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I had the privilege of volunteering recently at a nonprofit that sorts and distributes clothes and other items for a nominal feto those in need. As I was there, I noted the dedication and tenacity of those who were volunteering that day.
As I was working, I wondered, what makes these people so dedicated? These are people who were there, on a Saturday, unpaid, sorting old clothes and fixing castaway appliances.
It seems to me that we would do well to view our employees as volunteers. I don’t mean to stop paying them. Rather, I’d ask you to think about your best employees. Realistically, your best people can work anywhere in your industry for (more or less) the same monetary compensation and benefits that you provide. Thus, they are volunteers – they choose to spend their working hours in your company. In our region, now and into the future, the ability to attract and retain the best people will be a key competitive advantage.
When our people work only for money, our competitors can woo them away easily with a slightly higher pay or more abundant benefits.
Unless you want to compete on price alone for the best and the brightest, consider what drives people to volunteer.
Generally speaking, it is the sense of purpose, accomplishment, service, connectedness and camaraderie involved in putting forth our best for the organization that makes us work hard when we volunteer.
If you build those intangibles into your company so your employees are motivated not only by your pay and benefits but also something much deeper, you’ll have employees for life. You’ll experience the joy of having more applicants than you know what to do with and the luxury of choosing between just the cream of the crop.
On a recent weekend, my kids and I rented and watched “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” What a great inspirational story of a teacher enriching lives through his work.
I’ve done some study on the origin of the word work that is interesting and worth talking about:
There are at least three Latin roots for one’s work, laborem (labor) – a sweaty, exertion of the body related to toil, pain and fatigue; operari (opus) – to produce in abundance by being active in exertion; and urgere (urge, work) – to drive, press hard, push or compel. Beyond these three, another term related to work, task, has its origin from the Latin taxere (think tax) – an evaluative assessment sense or a piece of work imposed as a duty.
In the past 150 years in the Western industrial context, we have centered our ideas in business around the terms labor, task and work, and relegated the term opus to only the artistic – both visual, literary and musical pursuits.
Both in your quest to attract and retain the best people and in your personal quest to have influence and impact on the world through your daily activity, consider how you can begin to lead in a manner that allows people to experience their work as an opus – a body of work produced in abundance. When work becomes opus, we begin to experience true joy and wholeness in our work.
Lead well.
Harbor Consulting Group specializes in personal, team and organizational development
www.harborcg.com, 357-0299
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