Transformation of the Finnish employee ideal in job advertisements from 1944 to 2009

Abstract

In this article we examine transformation of the Finnish employee ideal since the Second World War. Our qualitative analysis is based on the data of 490 job advertisements from 1944 to 2009, and follows the change in employee requirements during this period. Our results show that requirements for transferable, particularly interpersonal, skills increased considerably during the research period. While workmanship, diligence, competence and work experience were the most common employee requirements in the job advertisements of the 1940s and 1950s, employees today are required to possess qualities such as stress resilience, flexibility, productivity, inventiveness and the desire to learn new things. The qualities required of white-collar employees have increased in particular. We conclude that, unlike the post-war period, today the ideal employee is characterized by flexibility and interpersonal skills reflecting changes in the organization of work, work organizations and work culture.

Keywords

content analysis employee requirements Finland history job advertisements work life

Introduction

In examining the requirements articulated in job advertisements, we analyse how the Finnish employee ideal was transformed between 1944 and 2009. This period is particularly interesting, as Finland experienced an exceptionally rapid structural change after World War II. Industrialization started late in Finland compared to the situation in many Western European and the other Nordic countries, but when it finally intensified after the war economic growth was rapid. In labour markets, the proportion of people working within primary production decreased dramatically, whereas the number of industrial workers grew – reaching a peak of 596,000 in 1974 – after which it began a slow decline (Hjerppe, 1990: 58). The proportion of public and private services in turn grew from 29 per cent in 1950 to 63 per cent in 2000 (Fellman, 2008: 144). Moreover, between 1988 and 2000, the proportion of knowledge workers more than tripled in Finland before stabilizing at around 46 per cent (Blom et al., 2001; Pyöriä, 2006: 81). To summarize, the occupations and working conditions of Finnish employees changed radically during the research period.

Although many technological and structural advances improved working conditions between the 1940s and 1980s, discussion on the negative or ambiguous trends in work life, such as work stress, burnout, depression, time pressure and higher requirements has increased only since the 1980s (Julkunen, 2008; Siltala, 2004; Väänänen et al., 2012). A constant lack of time and inadequate requirements for work have become commonly recognized aspects of work life today (see, e.g., Lehto and Sutela, 1999). Similar ambiguous work-life developments can be recognized in international scientific discussions (Green, 2006; Petersen and Willig, 2004; Sennett, 1998). The repeated arguments of the past 20 years accuse global competition, fast technological development, the constant flow of new information and the growth of service industries as being the causes of negative trends (Green, 2006; Sennett, 1998; Siltala, 2004).

As ideals reflect the cultural values, social norms and organizational needs of changing societies, we argue that studying historically diverging employee ideals helps us understand the paradoxical trends of work life presented above. In order to understand current work-life developments, we need to analyse a longer time period to find out how the employee ideal has evolved. Here is one of the main arguments of our study: we suggest that the need for innovation, upgrading, flexibility and competitiveness has led to current labour market ideals emphasizing completely different employee qualities from those required of the worker in previous decades (Frenkel et al., 1995; Green, 2006). Furthermore, as the share of white-collar positions has also increased during recent decades (Lehto and Sutela, 2008), these work-life changes may have been reflected differently between white-collar and blue-collar jobs.

Although job advertisements may seem a rather trivial channel of communication, they have a central role in shaping the perception of an ideal employee and work life in general by articulating employee requirements for various occupations. In continuously repeating the desired qualities of employees, advertisements create a discourse through which the perception of employee ideals is mediated to potential employees, or, indeed, to us all. Despite this, however, job advertisements have seldom been utilized as research data. We believe that examining their requirements is important, as advertisements are the key media through which many people first encounter the requirements of work life.

In this article, we aim to contribute to the discussion on the development of work life by exploring how requirements for employees have changed in Finland since the Second World War. The research questions are: (1) What qualities, abilities and skills were required of potential employees in job advertisements? (2) How has the notion of the ideal worker evolved over time? (3) Are different qualities required of different employee groups? In order to answer the third question, we divided our data into blue-collar and white-collar advertisements.¹ We also aim to find a connection between the transformation of the ideal employee and the changes in society, work and management ideas that occurred during the same period of time. The article is organized as follows: first, we introduce previous studies on employee requirements. Second, we present our research data on job advertisements and the research method used. After this, we examine the development in employee requirements. We divide the research period into four periods according to changes in perceptions of the ideal employee and the various requirements made of potential employees. Finally, we discuss our findings, connect them with societal change and recent scientific discussion, and draw conclusions.

