Are some jobs ‘more equal’ than others?

Shelter Chieza Change Management
I have worked for companies that tended to give more preferences to other departments and employees occupying certain jobs than others. I did not understand why, for instance, the accounts department seemed to get more preferential treatment than others.

We were made to believe that some jobs and departments had more demanding tasks hence the preferential treatment.

As I became more courageous I started to be more vocal in pointing out such anomalies during monthly meetings.

I challenged why the accounts department, for instance, should get an air-conditioner while other departments do not have or why more fuel was being allocated to accounts rather than the marketing department.

The argument was that more attention was being given to the department that is the top revenue earner for the organisation.

This raised the question whether there was a department that was more important than others.

If you are a manager and had limited resources, how would you distribute them?

You will realise that there are some departments that don’t necessarily generate revenue but support revenue generating areas. Are these then less important?

Would the accounts department exist if sales and marketing department was not there? Is HR department more important than the transport and logistics department?

I call it the chicken and egg argument, which one would be the chicken and which one would be the egg?

As a word of caution: This argument must never be publicly displayed if you are a leader and manager. You run into the danger of creating conflict within the organisation.

One might argue that the basic appreciation that we have on business is that a business must find ways of generating revenue and the sales and marketing department or business development focuses on that.

When you get a customer, the next thing you must do is to retain it, and so these other support departments come in.

One of my friends, a financier once said during a meeting that most top executives and CEOs in Zimbabwe are finance people.

His argument was that it is

the finance department that sets and determines what should be spend by who.

He cited a number of CEOs that have backgrounds in finance. He got a fair amount of verbal lashings for this.

Not to be outwitted, an operations gentleman stood up and presented his side of the story of how much operations is the most vital department.

A more sober and rationale argument was that all organisations have employees that contribute either directly or indirectly to making sure that revenue streams are open in the company.

All of them are needed for the good of the company. Each person must play their role to contribute to the success of the team.

This argument got so heated, it got me thinking of other areas, for instance in a football game, who is more important, the goalscorer or defender or the goalkeeper or the midfielder that has created the chance for the goal to be scored?

The current set-up in the country is confusing most business owners, what suffers the most as people are managing costs is either the marketing or research and development.

What many don’t realise is that they are killing a part of the company. It is believed that most companies advertise because they want to make money not because they have money. Support services are so vital to prevent death of any entity.

I believe you must look at your organisation’s mission and goals. If selling and receipting are your organisation’s goal, then you will value the sales team more than any other department.

However, if you are going beyond the current receipts generated to achieve customer satisfaction, you will realise that all departments are vital.

How then would you compare different jobs in more developed economies – which one is more important, that of a dog walker or a garbage collector famously known as a sanitation engineer.

Dog walkers can be paid as much as $50 per hour. The idea behind this is that you are paid for walking dogs through the city streets for the elderly or disabled.

In more advanced economies,

there are mystery or secret shoppers that are assigned to stores and restaurants to report on their consumer experience.

Some employers provide cash to spend and allow shoppers to keep the merchandise.

The deal is that those that are

in department that has work that can be demonstrated numerically and

quantified seem to be in a better position to justify their value and worthiness.

Organisations that have flatter structures tend to survive more.

I believe that when it comes to job satisfaction, some careers are better than others. Income and growth potential play a large role in contentment.

I wouldn’t mind being a footballer in the mould of Christiano Ronaldo earning $79 million per year.

Albert Einstein once said: “Not everything that counts can be counted. And not everything that can be counted, counts.”

Till next week, may God richly bless you!