Perhaps one of the most ingrained paradigms that our society has can be located in the belief that once we occupy a position in the company, our job of looking for a job has finished and, immediately, another one aimed at keeping us in it has begun. Nothing more contrary to logic and reason.
Let's visualize the previous situation for a moment by making a simile with the figure of an athlete who is fond of running. For him, staying in shape means training daily, demanding a little more from day to day, taking care of the diet, avoiding excesses, measuring his achievements and, once he reaches them, immediately looking for a way to overcome them.
The fact that a runner reaches the goal in one minute thirty seconds does not provide stability, he never considers maintaining the same rhythm and reaching the same mark each time he competes, on the contrary, he observes the score as a barrier that he must soon overcome. He is simply a runner.
But in the work environment the logic is different, because, unlike the athlete, the tendency is more oriented to take care of the brand, that is, to maintain employment, than to dedicate itself to breaking it, all due to the fact that we observe ourselves more as employees than as employable professionals. And this has its reason for being.
In the competitive world we live in, where supply exceeds demand, taking care of a job rather than a sign of "inability to take on challenges" or "unwillingness to change" has become a necessity, the average professional takes between six and eight months to get back on the job market, and this, coupled with the stress generated by lack of income, is an experience that you hardly want to repeat.
Es por esa razón que una vez alcanzada la meta, al volver a formar parte del equipo empresarial, la tendencia a aferrarse a la posición es inmediata y ello que supone la responsabilidad de un rendimiento superior al promedio, pues de lo contrario la amenaza de ser reemplazado estará siempre presente. Es ahí donde se intercambia una estrés por otro, donde dejamos de preocuparnos por ser contratados y comenzamos a obsesionarnos por mantenernos empleados.
But is being employed the ultimate goal? So, is all the effort we make a matter of keeping ourselves tied to a job? Besides, who assures us that this is the job we deserve and that there wasn't a much better job around the corner? On the other hand, don't world trends contradict reality? At present, it is claimed that twenty experiences lived in a year are worth more than twenty years repeating an experience.
The use and administrative customs, up to now present, have led us to suppose that the important thing is to prolong our permanence in a job until it is extinguished for reasons beyond the control of both parties. When reviewing a curriculum summary whose work spans are short, one immediately tends to assume that we are in the presence of instability, completely forgetting that experience is not measured by time but by intensity.
But the premise of time remains present, as a permanent paradigm, and this unconsciously forces the professional to limit himself and prevent him from developing in the labor market with the freedom and breadth that his knowledge offers him… The real professional does not is an employee, is employable.
Being an employable professional breaks with the traditional concept, so ingrained in our companies and summed up in the popular saying "the master's eye makes cattle fat." Contrary to what this expresses, the work of this individual is to transfer knowledge, generate trust and promote collective and not individual leadership, making it possible that in his absence, the work team is sufficiently capable of performing the same or even better than when he is present.
A employable professional obviously does his job well, adds value, but cannot feel tied to a company where he cannot continue learning and developing his skills, which gives him every right to look up and seek new horizons.
That is a reality that companies must understand. At the moment in which we live the struggle to keep talent, it is something that should concern organizations, because every day the professional is becoming aware that it is not a question of spending the night for years in a single setting, as this atrophies their holistic vision and innovation capacity, he knows that the more he knows at all, the more capable he will be of making objective, timely and successful decisions.
Once this concept is understood, that obsolete vision of judging performance by the time in which it has been employed will be far behind, since it will be understood that people are worth more for what they are capable of doing and not for what they did. It will be understood that the limit of permanence in the organizations will respond more to what can be learned and obtained from it, than to the reputation, the position or the executive position that is held.
Rotation will not be seen as a consequence of good or bad labor policies, but as a constant renewal and opportunity to keep up with the times.
However, as long as the paradigm does not change, the professional will be under the influence of a vision that limits him to taking care of the position, nurturing the paradigm of power, keeping knowledge to himself and reducing it to being simply an employee. No matter where you are in the organization, no matter how basic or strategic your role, the longer you stay in it, the more likely you are to experience workplace myopia and approach obsolescence.
However, it is prudent to point out that the prevailing need to be employable and not employed is not about observing a haphazard performance and lightly, as there are certain elements that would allow to establish the bases to differentiate behaviors. It is usable to the extent that the experiences are interconnected, are associated with each other and can assemble a professional with a very broad vision of the business. Isolated, shallow and inconsistent exercises could suggest unstable behavior contrary to expectations.
Finally, returning to the initial simile, professionals must imagine ourselves as athletes, and companies must see us as such.
As long as there are goals to be achieved, our effort and dedication should be oriented towards it, but once the summit is seen, it is contradictory not to take a look at the horizon, choose a higher mountain, which allows us to test the knowledge achieved and give us a broader position of observation, and this can happen in years or perhaps in a few days, our permanence will depend on the ability to remain captivated, interested in the goal, facing challenges and reaping success, otherwise nothing can stop us from continuing.
Remember, it is not about being employed, it is about being employable. An employee is banned from the world, lives in a constant routine, learns his functions by heart, knows even the smallest detail of the operation, to the point that he is unable to innovate. You discount the opportunity cost.
An employable professional is open to options, knows his or her work well enough, performs it in an optimal, timely and quality manner, but does not allow himself to be enveloped by it, he knows that by doing so he will lose objectivity, he will be unable to create.
He observes his employment as an experience, learns from his surroundings and transfers knowledge, because he also knows that at any moment there will be a greater challenge to be achieved and nothing will prevent him from doing it… not even the wrong practice of judging his performance by its duration and not for its results.