Previous studies on employee requirements

By ’ideal worker’ we refer to the entity of various expectations that employers have of an employee. In our study, we examine the general trends of Finnish work life, and thus analyse qualities that are not associated with a particular occupation. Bennett (2002: 457) calls these transferable skills, which, in our analysis, encompass both cognitive skills and personality characteristics. Previous studies have shown that employee requirements have increased over recent decades (Cappelli, 1993; Green, 2006; Lavoie et al., 2003; Wolff, 2003). However, empirical studies on employee requirements have often been based on employer and employee surveys and have concentrated on analysing qualifications, degrees and other measurable skills using quantitative methods (Felstead et al., 2002; Green, 2006: 30–31; Jackson et al., 2005).

Different management models have favoured different kinds of employees. In the early 1900s, the ideal workers of scientific management were suitable for the industrial setting: they were hardworking, obedient and did not act unprompted (Guillén, 1994: 8–9 f.). A few decades later, new ideas of the human relations school envisaged employees in a slightly more active role in organizations, with employers wanting them to take more initiative and be more active at work. Workers were seen as socially and inwardly motivated. They were given wider personal freedom and responsibility, and their social capabilities were emphasized more than they were in scientific management, although normative control was often strong (Barley and Kunda, 1992; O’Connor, 1999). The idea of the human relations school arrived in Finland as early as in the 1940s, but its techniques were not widely adopted until the 1960s and 1970s (Seeck and Kuokkanen, 2010). In the 1980s, the organizational culture paradigm saw unity and loyalty as the primary attributes of a strong culture that would lead to success, thus stressing commitment, team-working abilities and communication skills (Morgan, 1997: 121–123).

Grugulis and Vincent (2009) argue that employer requirements for ‘soft’ skills, including communication, team-working, motivation and the ability to improve personal performance, have increased during recent decades. They explain the increased requirements for soft skills by the growth of the service sector, the introduction of lean manufacturing and new management techniques in the public sector (Grugulis and Vincent, 2009). Another quality associated with the recent changes in work life is the need for flexibility (Hochschild, 1997), which according to Sennett (1998) derives from the instability that has become the norm in work life.

According to some scholars, the changing requirements for transferable skills may lead to the polarization of employee requirements (Grugulis, 2007; Grugulis and Vincent, 2009), whereas some studies have shown that the skills required of all employees changed with the recent increased emphasis on information work (Green, 2006: 27; Lavikka, 2000). The phase of increasing technological development has created the need in several sectors for a flexible, constantly learning, employee because of the rapidly changing organizational environment requiring problem-solving skills (Lavikka, 2000). Although several studies have indicated an increase in the skills and degrees required of employees, there is surprisingly little qualitative research on the changes in the desired qualities of an ideal employee, and in particular on the explicit requirements of potential employees in job advertisements.

Research data and method of analysis

The data of 490 job advertisements published in the most widely circulated Finnish newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, between 1944 and 2009 were collected at five-year intervals, in 1944, 1949, 1954 and so on, i.e. 35 job advertisements in each year. The advertisements were chosen randomly from the Sunday issues in February and September of the selected years. The number of job advertisements collected per year was based on data saturation: 35 advertisements per year produced data in which certain qualities could be seen to be repeated and others no longer appeared. Advertisements for managerial positions were excluded from the data, as our aim was to examine the qualities required for non-managerial jobs.

