5th April 2011:

On the nature of employment...

As human beings we are inherently pre-programmed to seek out order and meaning in all aspects of our lives, and this includes our jobs and employment. The primary driver behind work for 99% of the population is financial: the need to pay the mortgage or rent and put food in our mouths. Beyond this, however, comes a deeper desire to feel that we spend our time in paid employment doing something that has value, that we enjoy and that fulfils us. Because the alternative would be mudance and a little sad, wouldn't it? Ironically, the two jobs that I look back on in my career as being the most enjoyable were stimulating, fulfilling, relatively well remunerated and also characterised by a strong sense of identification with the company’s products and values. Which made the bump from the landing when I was made redundant and forced out (respectively) all the more painful.

Nobody likes the idea of working simply to pay the bills – forty hours a week is a long time to spend doing something out of pure necessity, and who aspires to such mendacity? I therefore humbly posit the theory that our brains are hard-wired to seek out (or create, if required) some sense of identification with our employers and their activities in order to justify the sacrifice of our time. Or, to put it another way, we seek meaning in our jobs because we simply cannot bear the idea that there might be none.

This is a very clever little trick that the brain plays on us and I too have fallen for it in the past. I’ve heard myself trying to convince a potential customer that my products are the best in the market or that my brand has more integrity and cares about its customers more than another. And all the while, the business owner has usually grown richer and increasingly egomaniacal. Some might simply say ‘that’s capitalism for you’ and shrug, and I accept that we have the ability to opt in or out to some extent, but I remain intrigued as to why I acted in this manner. Genuine belief in these statements? A desire to ‘do the right thing’? An inherent understanding of the need to tow the corporate line in order to progress and succeed? A little of each, I suspect, coupled with the other human need to associate and belong.

Liberating yourself from this trick of the mind is not easy and the results can be unsettling. After my experience of redundancy in 2008 I resolved never to give quite as much of myself to any employer ever again; a philosophy that I freely accept may hinder my chances of ever reaching the upper echelons of commerce or management. So far, however, I seem none the worse for the experiment – I found another well-paid job but there is now less stress in my life, I take things less personally and I am less likely to enter into the bullshit personality politics that seem endemic in contemporary commercial organisations. It’s not that I don’t care, I just don’t care enough to allow myself to get stressed, angry or upset about any of it. Perhaps that is the wise voice of experience or the cynical voice of bitterness, but either way I feel I function with greater integrity than at any other time in my career and I plan to stick to the credo until an alternative is revealed.