“Freedom is the will to be responsible to ourselves”…Friedrich Nietzsche

By ‘Uju Onwuzulike

Surprisingly, a lot of employees still have the kind of mindset I will refer to as SWAP mindset. SWAP stands for “Salaries Will Always be Paid”. Realistically, it is ethical and legal that organisations should pay their workers or employees’ salaries as at when due. On the other hand, what is unethical and disturbing is when employees have chosen not to add value to the organisations paying them. In this instance, they just come to work for coming sake without doing even the least that is expected from them.

market

These classes of people do not care what may happen to their organisations tomorrow in as much as their salaries will come today. They work for themselves and not for their organisations. Discussing with one another, they say things like: “Please don’t kill yourself for this organisation” or “Is your father the owner of this company?”

My goal for this insight is for us to understand who is responsible for paying our salaries in organisations. First and foremost, it is only a company or an organisation that has not been run down (that is alive) that can pay salaries.

Even the CEO will only receive financial reward in a company that has not gone under. Now we can begin to understand that both the CEO and the other employees have individual roles to play in ensuring the growth and sustainability of their organisation.

I have had cause to ask directly from participants who have attended my training at one time or the other about who is responsible for paying their salaries. A lot of them mentioned their CEOs, Board of Directors, and Human Resources Department, etc. But no one mentioned himself or herself as being responsible. No one is responsible for paying your salaries except yourself.

If no one is adding value to the organisation, definitely the organisation might find it difficult to stay afloat let alone paying salaries. So see yourself as the most recognized person responsible for paying yourself.

As soon as we are in the payroll of any organisation, we owe that organisation a huge obligation. The foundational obligation comes from understanding that our organisation is now our business. At a session, I have asked people if they have ran a personal business before and almost all of them said no. That means what they are doing presently in their organisation is their business.

Moreover that business (the work they are doing) has being taken care of their personal and family needs. With this in mind, every employee should take ownership of the business and their roles. They should see their organisation’s business as their own business. They should also begin to understand that when they are playing their part, when they are adding value, when they are exceeding expectation (or at the least, meeting expectation), they are crediting the till box from which their salaries will come from.

Final note:

Having ownership mentality will help us to see our organisation as our business first and foremost. Like I always say, no one will want his or her business to fail. Everyone has a role to play. It is not only the CEO or the top management that is expected to play the role of growing the organisation. Everyone that earns a salary should justify why he or she is on the payroll. Most importantly, everyone should bring his or her value to the table in order to fertilize the organisation for more growth. That way, we all shall say we have a “breathing” organisation that is alive to put money in our pockets.