Although it is the newspaper of the capital region, Helsingin Sanomat has been issued in the provinces since the 1920s. The advertising section attracted working-class readers to this liberal and slightly right-wing newspaper, which became the most popular and most widely circulated in the 1920s (Ekman-Salokangas et al., 1988: 131). Although the advertisements, including job advertisements, have always mainly concerned the capital city region, a good proportion from outside Helsinki are also published, particularly job advertisements for state offices and municipal posts. In the 1940s and 1950s, the job advertisements of Helsingin Sanomat were fairly equal in number from various businesses and occupational groups. By the final decades of the 1900s, job advertisements started to bias on the side of managerial occupations and upper-level jobs. This transition partly portrays the general structural change in Finland from industrial occupations to service sector and white-collar occupations (Keinänen, 2009: 44), but also that the job advertisement pages of Helsingin Sanomat have become a medium through which corporations advertise themselves. Many organizations want to appear as progressive and prestigious, and as offering attractive career opportunities such as expert and managerial positions. A large proportion of non-managerial and non-expert job advertisements have been transferred to the Internet, as this has become the main medium for job-seeking. Despite this change, we included a fairly equal number of job advertisements for both blue-collar and white-collar jobs in our data.

Our division of blue-collar and white-collar work and positions is based on the classification of Statistics Finland, commonly used in Finnish sociological research. This classification follows international recommendations such as the Provisional Guidelines on Statistics of Distribution of Income, the Consumption and Accumulation of Households by the United Nations, and the Proposal for Nordic Socioeconomic Division even though it is not identical to them (Statistics Finland, 1989). According to this classification, wage-earners are divided into workers (referred to in this article as blue-collar workers) and employees (referred to in this article as white-collar workers). This is based largely on the division between manual and non-manual work, although it is becoming blurred to some extent due to the recent increase of the use of information technology in all kinds of work, including traditionally manual jobs (Statistics Finland, 1989). A recent study, however, shows that the division between manual and non-manual work still exists in the minds of wage-earners (Olakivi, 2012).

We used qualitative content analysis (Krippendorff, 2004). All job advertisements in the data were first read through once and all the non-profession-specific requirements mentioned were listed year by year. By ‘non-profession-specific’ we mean qualities that do not refer to a certain skill or attribute for a certain occupation, such as a ‘degree in medicine’, but rather to general abilities and skills that potential employees are required to have. With the list of skills and qualities mentioned in the data, we were able to identify the decade in which a particular quality was mentioned for the first time, and when it came into common use. The analysis was conducted by reading the actual advertisements and the lists of requirements side by side, and, based on this analysis, by determining turning points at which the overall standard of requirements seemed to change.

Job advertisements are important sources when examining the changing ideal employee. Most of the prior research on job advertisements has focused on specific trades and skills areas (e.g. Lynch and Smith, 2001; Todd et al., 1995; White, 1999) or on a relatively short period of time (Jackson et al., 2005). A questionnaire study (Bennet, 2002: 468) has revealed that job advertisements aptly represent the skills and qualities that employers appreciate among candidates and demand from their employees, because the skills mentioned in the advertisements are carefully chosen by managers to suit the position. Towards the end of the 1900s, the role of human resource departments in shaping job advertisements may also have grown as these became more common after the 1980s (Storey, 2007). Lynch and Smith (2001) made the methodological assumption that the advertisements indicated the ideal design of the job at that given point in time, because the employer could include the knowledge, skills and abilities believed to be important without making the necessary adjustments to the job when a person was already in place.

From the mid-1940s to the 1950s: The skilled worker

From the mid-1940s to the end of the 1950s, blue-collar worker position job advertisements were very short and contained few skill requirements. Many were classified according to gender and referred to the age of the applicant. The most prominent aspect of the skills qualifications was that they emphasized professional skills as something very fixed and trade-specific. Employees were expected to be skilled, capable and experienced or trained for the work. They had to be ‘fully acquainted’ with the tasks of the given trade, or possess ‘full knowledge of the trade’. Formal education was rarely mentioned. This is understandable, as vocational education was not widely available before the 1950s and hence most professionals had learned their profession through apprenticeships (Leskinen, 2001). The ideal worker presented in the job advertisements was thus a skilled craftsman or a semi-skilled industrial worker (see also Turtiainen and Väänänen, 2012). If s/he was offered any benefits, it was usually an apartment or assistance in finding one.

A position in our factory is open to a fully professional car mechanic. A two-roomed apartment can be arranged. (11.9.1949)

However, the character of the more independent jobs in smaller organizations and of white-collar workers was different. Alongside occupational skills, it was common to require qualities linked to the character of the employee. Employers often searched for an energetic person, and high morale was appreciated. The advertisements defined an ideal employee who was careful, responsible, conscientious, steady and suitable for the job, all characteristics well suited for the paternalistic management style that dominated the period (Seeck, 2008). These requirements could extend to the applicant’s personal life, as a steady or respectable lifestyle and sobriety were sometimes mentioned.

