"Aapki naukri mein na izzat hai, na mazaa hai aur na matlab (Your job has neither respect nor fun nor meaning)," - Bunty in the film Bunty aur Babli
So when did Bollywood filmmakers like Yash Chopra become career experts. Rashmi Bansal thinks that the quote from the movie above captures the essence of what people look for in a job and career.
Respect (the kind of job should evoke external and internal respect) is an intrinsic part of the job. Lots of careers come with external respect, while others do not. Rashmi covers external respect, but I would add a respect one has for one's job goes a long way to "make meaning" for oneself.
So as an employer, if you think people do not respect the job your employees do, what are you going to do about it? And what are you going to do that will make sense, which is a precursor to your employees evoking respect for the job.
Fun. Fun can be superficial or inbuilt. Fun can be linked to the task or the environment. What are you doing as a manager/employer to add to the daily zing that makes employees want to come to work? Are you building a community of employees by giving them time and space to "chill out" and "hang out" with each other? Do you organize events that make people loosen up and laugh?
Meaning. This is the least you can do as a manager/employer. Meaning is very individual to a person. It is tied up with one's inner desires and motivation. It might be pointed to by educational qualifications, but maybe not. It is the part that people compromise most when starting their careers and ends up after a couple of decades as the reason for the mid-life crisis. At the most what you can do is assess the needs of a person and hope he/she is in a job that makes most meaning to him/her.
I believe people look for different things at different points in their career. The next job must fulfil the gap the current job has. What do you think?
ReplyDeletehi abhijit
ReplyDeleteThat's true, but I feel that we search for all three factors, although one overshadows the other at different points of life...and yes, it propels one to a change
I think 'meaning' or matlab is a higher order need in the scheme of things - as Abhijit said, people look for different things at different points of their career- and this depends a lot on the person's lifestage as well... wanting to move jobs depends on whether the need gap is felt so actutely or not...
ReplyDeleteand I guess these three factors are totally interdependent - what is respect without finding meaning and vice-versa, for instance...
Having started up 2 companies and seen a number of qualified, talented guys and girls come and go - i see the "peer pressure" plays a very big role in choice of careers and companies they work for. And this is intense especially in the Year 2-5 of the career - where the main reference group one has is his class/ insti/ batchmates - and there is immense pressure to keep up.
ReplyDeleteAnd the "head hunters" or "placement consultants" don't help either with their constant baits to these impressionable minds with lure of money, position and power.
It does take a lot of courage for some one in mid 20s to stick to what they have chosen as careers - however unglamorous it may be.
btw, how many of us and our engineer friends have chosen to stick to production management?;-)
Actually, the focus should be on looking for what people look for in their whole lives. Career or job is just a means of reaching that overall objective.
ReplyDeleteAnd the model that best explains people's basic motivational drives is their ‘value profile’. Its been proved since a long time, that value systems of individuals has a pretty stable structure, and at times remain unchanged throughout life.
And please, values are a very 'neutral' term. Someone could believe in self-enhancement values, while some others would endorse self-transcendence values.
Rajan's comment above corroborates the values theory. People, who apparently are leaving jobs because of peer pressure, are actually doing this because they believe in achievement (demonstrating competence in terms of prevailing cultural standards, thereby obtaining social approval) and power (social status and prestige, control or dominance over people and resources) values.
I really do not know of any formal OD or HR strategies that have tried to link values with satisfaction of employees, but I think this could lead to lots of practical insights. Do let me know what you think of this.
The common factor is experiencing 'personal growth and development' resulting in higher self esteem. All others may be subsets.
ReplyDeleteMy three key points:
1. Learning on the job (identifying something new to learn always/innovate - organizations to encourage this through systems and practices), attaining knowledge through constant research -resulting in consistent development of competencies and better understanding of oneself - where does one want to go/what does one want to achieve?/what are my strengths and weaknesses?
(the EI 'personal' competency of self realisation) .
2. Encourage the employee to be responsible for one's own career development - org. systems to encourage 'horizontal' development more than vertical progression.
3. An able mentor who would provide direction - guidance through the ups and downs in a tough world where failures are bound to happen (or ideally should happen if one take's risks out of the comfort zone) - keep the mentee striving for excellence positively and continually.
The important decision for any person is to be in a career chosen with interest and passion, however dull and uninteresting it may seem to the world.
awesome thoughts !
ReplyDeleteThanks to everybody who contributed...I will try to synthesise these into a new post !
Good observations. I think one thing that often happens is that the further people go in their career, the more the focus shifts inward. So while in their 20's the salary and the title might be the most important factors (and the external respect associated with them), by midlife people are more inclined to ask themselves, "Is this really what I enjoy doing," and "What is the meaning of all of this?"
ReplyDelete