The Primary Benefit of Employment

Work is Intrinsically Creative

Management (i.e. the organization) demands and expects much of you—your time, energy, and creativity.  What does it give in return? Certainly, money and status. But that is not enough for a full life.

The most important part of the exchange is the opportunity to work creatively in a humane and humanizing environment—i.e. as a person in a social group. Read more on the need for work. If the physical or social environment is harmful—i.e. to health and well-being, physical or psychological—then the humane and humanizing element of the organization's obligation is not being met.

Organizational Self-Interest

Organizations, despite their limited monomaniac-like mission, can be expected to be self-interestedly concerned for individual employees so as to get the best out of them. The management literature indicates that economically developed societies are increasingly demanding a humanizing approach to staff and work. Nevertheless, it seems that relatively few firms currently manifest this degree of management sophistication. In THEE's map of management culture, a personal focus emerges as a crucial driver only in the penultimate Stage-6 (the Imaginist).

Mechanical Work?

Without creativity, work cannot be humane. If a task can be wholly mechanized or computerized, the expectation will be that a person undertaking that task should behave like a machine. Even if the organizational environment strives to be humane, mechanical work remains potentially dehumanizing. However, this dehumanization may often be kept at bay by a mental attitude—read more.

Looking After Your Own Interests

Even in the best possible case, an organization is unlikely to look after your best interests—simply because it does not know what these are. You may not either, but it is still your primary responsibility, and yours alone, to discover and protect your own interests. When most people in society think like this, society has reached the individualist stage of political development.

Even before the ink dries on the contract, you are mentally getting ready to work. You know that this requires a dual focus. The obligation to look after yourself may be as important as, or more important than, your obligation to work for the organization. But if you don't pitch in 100% to work and fulfil the contract, then you probably do not know what is in your own best interests.

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► Time to pitch in.

Originally posted: 20-Oct-2011