A well-paid position is open to a female shoe-seller who is trustworthy, takes care of her tasks independently, has a pleasant demeanour, and fully masters her field. (7.2.1954)

During the 1950s, job advertisements showed a slow diversification. The ideal employee now also had to possess organizing abilities and be more independent and enterprising than previously. As advertisements in commercial trades became more common, references to customer service skills and manner of presentation appeared.

The definition of motivation gained new elements in the advertisements of the 1950s. He, sometimes also she, had to be determined and to have a go-ahead attitude. While most of the advertisements preserved the same simple form and orientation in professional skills as those of the 1940s, some were targeted towards a highly enterprising, subjective applicant.

Are you a determined young man under 35? If you also possess a full command of both spoken and written Finnish and Swedish and have worked in industrial sales for 2–3 years, an interesting position awaits You in the sales department of a large industrial company. (5.9.1954)

The simple definition of the ideal worker as a skilled professional reflects rather traditional perceptions of work and organization. The short job descriptions and requirements of full knowledge of the trade represent a workplace in which professions had established technically defined boundaries and in which the hierarchical organization did not encourage the expression of one’s individuality as an official part of the job. In large-scale industry, where scientific management was starting to gain ground, the target was to define job boundaries even more precisely and to remove any potential risks caused by the personal characteristics of workers and their emotions (Seeck, 2008: 277–279). However, throughout the period, the share of employment in the service sector grew, while the educational level of workers kept rising. The 1950s and 1960s witnessed the increasing modernization of organizations and production, and the professionalization of management practices (Seeck, 2008: 93–94; Sädevirta, 2004: 44–45). While the overall changes in job advertisements were small, these developments anticipated a more radical shift in the definition of the ideal worker.

From the 1960s to the mid-1970s: Employee as cooperative subject

The period from the beginning of the 1960s to the mid-1970s is characterized by a higher number of qualities required of an employee and an increased emphasis on interpersonal skills. Although most job advertisements were still short and simple, a new demand arose for personal qualities beyond mere professional skills and ‘good behaviour’. One of the most prominent and distinctive new requirements was the ability to cooperate. This first appears in the data in 1969, and by 1979 had become one of the most common requirements. The ideal workers of this period also had to be in command of themselves and know how to behave in various situations. These requirements reflect the ideals of the human relations school, according to which social norms, values and group relations were to be considered in organizing work (Barley and Kunda, 1992; O’Connor, 1999). The growing emphasis on interpersonal skills also reflects in part the change in Finland’s business structure; a decisive shift towards the service sector (Fellman, 2008).

Do you have a pleasant voice? A polite and composed manner? If you are also quick and have good organizing skills, you are the telephone exchange operator our modern office seeks. (9.2.1964)

An independent and enterprising attitude towards work was also required more often than previously. The new qualities of the 1960s – entrepreneurship, creativeness, efficiency, careerism and the ability to produce new ideas – depicted the ideal employee as an active and capable actor. The ideal worker had ideas for developing the organization, but did not take any liberties at work without consulting a supervisor.

The job advertisements of 1974 introduced even more demanding new attributes. The ideal employee had prowess, energy, solid experience, self-confidence, good conversational talent and an active interest in the business. However, many advertisements – for blue-collar jobs in particular – still did not contain specific requirements of candidates, except that they be ‘skilled’. By 1974 it had become fairly common for employers to list what the employer – and now also the work – could offer the employee: the advertisements did not just advertise employee benefits such as a nice canteen, free Saturdays or the option of leasing an apartment, they now presented the work itself as rewarding as well. A desirable job was described as independent, exciting and high-powered.

