The employment contract as we know it is disappearing. In its place, a new model is essential: modular, individualized, fluid. A structural transformation which redefines the very contours of employment.
“There will be no more jobs. There will be tasks to be accomplished, results to be achieved, missions to carry out. In a sentence, Rashad Tabakawala, former Chief Strategist from the Publicis group, sums up the shock wave that falls on the world of work. According to him, the classic organization around a post, a mission sheet and a managerial hierarchy is an artifact of the 20th century. And he is already obsolete.
From the era of jobs to the era of fragments
The dominant model from the industrial era is based on an integration logic: an employee, an employer, an employer. All framed by a permanent contract, an office, a hierarchical superior. This stability has long been synonymous with security. Today it is experienced as an obstacle, both for talents and for businesses.
What Rashad Tabakawala offers is a radically different reading: thinking about work either as a job frozen, but like a Flow of tasks and objectivesallocated according to skills, availability, and contextual relevance. A bit like a personalized playlistgenerated on demand, adjusted in real time.
The image is striking: in the old world, we downloaded an album. In the new one, we listen to a playlist built according to the mood, the moment, the interactions. In the same way, the company no longer recruits only a fixed profile, but composes an ad hoc, temporary, often hybrid team (employees, freelancers, AI, external partners), to achieve a result.
An assembly logic rather than structure
This evolution is not a theoretical projection. It already manifests itself concretely:
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- In the independent work growth (More than 6 million business creations in the United States in 2024).
- In the rise of skills “matching” platforms (Malt, Comet, Worksome).
- In the rise of fractional employeesworking at 60 or 80 % for a company, while developing parallel projects.
Even the most established companies are starting to adapt their model. Some now offer employees to choose their desired working time every year (60 %, 80 %, 100 %), and allocate tasks according to this availability. The contract becomes a flexible agreement, continuously negotiated.
IA, Marketplaces and Disintegration of the single position
Three factors accelerate this rocking:
- Artificial intelligencewhich automates an increasing part of the tasks formerly associated with “posts”.
- Service marketplaceswhich facilitate access to specific resources, on a global scale.
- The culture of side hustleamong young generations in search of autonomy and diversification.
The company becomes a coordination node more than a workplace. THE Chief Task Officer could soon replace the Chief Operating Officer.
Towards the end of standard wage earners?
This transformation questions several pillars of labor law:
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- What is an employee when he only works 60 % of his time for an employer?
- How to guarantee social rights (health, retirement, unemployment) in a fragmented model?
- How to organize continuing education when careers become non -linear?
In the medium term, the tension will relate to the joint between individual freedom and collective protection. In the absence of suitable regulation, the model could dig inequalities between “liquid talents” and precarious workers.
A strategic challenge for companies
For organizations, the stake is twofold:
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- Attract the best talentsby agreeing to negotiate the collaboration formats on a case -by -case basis.
- Organize work around resultsand no longer processes or schedules.
This implies deeply reviewing HR systems, management models and performance monitoring tools. No more “supervise” an employee on a defined position. It’s necessary Pilot multiple contributionsoften non-synchronous, sometimes hybrid men-machine.
What is at stake: professional sovereignty
In this recomposition world, everyone becomes a “Company of one”according to the term tabakawala. An individual capable of aggregating projects, negotiating his value, of continuous training, to manage his brand and his income flows.
This tilting can be scary. He is mainly carrying sovereignty found for those who will be able to adapt. Far from announcing the end of work, he inaugurates a new era: that of extreme personalization, fluidity, permanent hybridization.
It is no longer the job that makes the individual. It is the individual who composes, à la carte, his professional trajectory.
