How to Keep Employees — a cautionary tale
In today’s job market, employees are a highly valued commodity. And as a student who needed to work on the side to feed myself, I noticed the shift in employee sentiment from that economics 101 nugget of truth we know; supply & demand.
A company has a demand for labour, I have labour. And I’m willing to trade that labour for money. The problem is, what if there are too many people lined up to trade their labour, but only a few companies demanding labour? Supply and demand, the worth of my labour is reduced.
So, in an economy bent towards companies with plenty of brilliant workers waiting to trade their time and effort for money, what you see is worker sentiment completely shifting towards the company. What I mean by that is the person trading their labour has had quite a difficult time finding a buyer, so when they do, they treasure the opportunity for the transaction of labour.
This was the case pre-and-early pandemic — at least in my estimation. At this stage it was very difficult to find work, and when I found it, yes, I treasured it. being mistreated by managers was a mere nuisance, and pay was all a bonus. However there was a major shift in the supply and demand of workers during 2021.
The change in labour supply was probably due to the year-long hesitancy to hire new employees during the 2020 early pandemic stage. And with the added problems of COVID-19 testing — resulting in extended days off, and money being pumped into the economy by the government in an effort to ‘damage-control’ what was essentially a mass firing of workers… Well, that’s nicely written. Anyway, I reckon it caused a mass labour shortage is what I’m trying to say.
20/07/2021 — Company……………………………………………….Gmail
Dear Ben,
We have seen your resume in seek and are wondering if you would be interesting in the following position with logistics group:
$34–40 per hour plus generous bonuses
No experience required
Flexible working hours
This is the kind of thing I started to see arriving in my inbox… I’ve never had a company reach out to me like this, ever. And this would happen about once a week. So without applying for any jobs, each week I’d have another option.
And guess what happened? My sentiment changed.
Now those bothersome managers started getting into trouble when their subjects quit for better opportunities. I demanded more pay, didn’t get it, so I immediately left for another company — and that’s despite being offered a promotion. In this new company, with my new privileges as someone in high demand, I’d witness my managers making mass apologies for sounding “dictatorial” in a text message (it didn’t, by the way). And employees would decide to just not show up some days, only to arrive the next day without warning or discipline.
So the life of someone in high demand is pretty cool.
So, if you’re reading and you’re a manager from a company, or maybe you own a company. Listen, employees deal with shit when they have to, but the second they can deal your hand back to you, they will. So treat people well for heaven’s sake! And never, ever, ever hire an ass manager, their subjects will destroy the company the second the labour market changes.