The task is demanding and diverse. [--] We expect our forthcoming secretary to be able to organize, take initiatives and be efficient. The position requires a relevant college-level degree. Practical experience of a similar position is also favourable. (22.9.1974)

Several job advertisements in 1974 began by introducing the company and the business in which it operated, which had not been common in the 1960s. Job advertisements had now become media for promoting companies, as well as for seeking new employees. The data indicate that vocational and academic degrees and qualifications had become more important by the 1960s, whereas in the 1950s professional skill acquired through experience was often sufficient. In the 1960s and 1970s many employees had to have a degree, as indicated in the quote above. This reflects the increased prevalence of vocational education in Finland (Leskinen, 2001). A respectable lifestyle and sobriety were still mentioned from time to time. Age and sex were also mentioned in many job advertisements, even in 1974, but particularly in the 1960s it was still common specifically to seek either a ‘young man’ or a ‘young woman’.

Part-time assistant clerk’s position open to a young, energetic, diligent female. Includes diverse tasks. (7.9.1969)

To conclude, the employee of this period became an active, cooperative subject with distinct qualities. The ideal employee was enterprising and skilfully interacted with customers and co-workers. This redefinition of the ideal worker is in line with the development of Finnish society at the time. In the literature, the late 1960s and early 1970s was associated with the creation of the welfare state and the birth of the consumer society, educational expansion and a remarkable transitionary phase towards more equal, democratic and socially sensitive work organizations and society in general (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 97, 167; Wouters, 2007: 184–191). Organizations were modernizing through the automation of production processes and the computerization of work, the development of human resource administration and the reorganization of work towards less hierarchical and more interactive structures (Julkunen, 1987: 49, 285; Sädevirta, 2004: 45). Work was thus increasingly characterized by an interactive and informative content and an inability to reduce social relationships to formal hierarchies.

From the late 1970s to the end of the 1990s: Intensifying employee requirements

Several new requirements appeared at the end of the 1970s, a period characterized by a significant intensification of employee requirements. For example, sales orientation was no longer merely a sufficient characteristic; the orientation had to be strong. Similar stronger attributes began to inch their way into job advertisements. The ideal employee of this period was presented as an all-rounder who had versatile skills and diverse work experience. The candidate was required to have such assets as a sense of style and good taste – exclusive personal abilities to distinguish her/himself from other candidates. The intensification of job requirements seems to have coincided with Finland’s shift from production orientation to market orientation in the late 1970s (Kettunen, 2002: 349). Company and personnel management shifted their attention to effectiveness and competitiveness alongside the development of strategic management thinking (Sädevirta, 2004: 116).

The same development continued in the 1980s. Job advertisements contained new adjectives, like flexible, results-driven, active and innovative. Ideal employees were capable of analytical thinking, had mastered various skills and were enterprising. They were presented as rigorous, ambitious professionals who were prepared to take on a great deal of responsibility.

Growth. Proof. Results. Challenges. Rising powerful leaders. Speed. Strong resources. As a creative, full-blooded professional you possess all the means. Come and take your share. (5.2.1984)

Work seemed to have become more short-sighted than before, and the employee needed to be able to adapt easily to changing circumstances and ready to meet the challenges of dynamic work. Project work began to appear in the job advertisements of the 1980s. Moreover, work itself seems to have been transformed into a project that required continuing personal development and application of the whole personality at work. Work was no longer an inevitable duty to support one’s living. It had come to mean a way of self-fulfilment, even an important goal in itself.

The ideal employees of the 1990s were dynamic, unprejudiced, brave team-players and profit-makers and rejoiced when the team succeeded. A winner attitude, the ability to cope in demanding situations, ambition, and the urge to succeed were also among the desired characteristics. Stress resilience along with flexibility had become the most desired qualities. ‘Top’ appeared for the first time in the data and was used in contexts such as ‘top professional’ and ‘top performer’. The quote below illustrates the way in which the ideal employee was expected to ‘independently develop‘ his/her performance to surpass the expectations of the employer.

We are looking for a Selling Spirit, a Sales virtuoso. This is the position for you if you have an inborn selling talent. You can be a chef, [--] or a carpenter as long as you have that something. We will train our salesmen ourselves, but the idea is that you will independently improve your results to exceed our expectations. (14.2.1999)

The intensifying of employee requirements can be seen as reflecting the accelerated pace of Finnish work life during this period. Between the mid-1980s and the end of the 1990s, the Finnish economic system, largely based on a planned economy, was transformed into a system based on international competition. Moreover, the pressures of global competition were transferred to workplaces, and employees were forced mentally to become entrepreneurs (Heiskala and Luhtakallio, 2006: 7). Lehto and Sutela (1999) found in their Finnish Quality of Work Life Survey that time pressure and the requirement for efficiency grew in Finnish work organizations between 1977 and 1997, and that the requirement for productivity and flexibility created pressures that affected the well-being of employees.

