The Accountant-May-June 2017

WORK PLACE
In the market place, the democracy of
the wallet reigns supreme. By exercising
their freedom to choose, through their
expenditure preferences, customers
determine winners and losers. If an
enterprise continuously gets fewer and
fewer ‘votes’ in terms of shillings sales, they
have no choice but to close shop. As kings
and queens, customers are the ultimate
employers. The last persons to be fired
by customers are the owners of business,
investors and shareholders.
Employees fire themselves
When someone is fired, one feels very
bitter towards the employer. Such
employers are perceived to be uncaring,
bloody sucking capitalists, heartless, mean,
exploitative, and insensitive to one’s family
commitment, high unemployment rates,
or outright sadists.
What many employees forget, and
conveniently so, is that employers are not
in charity to create jobs. One can state
authoritatively that there is no employer
in the whole world who starts a business
with the primary objective of creating jobs.
Employees are hired to support in the
implementation of the founder’s dreams.
As a factor of production, an employee
comes in at a cost; the remuneration. For
the employer-employee relationship to
make business sense, the market value of
an employee’s contribution must be higher
than the payroll cost. Any time there is
some disequilibrium to the disadvantage
of the employer, the employee becomes a
loss making investment that is disengaged
or decommissioned or discontinued or
fired at the earliest convenient time! If
left unattended for a prolonged period,
‘corporate bleeding’ (losses) just kills the
patient (the business). Only a fool would
leave a bleeding patient unattended.
Employees determine
performance and rewards
Every employee is 100% responsible for
their contribution. Every employee has
the free will and the freedom to choose
what to contribute during the 8am-5pm
day. Nobody is a slave. Nobody can cheat
on measurable performance. When the
going gets tough and a company starts
struggling to pay bills because of declining
sales, owners of business have to move
with speed to save the ship from sinking.
For the ship to land safely in the ‘Nineveh’
of survival, some ‘Jonahs’ have to be
thrown out. The choice of Jonahs is pretty
easy, namely, the poor performers. Never
be cheated, like the shrewd soccer club
managers who pay a premium to get the
Messis’ and Ronaldos’ in their teams, every
employer desires to retain superstars in
their teams. The laggards, the late comers,
the whiners, and all the other miscreants
are quickly shown the ‘red’ cards-fired.
Like the Jonah’s story in the Bible
( Jonah has been called to go preach the
good news in Nineveh. In disobedience,
he took a detour in a ship. The vessel
experience serious turbulence in the seas.
To avoid ship wreck, the captain called
all present to pick some secret ‘ballot’.
Jonah picked the NO and he had to be
thrown out into the deep sea as the rest
continued with the journey), a company’s
future cannot be jeopardized to save
careers of a few employees. A conscious
self-enlightened decision has to be made
pretty fast to save the founder’s dream by
separating saboteurs. If you are hired to
support somebody’s dream and you try to
sabotage it through non-performance, the
dreamer has a right to show you the exit
door. In any case you will have preselected
yourself by your results. Results do not
discriminate. A cow that gives ten litres of
milk cannot complain when her feed ration
is made commensurate to performance
compared to one that gives thirty litres.
It’s pure common sense.
Therefore, being bitter with the
employer for firing you is being dishonest
with yourself. You are still entertaining this
dishonesty in carrying out an assessment
of your worth or contribution during
your working days. You knowingly or
unknowingly signed your dismissal or the
‘RTS’ (return to sender) letter the moment
you started earning your employer lesser
revenues than what it cost to maintain
you in the payroll. That is the moment
your salary is GREATER THAN your
contribution in terms of results (income)
you get fired or you are blacklisted for
retrenchment, if the ‘corporate pain
persists’ , to paraphrase drugs adverts that
caution patients to see the doctors if pain
persists.
Attitude of gratitude
Somebody who gave you an opportunity to
serve, gave meaning to your life, advances
your career, and more importantly pays
bills for months or years, surely deserves to
be appreciated. If you honor your parents
or guardians for nurturing you to be who
you are, the more so you should honor your
former employer for providing financial,
relational and network nourishment. There
is no doubt you have grown, career wise,
financially, and even physically. You should
celebrate the wonderful time you had with
your former teammates.
A heart of gratitude and thanks giving
enriches your life and is a great health
booster. Bitterness is corrosive, wrinkles
your face and shortens your life. Why
engage in life threatening acts over the
past that you cannot change? You have
lost a job; money is in short supply, so why
use it on things that can be avoided like
medical bills?
As for me and my house, I am forever
grateful and indebted to all my former
employers; all ten of them for giving me an
opportunity to serve, earn money and make
friends. I have been fired six times (once as
an employee and five times as a founder
of businesses that failed.) My failures were
great lessons in my entrepreneur journey.
Being fired, the best thing in
your life
Guess what, being fired could be the best
thing in your life. Remember it could have
been worse, for example, losing your job
while on duty, got serious injuries at work
or other terrible things.
Being fired could be a wakeup call
from somebody who really cares about
you. Could be you have stagnated in
one position, you have been ‘passed’ over
promotion for reasons you could not
understand (the truth is, your results were
not satisfactory), the job was no longer
challenging or meaningful but you lacked
the guys to move on among other reasons.
Could be your employer is facing a bleak
future for failure to innovate and adapt to
disruptive technologies. In such a scenario,
being selected for retrenchment with
some package may turn out to be the best
decision if the company goes bankrupt and
others leave with nothing.
Accept the new reality
This is the time for you to pause, be
grateful for all the years you have worked
and figure out what you can do. It is a
time to reflect on your life. It time to reengineer
and re-imagine your next life.
You have many things working in your fair
unlike your former college buddies you
may still be languishing at home jobless.
You have valuable experience, networks,
some working capital and time in your
favor. Build on your strengths. Move on!
38 MAY - JUNE 2017