Loving What You Do…

Entrepreneurship… This word was a jargon five to eight years back. But now it resonates through everyone’s mind, more as a dream. The reason not only being the profit from a business but also the idea of ‘doing what you like’.

In our robotic lifestyle, even the smallest way to increase pace seems fascinating. Most people have a protocol-like job with hard-coded instructions that define lines on do’s and don’ts of everyday. Whereas, start-ups don’t just increase pace but introduce you to a world where your whims can also be accomodated. People should realise that work is essential but not mandatory and a lonetime everyday to feed yourself a sense of freedom is necessary.

Contribution, Recognition, Respect, Culture and Learning are the five reasons why employees prefer working at startups. The concepts of flat hierarchy and flexibility come only as secondary reasons. Of these, what is commendable is the culture at startups. Favouritism and inside politics is very rare to find because more than colleagues, we make friends by working at startups. True that people working at startups compete but it always stays a healthy competition and improves the learning oppurtunities. These ideals definitely invigorate anyone who dive into a start-up, to achieve high and reach places.

True that hard work has helped people achieve merits. But liking what you do has created organisations like Facebook, Pixar, Apple and the like. I work for a similar organisation, where culture is considered more precious than revenue. Few years ago we would have written in our resume that our career objective is to be part of an organisation where learning is a part of everyday life. Stop for a while and think if you really learn what you do… If you are living your objective. The “learning curve” as they call it would have grown at the beginning but at a point of time we find ourselves stagnated at a point. But in a startup, you learn on a regular basis because you cannot afford to stay back while those around you keep moving. These are healthy when it comes to building yourself a strong career.

Employers talk about work-life balance. But any place that wants you to choose between life and work or even differentiate them for that fact is not appropriate. Instead an employer, and a workplace which makes us believe that work and life are one and the same is most pleasant to work with. Workplaces, why even work for that matter should be prioritised for passion and happiness, not for money.

Many enterprises are facing a depreciation in their work culture and concentrate less on employee happiness. This is the reason why they lose out on the best talents while recruiting and their lesser employee retention rate. If as employers you want to have a flourishing talent-pool I suggest organisations start working on developing their work environment. Because with freedom comes responsibility and every leading enterprise has made use of this responsibility and turned it ultimately to revenue.

We always have options but when combined with our personal priorities, economy and comfort we tend to choose different. So, could I say that work can be made pleasurable? Well that’s for another day. :)