mabinda.com Business, Education, Technology Commentary.

When deciding which company to work for, what comes up first? Is it the reputation of the company, is it the high salaries and even stock options, is it the work life balance? Let’s unpack this. The number one issue is the salary that the company is going to pay you. However much you are going to shout about loyalty, the fact is that it is out of the window. Just as employers deem that they can fire you at any time, the same also applies to employees. They will go and work for the highest bidder. It doesn’t matter if the employer is a known toxic employer, mistreats employees, and has a poor work life balance, the fact is that employees do want to pay the bills, and sadly, most people are in jobs rather than careers, and all they ever want to do is to pay the bills through a high salary. For some companies, the fact that they have stock options for employees is very admirable, and this just means that they will grow more wealthier. For instance, during its heydey, Microsoft created 12,000 dollar millionaires through it’s employee share ownership scheme.

The second attribute, after a great salary, is the reputation of the employer. For many a people, their work defines their self worth. They introduce themselves in social conversations that I work in company X and I live in place Y. Some of the major employers will restrict employees on where they can live, and which hotels they can eat from. All this is so that they maintain a certain image of the company. For instance, for the auditing and consulting firms, you get even pocket money to go and change your wardrobe so you can live in a nice place and so when the company is bidding for jobs, the employees prestige speaks for itself. It’s why for instance, they only hire from certain schools so that they can have a portfolio of employees and that would just make them charge high fees. So, this is a two way traffic, employees love it when the company they work for is easily recognizable, while employers love it that they are able to charge clients high fees based solely on the reputation of their companies, especially in the professional services companies. It’s probably why law firms charge so highly, so they are looked as credible, even when the cost is minimal, as former President Moi’s lawyer Mutual Kilonzo would teach his students at the Kenya Law School.

The third aspect of a great employer is the work life balance. Can I do the work without feeling necessarily stressed? Such is the nature of the workplace today that companies want maximum profits from ever fewer employees. Therefore they are always cutting down staff and so the remaining employees are always doing work that should have been handled by more people. It’s a well known fact that consulting and investment banking jobs require one to work well over 70 hours a week and so even if they are paid highly, but if you divide by the number of hours they work, it becomes pocket change. For GenZs especially, work life balance is something they prize a lot and many of them just cannot believe how their parents practically spent their whole lives in the office, and they would want none of that.