Rebranding work and relationships.

• Author: Hall, Robert
• Position: MARKETING SOLUTIONS

THE HANDSOME, ARTICULATE, YOUNG MAN SITTING ACROSS FROM ME looked hollow and slightly hopeless as he recounted that four years ago everything looked great for him and his young bride. He had a good job with a top financial organization and was working on a master's degree when cutbacks left him unemployed. Now, still jobless, he confided that he and his wife were near divorce, mental health issues had surfaced, and isolation, especially from work and former work-colleagues, had taken their toll.

He is one of millions out there: college grads unemployed or underemployed living with their parents; inner-city fathers defined and deflated by their inability to support their families; single-parent moms stressed and alone in providing for their kids.

Sadly, his story reminds me of a senior manager I terminated a decade ago and found out several months later that he was getting up, getting dressed and going to the library each day and had not told his wife or teenage daughter of his job loss. Work is foundational to the relationships that undergird our well being--economic, social and emotional.

Relationships are often the first major casualty for the unemployed or even the underemployed.

Work also creates psychic income

We underestimate the value of work when we view it just in economic terms. Work is much more than the value customers receive or the pay workers collect for producing products and services. And, it is more than the shareholder value it creates. Work contributes to essential relationships that yield crucial psychic income. And as the structure of work changes, so do our relationships and our society. It is the magnitude of this change that now warrants our urgent attention.

Peter Cove, founder of America Works, the first for-profit, welfare-to-work company in America, says that work socializes people and instills a sense of personal responsibility in them, and connects behavior and consequences. It permits people to obtain the admiration and respect of their family and friends.

The changing nature of our work has created the perfect storm. The lead work-story today is our high unemployment rate hovering near 8 percent. The workforce participation rate--civilian working-age population that is either working or looking for work--was 63.6 percent in December 2012--the lowest in three decades and lowest on record for men. That reminds me of a description of a typical European football match: "22,000 people who desperately need...