a family’s financial and emotional needs once a worker is made redundant. Despite social allowances that are exclusively meant to provide a safety net, these can never substitute full-time job remuneration.

In certain cases the workers’ quest for employment forces them to accept certain degrading occupational conditions, making them grow alienated from the daily effort these produce. What becomes of sole importance through their working life is the extrinsic motivator; in other words, their wage.

In the long run this situation may negatively affect workers psychologically as well as physiologically. It is normal for such employees to resort to their leisure time as an attempt to regain the satisfaction negated at the workplace; however, this can never be equalled.

Unfortunately when it comes to frustrated young workers, some may also resort to alcohol or drug abuse in order to subconsciously escape the boredom created by their alienation at the place of work.

In return, this situation also adversely affects employers. Employers do complain about the substantial amount of sick leave availed of by employees after weekends.

Although most employees are prone to this phenomenon, it normally affects the unskilled, considering that they form the bulk of the unemployed. A worker may simply be deskilled after new technology has been introduced. Today’s labour market value of an unskilled worker is negligible and, thus, it is a hard task for this class of “reserve” labour force to find employment.

Introducing a lifelong learning culture should lessen such problematic situations. However it is not an easy exercise since the latest NSO employment statistics reveal that only an average of 3.9 per cent of those aged between 25 and 64 participate in education or training. Employees with the support of employment agencies such as the Employment and Training Corporation may engage in an exercise aimed to diversify their individual skills in synchronicity with the present and possibly the likely future labour market needs.

The importance of multiskilling achievement is crucial both for the worker and the employer in today’s fast changing market scenario. The more flexible a worker is the more confident he becomes in securing alternative employment; once, whatever the reason, such need arises. It also provides employers a pool of trained personnel to match any available vacancies within their organisation.

This is a concept technically known as flexicurity; where flexibility leads to security.

However one must be careful not to confuse flexibility with an employer’s attempt to turn employees into exploitable chewing gum, expecting them to work in all situations as demanded by him/her.

What I am pointing out here is that workers must keep themselves up to date with the rapid changing labour market demands. This enables workers to retain their effective labour market value and, on the other hand, provides the employer a valid and satisfied workforce.

Flexicurity is a concept which benefits all those involved in industrial relations and, as a result, the country as a whole.