From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Hassan writes:
Good day Mr. Tom. I really appreciate the service you are providing. I’ve got a business studies assignment to create 20 reasons why people work. Could you please help me out with some reasons?
In response to Hassan’s request, think about why it is important for people to work. Hint: It’s not for the money. Please post your comments and we will debrief tomorrow.
To view comments as they are posted, please visit the site www.managementblog.org.
Tom,
In Dan Pink’s ‘Free Agent Nation’, I read a quote: “Working is getting paid to learn the things I don’t know yet.” If you can look at work like that, life is beautiful!
There’s also working for ‘self-actualisation’. In the end, you feel a better person because you’ve accomplished something.
A third group I observe are the ‘autopilots’, they work to earn money, nothing more (sometimes nothing less). Strange is that some of these people show a great drive of self-actualisation outside their work …
Philosophical question: is it the manager’s job to help them ‘transpose’ their drive to work? Or to reorient their career if need be?
Best regards,
Manuel
To be part of something bigger than they can be alone
Fellowship
Selfworth
Provide for your family
What makes people motivated to go to work is of course dependent on the tasks and the person involved. The fundamental reason would be to be able to survive – we need money to do this. But most of us strive towards finding other reasons such as self-fulfillment.
I am posting a link to a film about management through surveillance – since monitoring is one way to motivate employees to work effectively. Whether it is a good method or not is left to discuss, but the film makes some connections to reasons and theories about why people work. I hope you enjoy it:
The old Maslow’s hierarchy holds true. There are indeed those who work mainly to obtain a paycheck (physiological and safety needs). However, perhaps because we’re a developed nation, I have run into far more who work for the camaraderie of their workmates (love / belonging). Unfortunately, I have encountered only a smattering of peers who focus on esteem and self-Actualization. However for those lucky few, I have found that their definition of “dead-end job” vs “good job” tends to vary from the norm because they weigh opportunities for learning and advancement more than simply pay rate.
I disagree. Not many organizations use the heirarchy. Only the ones that know how to be cunning. Which is sad, most cunning individuals know the gift of gab, but don’t really know the job at all.
I think this quote sums it up best for me, “Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life, rather than a Monday-to-Friday sort of dying.” Studs Terkel (1912 – )Historian and author.
People work to be apart of something bigger than themselves. Whenever you show up just for a paycheck, it is time to do some soul searching to find out what you are passionate about and to seek to find work doing that.
Hope
Team
Fun
Accomplishment
Satisfaction (might be the same as above)
Self-worth
20 is a lot. I look forward to the list.
In response to Manuel Bollue’s philosophical question: “is it the manager’s job to help them ‘transpose’ their drive to work? Or to reorient their career if need be”:
Does it really matter whether or not a person finds self-actualization through the work they get paid to do? Finding self-actualization outside of the workplace, and using the workplace as a means to that end, seems a valid way of achieving personal fulfillment for some. As long as they can achieve the level of commitment and quality needed to reach the goals of the company why should a manager attempt to “transpose†their drive or reorient their career?
Not all careers can offer the satisfaction that some people need, and can sometimes find, in the limitless world outside of the workplace.
Reply to Hasan: you just covered this topic within past 2 weeks.
1.People have a deep need to do their best
2 A deep need to contribute
3. A deep need to work
As social animals, since we are herd or pack animals, there is a drive to contribute, to find meaning and purpose in what we do. Work allows us to challenge what we are capable of becoming.
The word competition means to “seek with” so work is a way of measuring one’s value to community and to oneself. Since the measure of performance is performance, work allows us to measure ourselves against our best performance in being the unique world class human I can create and instrument myself to be.
It is interesting that the word “job” which is Anglo-Saxon and means a lump was presumably used at the beginning of the industrial revolution meaning that someone could not do a job/lump of work. What one needed was the bigger picture in which the piece/job/lump existed. The old story of laying brick or building a cathedral.
Two hundred and fifty years later we are afraid of losing our “lumps” and also that in our global economy we are brought back to the fact that we are and always have been: interdependent.
I work because I am passionate about what I do. I love everything about digital marketing and want to share my passion with my colleagues.
I also love feeling like I’ve achieve something every day, whether it is something simple or contributing to a bigger project.
To work or not to work. Now, more than ever, that is the question.
A unit of work is the amount of effort required to accomplish a task. Thusly, everything we strive for in life requires some level of work. You want to go out dancing on a Friday night, there is some work involved in getting ready and then actually getting to the dance floor. You want to eat a good healthy meal that you prepared, there is a level of work required. There are some people who have to work at being lazy; believe it or not your teenager has to put a lot of work into not cleaning his room each time you tell him to.
But the question is “What are the reasons people work?†So to that I have to answer, people work in order to solve a problem or achieve a goal that benefits them in either the long or short term. A single parent may work two jobs to solve the problem of providing just the basic necessities for their family and may love their ‘work.’ But by the same token a CEO may be looking to build a vacation home on an island in the South Seas and hate their ‘work.’ However, each of these people is working towards an ends.
One final thought, I once had a friend who told me, “I don’t want my tombstone to say ‘He was a hard worker’.†At the time I thought I didn’t want that either. However, if people understand that I am a very hard worker in my personal life with my family and friends and maintaining and building those relationships, then let my tombstone forever label me as a “workaholic.â€
That’s what I’m talkin’ about Wayne! Well said.
Apart from being a means of earning livelihood, work provides us identity, experience and learning for creating future. These are some of the thoughts that I have shared at http://thoughtleadership-vs.blogspot.com/2008/11/why-is-work-important.html
Learn how to get through harsh life with other ppl
get honor from other ppl
feel achievements
self actualisation
self worth/hope
what else???????????????????????
Yes indeed, people work for money, money is essential in order to survice, to sustain our needs and wants. But in addition to this, people work to have some achievements, self satisfaction, or simply its their happiness