Factors such as sobriety and a respectable lifestyle seemed to die down after the 1980s, but new personal requirements demanded that an employee be active in leisure time, too. The increased demand for personal skills and qualities expanded the need for full personal involvement in work (Kahn, 1992; see also Rose, 1989). Outside work, the new organizational culture emphasized devotion to the workplace and required that the virtues of leisure time be linked to organizational needs, whereas the earlier organizational interest in workers’ extracurricular activities had focused mainly on moral and community issues (Grugulis et al., 2000).

The person we are looking for is a 35–50 year-old, to whom both work and active leisure are important things in life. (19.9.1999)

Explicit references to an applicant’s sex disappeared during this period, because a law prohibiting this in recruitment and job advertisements came into force in 1987. Even in this period, only vigour, work experience and good behaviour were required of many blue-collar employees. Although requirements of blue-collar workers also slowly became more demanding than they were in the 1940s and 1950s, the difference between requirements for blue-collar and white-collar workers had become enormous.

Are you a professional chef? Then join our youthful team. Written applications: Restaurant X. (14.2.1999)

The simple request for a professional chef in this advertisement is exactly the same as the style of an advertisement in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the invitation to a ‘youthful team’ reveals that work has gained meanings other than merely earning a living or doing one’s share for society. The applicant is also addressed as ‘you’, which invites him/her to get involved in work more personally. This became quite common at the end of the 1970s, particularly in private sector advertisements for white-collar employees, and increased during the 1980s and 1990s. A workplace was now considered to be a community reflecting the qualities of the people working within it, and also something of a manifestation of employees’ personalities. This reflects the values of the organizational culture paradigm that became topical in Finnish management journals in the 1990s (Seeck and Kuokkanen, 2010: 319). Proponents of organizational culture claimed that employees’ commitment and loyalty to the organization were essential for the organization’s performance in turbulent times (Barley and Kunda, 1992: 382). Hence, it was important that the values of the employee were as congruent as possible with the values of the organization. According to Lehto and Sutela (1999), employees were required to be more strongly committed to the employer, while at the same time employment relationships had become less secure.

The 2000s: Overwhelming employee requirements

The job advertisements of 2004 and 2009 create a picture of an even more competent and enterprising employee. The ideal employee of the early 2000s was required not only to be efficient, but also ‘very efficient’ or ‘extremely efficient’. The requirement for communication skills had been replaced by a requirement for ‘excellent communication skills’. Knowledge of a certain language had become ‘fluency’ in a language or several languages. Moreover, the ideal employee had to have a ‘deepunderstanding’ of the field, ‘good stress resilience’ and ‘goodproficiency’. Most attributes now had an emphatic adjective in front of them. As a consequence, the job advertisements of the early 2000s had a new, intense, demanding tone.

We expect you to have a wide interest in the communications business. We also require an academic education, excellent language proficiency, analytical thinking, intellectual curiosity and ability to work independently. (19.9.2004)

Motivation and self-confidence had become even more important employee qualities. Ideal employees had to strongly feel that they were in the right occupation. They had to have strong inner motivation and ‘a genuine interest’ in any business that they worked in. However, job advertisements indicate that ideal employees were also required to be open-minded and ready to switch to other tasks or jobs if they were needed in another area of operation. Moreover, the ideal employee was presented as extremely enterprising and continuously contemplating how to develop his/her work, career or organization. As the quote below shows, the ideal employee was expected to hold a personal aspiration to becoming an outstanding professional.

Fashion and customer service are fields in which you excel and constantly challenge yourself to perform increasingly well. (8.2.2009)

The ideal employees of the early 2000s were expected to have experience of several businesses and organizations and to be prepared constantly to learn new things. Moreover, they were socially capable and able to convince the client of their proficiency. These qualities indicate the requirement of entrepreneurship described by Miller and Rose (2008), according to whom (p. 97) the emphasis on employees’ active roles in their own economic governance through the capitalization of their skills and abilities created new vocabularies for managing employees. Flexibility, activeness and a constant endeavour towards self-enhancement and actualization through work were construed as virtues in work life. In addition, they were taken to be in accordance with the interests of employees themselves (Miller and Rose, 2008: 97). The employee ideal of the early 2000s reflected in job advertisements emphasizes the employee’s responsibility in keeping their skills up-to-date and being prepared to adapt to changing requirements.

