Segment of One

Those Millenials. We blame them for almost everything in the workplace. 

While easy to attached blame on them again for this one, it is people from ALL generations who seem to be demanding for more individualised modes of salary payments. 

Here in South Africa, we generally have a packaged form of reward with some variable pay linked to performance thrown on top. Within the package, an employee can make a few choices but we generally have a few unbreakable rules, like membership of a medical scheme or retirement fund. This benevolence is in the digital age viewed by employees as their companies believing they can't think for themselves.

I am increasingly asked, why should I be forced to belong to this, or that? Just give me the cash instead!

Why, indeed? 

Do I say, we don’t think you’re mature or smart enough to manage your own retirement or medical responsibilities? So we force you to, for your own good? 

Or that, as a responsible employer, we try to look after your overall well-being, and that of your family, even when you no longer work for us? Its part of our EVP?

The attainment of an employee Segment of One has followed me throughout my career as I have encountered obstacle after obstacle in trying to craft a related system for my companies. Now, I believe that the stars have lined up. Technology is finally in place that allows us the degree of individual employee flexibility they are baying for. Leaders are more tuned to new ways of rewarding people as Millenials start comprising higher proportions of decision-making bodies. 

This last bit is always the toughest part - convincing leadership structures to drop the current parental perspective of their workforces is a break from the past and akin to potential "empty nest syndrome" for parents. Fraught with emotion and a perceived sense of wanting to protect. If they don't change, they will end up losing out on the talent that wants to be free to choose, trade their skills and work for gigs, not salaries.

As we crossed from the 2nd to 3rd industrial revolutions, workers became less human and viewed by companies as producers of output. Well, the robots are coming to produce output better than any human can, and in order for humans to stay relevant, we need to switch to roles that define our very humanness. One of these is the ability to choose for ourselves, and apply tacit, as opposed to explicit, knowledge.

If only employers allowed us to do that, with our very own salaries!