“With every ounce of opportunity there’s an expectation on you to be responsible. Getting a job means there’s work to be done and if there wasn’t then you’d better be fired.”
With COVID-19 and accompanying containment measures employers have been forced to let go of their employees in order to stay afloat. While this is the case, some have still gone to the point of having to close shop. That’s how unfortunate a turn of events it has been over the last one year for individuals. While this have made worse the situation on unemployment, all we can wish for is to ensure we get out of this better and for those with jobs to give it their all. That’s the much you can do hoping it works out for the better.
Over the past I’ve been advocating for hard work, diligence and responsibility among us as individuals. These are attributes I do believe will never get out of season any day and while they may not reap immediate returns they always do in the long term. As I started this blog last year, I promised to share on lessons I pick from my encounters through life and yesterday was one such day where I had a moment to talk with a great friend on her experiences at work. She’s been supporting with the running of an eatery in the city and with the new containment measures, there’s need to ensure efficiencies in operations. Considering the standard client flow is interrupted, it’s upon employees and management to find ways of working together to sustain if not improve their performance. Cognizant of this, you’d expect that all employees would put in their best efforts to ensure operations are sustained, no orders go unfilled and most importantly any new service streams optimized. Unfortunately, this isn’t the norm at the current moment. Instead of adjusting to the current circumstances employees are instead breeding complacency. In one scenario, an employee being asked to refocus into a new service stream to ensure client needs are met had the confidence to complain that it was a lot of work and thus they’d rather go without that new stream. What he didn’t know at this point is the fact that for him to keep drawing his salary at the end of each month, there’s need to ensure the eatery makes money which at the point isn’t happening as much.
Reflecting on this conversation, I was reminded of a statement from my Dad awhile back when one of our helps at home complained that there was too much work at our home. This wasn’t news to us considering it had always been the norm so when he brought it up, we got a little concerned but then my dad had the best comeback to it and I’ll quote:
“You know for me to employ you, I had acknowledged there was more work to be done compared to the available labor. In this case, your employment is a way to ensure we have more people to do the work otherwise I wouldn’t have employed you.”
This sums it up for me. When we feel that there’s too much work, it’s a clear justification for why we are employed in the first place. Nobody would employ you for the sake of it. I doubt there’s anyone with lots of money just to employ people to do nothing. With this in mind, it’s my call to all of us who are in employment or who will land jobs in the near future, you are there because there is more work to be done. Make yourself useful in helping drive the company agenda. That’s your mission and if you can do it well, then you’ll succeed with the company and grow in your career/occupation/profession.