A clear difference remained between the requirements of different employee groups. The abilities required of blue-collar employees were still considerably fewer than those demanded of white-collar employees, although even blue-collar workers were now expected readily to be able to cooperate, a good attitude towards customer service and flexibility – qualities that have now become almost standard requirements of any job advertisement. However, as there were still many blue-collar job advertisements with no or very few requirements other than proficiency, the difference between requirements for different kind of jobs became greater than in any previous decade. Whereas blue-collar job advertisements mainly addressed the applicant and their abilities neutrally, almost all white-collar job advertisements did so using ‘you’: ‘your approach to life is positive’, ‘you are the business card of our company’, or ‘you are active and open’. This seems to underline the different qualities required of different employee groups: white-collar employees were required to become more personally involved and apply their whole character at work (see Kahn, 1992).

Discussion

Transformation of the employee ideal has been a multi-layered process reflecting societal, organizational and occupational development. Only a few qualities can be found in the job advertisements of 1944 and 2009: ‘professionally skilled’, ‘conscientious’, ‘experienced’, ‘young’ and ‘able to organize’. This short list aptly describes the employee ideal of the 1940s, but the requirements had become much more diverse and demanding by the 2000s. In terms of our data, the intensification of employee requirements applies particularly to white-collar employees, which suggests that the shift in skill requirements is linked to the work content of non-manual jobs. It has been argued that modern white-collar and service work lack the routine nature of traditional manual work. It is defined as more complex and interrelated, and workers are typically under less close supervision (Edlund and Grönlund, 2010). In such work, the need for generic skills including flexibility, creativity, generalized problem-solving and social skills increases (Spenner, 1983; Stasz, 1997). Our finding suggests that significant differences in requirements between employee positions exist even although many scholars have suggested that the intensification of requirements concerns all employee groups (Lavikka, 2000). One explanation of our finding may be that the content of white-collar work has changed more profoundly during the previous decades in requiring more new qualities compared to blue-collar work (Green, 2006: 37).

White-collar workers do not, however, constitute a uniform group. A study by Jackson et al. (2005) indicated that the requirements for educational qualities also vary according to occupational group. In terms of transferable skills, earlier research has indicated that the appearance of employees is significant, particularly in service work (see, e.g., Nickson et al., 2001). Our data contained only a few references to appearance. This does not mean that aesthetics are unimportant in recruitment; rather the lack of references to aesthetics indicate that it is not appropriate to refer explicitly to appearances in job advertisements. A ‘pleasant telephone voice’ was mentioned in one advertisement in 1989; the previous reference to an applicant’s looks was in 1959. However, it is noteworthy that the few advertisements referring to physical appearance were all for service workers, explicitly women. This indicates that the requirements of white-collar employees may also differ between occupational groups and sexes. For instance, different qualities may be required of female service workers than of other white-collar workers. This requires further research.

Management models may also have played a part in the shaping of employee ideals (Guillén, 1994). The increased requirements for transferable skills echo normative management rhetorics that emphasize social and communicative skills, employee commitment and a strong organizational culture; all considered essential for an organization’s performance, particularly during turbulent times (Barley and Kunda, 1992: 381). Deeply tied in with managerial focus is the increased attention to emotions and personalities (Hochschild, 1983; Julkunen, 2008: 122). In contemporary organizations, the display of emotions and the utilization of personal characteristics are seen as tools for increasing productivity, particularly in white-collar jobs and in the service sector (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2007: 98; Bolton, 2005: 14). For example, a study of Finnish managerial position job advertisements indicated that emphasis on emotional qualities in the selection of managers grew considerably from the 1950s (Varje et al., in press). Similarly, Kira (2003: 61–63) concludes that the de-bureaucratization of Finnish organizations shifted attention to the social and personal spheres of employees.

