The Sunday News
Many people hardly pause to think about how much time they wasted taking care of everything except themselves. In that respect there a few people who are committed to changing their entire lives through career growth and development.
The rest are engrossed in nursing self-defeating attitudes coated in high-sounding excuses and blurry explanations regarding why they could not do what was right for them to do when they had the golden chance to do so.
No wonder most people currently get old enough at 40, when an old adage advises that life begins at that age. Consequently people dread taking meaningful action hence are pretty comfortable with apportioning blame on someone, or something or some event.
Most people nowadays nurse an attitude of defeat and indecision. Therefore they are so persuasive in discouraging or even shooting down purposeful actions taken by their colleagues. For instance if a colleague advises that s/he is going to college after work s/he is greeted with such reactions as “kuyakunceda ngani? Akulamsebenzi kulezinsuku” translated to mean that does not help in any way, “there are no jobs these days”.
This article therefore looks at some of the most preferred myths nursed by most people in their quest to justify why they are not doing something to improve their skills, competencies and knowledge. A myth is a story which may not be true hence lacks credence.
It is an undeniable reality that employers want employees with demonstrable skills and knowledge. Mainly because employers, like any serious investor, want to derive value from their capital investment in a business idea.
In that regard, employers know for sure that employees with verifiable skills can influence positively, pro-actively and serendipitously the strategic focus of the organisation and help to secure the future value of their investment.
The need to demonstrate requisite professional or job skills in all employment situations has quickened at breakneck pace! In tandem with that professional examination boards have evolved and have been established over the years dating back to the early 1800s.
The view of these boards is to develop syllabi, study materials and examinations which should be taken and passed before the student is awarded with a certificate and later with the letters as certification that the student has qualified and the board can vouch that s/he can confidently guide the organisation to sustainable success.
Furthermore these professional boards are dedicated to promoting best practices through the provision of a wide range of services meant to benefit the members and the wider business community.
Cognisant of the above reality, employers are intently looking at recruiting and placing people (employees) who possess relevant and recognised worldwide qualifications in finance, marketing, IT, supply chain management, logistics and transport, office administration, project management etc.
Employers are convinced that people with appropriate professional qualifications have the capacity to make quality decisions. More so, employers are convinced that such employees will guarantee output such as sustained profitability, competitive knowledge advantage, legislative compliance, career-oriented human resources practices as well as quality human resources development practices among other benefits.
The changing nature of employment
Admittedly there is a change in the nature of employment the world over. This development is another unavoidable but elusive reality. Unavoidable, in the sense that the new world economy resulted in the “new normal” characterised inter alia by down-sizing, rapid growth of information technologies, globalisation and a worrying change in labour relations as well as employment laws.
Elusive reality implies that the asymmetric relationship between labour and capital has become so evident confirming what Karl Max postulated a long time ago. He argued that “capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”
Karl Max was a German philosopher, social scientist, historian and revolutionary, who undoubtedly is regarded as the most influential socialist thinker to emerge in the 19th century. The current reality, obtaining from the changing nature of employment, shows that people are expected to hold multiple jobs and careers throughout their lives.
The changing nature of employment has resulted in the emergence of a new psychological contract between employers and employees. Baruch (2004) argues that the emphasis of this new contract is on worker employability rather than job security.
As a result employees are now required to maintain employability by taking ownership of their careers through studying job market trends — within their geographical environs (locally), regionally and globally — and commit themselves to continually developing and expanding their skills and knowledge.
It should be borne in mind that a career choice is basically or usually the product of a dream. Through “dream” a person chooses the type of life s/he wants to live and goes on a career journey, characterised by studying, writing examinations and graduating in order to achieve the dreamt goal. This will entail the choice of further education and the kind of career they want to pursue.
This is not always simple neither is it easy. As such it is my considered view that the career relationship between people and organisations is now characterised by mercurial shifts from long-term relationships to short-term transactional relationships.
The latter implies more frequent career transitions and career decision making by people. This new reality calls for people to seek career counselling and guidance on how to deal creatively with the new reality of the work world and their working lives.
According to Melinde Coetzee et al (2010): “Organisations are input-throughput-output mechanisms that take inputs from the environment at different levels (individual, organisational and national), assimilate these into the career development support processes and provide outputs back to the environments.” In view of this observation, this writer is of the view that employees, both current and prospective, should as a necessity embrace the culture of continuous learning in order to become high-potential employees. Unfortunately most employees are pregnant with mythical excuses.
The time-factor myths
The commonly entertained excuse by people who are not taking any further studies is that they don’t have the time to do so due to other pressing issues like work, family etc.
The interesting observation is that for the driving public in most cities and towns in Zimbabwe, the time after dismissing time say 1630hrs is characteristically marked with severe traffic jam hence congestion so much that the time wasted in the jam queues could equally be invested effectively in reading for further studies.
For the pedestrians who depend on public transport that time is equally characterised by jostling as people out-do each other to claim a seat in the kombi. Added to that this category of workers is exposed to a lot of undeserved abuse by the rank marshals who shout all manner of obscenities at the travelling public as a way of forcing them into their kombis and in the end squeezing them of their hard-earned cash as the passengers pay inflated fares on the pretext that there is “no transport”.
While all the people referred to above are entitled to their inalienable rights of choice it is a deserved advice to the same to reconsider how else they can use this stressing time. One such option is to opt to do further studies. Appreciate the issue of affording is critical, but often people exaggerate the costs involved in studying for a course.
Suggestion worth considering
A suggestion is an idea which influences our thinking processes and open floodgates of alternatives. A great French scientist once remarked that: “People don’t die, they kill themselves”.
Trust Academy invites you to re-invent yourself, for your own general good by removing the mythical obstacles which, up to now, have blocked you path to becoming a high profile employee. Take up a course in the area of your keen interest, believe me this move will become a springboard to a better rewarding future.
In addition seek career guidance. This will also help you to cast away the “evil spirits” which have blocked or blown your chances of promotion or getting a good job. If you heed this advise then congratulate yourself . . . bearing in mind one of the essential change management techniques is to celebrate even small achievements.
You missed the January and June intake, without further hesitation join the September 2015 intake.
Herbert Taruwona Mbindi is a passionate career guidance and counselling adviser. His key motivation is to help people make a difference in their lives.
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