The age of the employee is dead,
gone and about to be forgotten. In the past slaves worked for free, today employees
work for money while entrepreneurs make money. In the old days slaves simply
did what they were told, today employees have carefully worded job descriptions.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, do what needs to be done to get the job done.
These are not minor distinctions nor are these descriptions intended to be a
play on words. These three make a significant impact on staff effort initiative
and output.
The “employee” was created by the
industrial age. That age of mass production mechanized jobs and work procedures
and made many employees make many of the same thing by each employee doing one
thing. Employees essentially did that one thing for life. A person’s career was
based on the mastery of a single skill like, “filling a form” or “making a pot”.
So long as an employee mastered that skill, his job was unchallenged, career established
and income guaranteed. No more was demanded of him. Indeed no more was desired
of him. All one had to do was show up at 8 and check out at 5 with a minimum of
20 widgets handed over to the store supervisor. However, the advances in
technology and business organization have dismantled this comfort zone. A
minimum 20 widgets for a days work is not enough to guarantee anyone a job.
The information age driven by
technology has created a whole new set of demands on organizations and those
who work in them. While it was sufficient for industrial age employees to be
productive, the new age demands performance. The Industrial age employee did
not have to be creative. The job did not require it. While the industrial age employee worked hard
to protect his job, today’s employee must create wealth in order to be
employed. Employees have transformed into entrepreneurs.
The information age no longer
affords employees the luxury of doing one thing for life. Today employees are
expected to do many different things. Indeed, staff are expected to do many
things differently! It is no longer appropriate to call them employees. The
character of successful employees is more like entrepreneurs making wealth for
the employer (profits) and themselves (rewards). Employees from the industrial age cannot hope
to survive in the information age. Staff in the information age must be ready
to think, take initiative and do what it takes to make a profit in order to
keep their jobs. To think of employees as entrepreneurs sounds like an anomaly
if you come from the industrial age. Nevertheless, workers who succeed in the
information age must be entrepreneurs or at the very least have an
entrepreneurial mindset, because today’s organizations cannot afford to pay employees,
they can only succeed if they hire entrepreneurs to work for them.
Allan,
ReplyDeleteYou Have nailed the Employer and Employee to their crosses of extinction. May the gems of this article resound across our Nation and Africa at large, causing the people to arise and take their position as Entrepreneurs. Its time we engaged our entrepreneurial skills and ate produce from our performance and create the Future we Want and Deserve.