However, the shift in skill requirements towards emotional and psychological spheres does not explain the intensification of requirements in terms of extremes and top achievements. As noted by Siltala (2004: 73–74), the leftist social movement of the 1960s anticipated that economic growth and technological improvements would liberate workers from the imperatives of competition and bring more equality to labour markets. Instead, due to the changes in work of previous decades, certain employee groups, particularly white-collar workers, began to suffer under time pressure and from increased requirements at work. Simultaneously, some people drifted outside employment and risked marginalization (Blom et al., 2001). Siltala (2004: 77–80), among others, associates the increased competition and inequality in work life with the slowdown in economic and productivity growth that began in the 1970s and shifted labour markets closer to a zero-sum game. As a consequence, one factor contributing to increased employee requirements could be high unemployment, as a large number of qualified workers were looking for employment, and hence organizations would be able to choose the very best of the workforce available. During our research period, unemployment peaked twice, first in the 1970s and then in the 1990s during a severe recession. It did not return to its pre-recession levels after either peak (Hannikainen and Heikkinen, 2006). However, we were unable to detect significant changes in requirements when unemployment was at its highest. Hence, the increase in employee requirements in Finland seems better described as a gradual and multi-layered intensification of requirements rather than fluctuation according to the labour market situation.

The raised level of requirements was not necessarily just negative; it may also partly have reflected an increased level of opportunities at work. In the early 2000s, opportunities for development and career advancement became available to more employees (Lehto and Sutela, 2005: 34). However, opportunities for self-development and training were not divided equally (Green, 2006: 37; Siltala, 2004: 155–162), and the continuing demand for self-development at work became a burden. Employees could no longer passively expect the employer to tell them what to do. On the contrary, employees were expected actively to develop their skills and abilities to retain their competence and market value (see also Miller and Rose, 2008: 97). An important question is whether the overwhelming employee requirements of the first decade of the 2000s have created pressure for employees or whether employees feel empowered by these high expectations. As public adverts, job advertisements not only list the attributes needed for a certain job, they also contribute to the formation of the shared understanding of the employee ideal in a public domain. As most advertising today is based on creating strong images, job advertisements also create images of jobs, occupations, employee groups and organizations. Hence, as job advertisements reflect employee expectations and requirements, they also create and reinforce the public image of an ideal worker.

Conclusion

The employee requirements of job advertisements reflect the changes in the organization of work, work organizations and work culture. In other words, the transformation of the employee ideal is part of the structural change of society. Our results show that the transformation of the ideal employee can be traced to two separate developments. First, overall requirements seemed to increase during the research period and applied to both white-collar and blue-collar employees. Second, the requirements of white-collar employees increased much more than those of blue collar employees and the growing requirements for emotional skills became particularly concrete in the job advertisements of white-collar jobs. As the proportion of white-collar employees grew at the expense of manual workers from the 1940s, a good share of employees moved into the group that was subject to intensified requirements during the research period. These intense employee requirements are now applied to more employees and this may partly explain employees’ experiences of unpleasant developments in work life.

Factors other than employee position may also define the amount and quality of requirements for transferable skills that employees face. Our data clearly suggest that there are gender differences in employee requirements (see also Grugulis and Vincent, 2009). Hence, this would be a fruitful future path to follow in the study of employee ideals. Differences in employee requirements between occupational groups should also be further studied, as our analysis suggests that requirements vary according to employee positions. Another interesting direction for further study would be to examine how employees themselves experience the requirements of job advertisements. Do they find them realistic or empowering or do they feel inferior when they compare them to their own qualities?

Job advertisements are a segment of marketing, and it is clear that they are also a tool by which organizations can present their positions as interesting and exciting. The language of job advertisements seems to form a special genre with established, yet constantly evolving ways of expressing the qualities desired in work life. Even though the employee that is finally selected for the job may not be the energetic and innovative top-achiever that was originally illustrated, the advertisement has participated in shaping the ideal employee. Hence, job advertisements provide important data for further studying employee ideals.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Finnish Work Environment Fund (grant number 111337) and the Academy of Finland (grant number 128089 and The Rise of Mental Vulnerability in Work Life project). We also thank the entire Crafting the Ideal Employee research group and two anonymous reviewers for providing us with constructive comments that helped us considerably improve the manuscript.

Note

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