Increasing Efficiency is Your Best Route to Employment Security

The cheapening of any article in common use almost immediately results in a largely increased demand for that article. Take the case of shoes, for instance. The introduction of machinery for doing every element of the work which was formerly done by hand has resulted in making shoes at a fraction of their former labor cost. Now almost every man, woman, and child in the working classes buys one or two pairs of shoes per year, and they wear shoes all the time. Formerly, each workman bought perhaps one pair of shoes every five years, and went barefoot most of the time, wearing shoes only as a luxury or as a matter of the sternest necessity. In spite of the enormously increased output of shoes per workman, which has come with shoe machinery, the demand for shoes has so increased that there are relatively more men working in the shoe industry now than ever before.

The workmen in almost every trade have before them an object lesson of this kind, and yet, because they are ignorant of the history of their own trade, they still firmly believe, as their fathers did before them, that it is against their best interests for each man to turn out each day as much work as possible.

Under this fallacious idea, a large proportion of workmen deliberately work slowly so as to curtail their output. Almost every labor union has made, or is contemplating making, rules which have for their object curtailing the output of their members. Those men who have the greatest influence with the working people, the labor leaders, as well as many people with philanthropic feelings who are helping them, are daily spreading this fallacy and at the same time telling them that they are overworked.

-Frederick Winslow Taylor, The Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

From the time I was 18 until I was about 27, I spent most of my summers working as an asphalt sealant and maintenance contractor around Detroit, Michigan. One of the main jobs I did involved putting an asphalt sealant on parking lots and driveways. At the beginning of my first summer doing this work, I used to purchase the sealant in five-gallon pails. Then I starting purchasing the sealant in 55-gallon drums and installing a pipe on the drums to drain the sealant out. After a few years, I did so much asphalt sealing work I had a trailer custom made to hold 550 gallons of the sealant.

From the beginning of my second summer through my third, I had two people working for me whose job was to assist me in putting down the sealant. Their names were Larry and Jake. Larry was Jake’s father. Jake was mentally disabled but not overly so. He understood what was going on and followed instructions. He never really said much, however.

Neither Larry nor Jake cared much for the work they were doing. While they had decent work ethics and put up with me literally walking into their homes and getting them up for work each day, they were not extremely concerned with the quality of the work they were doing. They frequently cut corners and I needed to watch them pretty carefully. Larry was a guy I remember and respect a great deal because I think deep down he was a really good person. On Sundays, I used to have to wait in front of his house until he got back from church with his wife and children. Larry was a smart man who had made some mistakes throughout his life but worked when he could. He was hungover every day, and I bought him Gatorade after Gatorade at convenience shops to keep him going.

We would fill up five-gallon pails from the barrels and then walk the sealant over to an area of the asphalt we wanted to seal. Then, we would spread it around on the asphalt with either squeegees or a large brush. Without going into a lot of detail, this was excruciatingly difficult work because the sealant gets on your skin and burns. You are also outside, and the sun burns you because you are on black asphalt all day, and the sealant is a very heavy tar liquid that you need to pull off your skin at the end of each day. It often takes layers of your skin off when you remove it and needs to be removed with gasoline and a steel wool-like material.

As this business grew, I started getting better and better equipment for it. I will never forget the moment I purchased and installed a pumping system and sprayer on the tank. With this new pumping system I was able to pull up to any parking lot or house and, after blowing all the debris off the driveway or parking lot, turn on this spray machine and complete sealing the asphalt without hardly getting dirty at all. Best of all, I did not need to fill up the five-gallon buckets. I simply needed to turn on my sprayer and walk up and down the driveway.

One day I pulled up to a driveway that Jake and Larry were working on around 5:30 in the afternoon and turned on the sprayer. They were in the middle of working on the driveway and, by the looks of it, would be working for at least another 35 to 40 minutes. I told them to stop. Then, wearing khaki pants and a fresh shirt from the dry cleaner, I completed the entire job in less than five minutes.

I could see they both looked somewhat astonished. They also looked frightened because I think they believed this new sprayer was going to put them out of a job.

“This thing does not give as good of a coat as doing it by hand,” Jake said. This was the first time I had ever heard Jake say anything about the quality of the work we were doing.

“Yeah, it does not look as good,” said Larry.

The strangest thing happened over the next few weeks. Weird things started going wrong with the pump and we never made it through a full day. Belts would suddenly fail. Start switches would break off and disappear. I began to suspect after a week or so of this Larry and Jake were sabotaging the pump because they knew it could put them out of a job. After a few weeks of this I insisted I be the only one allowed to operate the machine, and I made sure I was. While I still have no proof of it to this day, I think Larry and Jake were sabotaging the machine.

Change is something that creeps into every single business, and the objective of every business is to lower costs because lower costs mean more profits. This means they are always looking for ways to eliminate your job. That’s right. Your very job is a threat to your company and its profits.

When I started in the Internet business in the year 1999, the world was a far different place. One of the most interesting things I witnessed involved computer programmers. In the late 1990s through 2001, computer programmers were like gods to companies in the United States. They could demand six-figure salaries and jumped around between companies at an alarming rate. Everyone wanted to hire them because there were so many Internet companies and businesses believed the Internet was the next great frontier.

At our small company we practically needed to beg programmers to work for us. We would offer them pizza and other incentives when they were not on other projects. In some cases, we would pay them as much as $100 an hour to do the work, and then they would stop working after four or five hours because they thought the work was “boring.” Some of the programmers I interviewed even requested stock options just to show up for work. I was baffled by the programmers I worked with and my inability to get the programmers to do any work really held me back.

Due to the difficulty surrounding this issue, we started building an office in India. We had no problem getting people to do the work there. In fact, people were enthusiastic about getting the work and wanted more of it. While there were lower costs associated with the work, the real reason for getting the work done abroad was that people were enthusiastic about doing the work. All we wanted was to get the work done.

After the dot com crash and the events of September 11, 2001, all of a sudden those American programmers were out of work. Tens of thousands of American programmers were let go in a very short time, and Internet companies dropped like flies.

I remember putting an ad out in late 2001 for an in-house programmer and getting overwhelmed with applications. I received so many applications, literally, one every few seconds, that I had to make changes to the settings in my Microsoft Outlook. I ended up hiring one person to work in our Los Angeles office who had just received a PhD from Caltech. I practically could have hired anyone I wanted in the world. There was simply no work for programmers. It had all dried up.

The economy did eventually recover. However, I still did not grow our base of programmers in the United States. I had such a bad experience the first time and, in the interim, had built a large group of programmers in our company in India. This was all I needed. I cannot imagine how many jobs went to India due to this.

Our company is not alone. Many companies do all their programming in other countries now. It simply makes more sense for them from a financial standpoint. They are not interested in doing work in the United States anymore due to the cost, hassles, and the fact the people are not as enthusiastic about doing the work.

There are tons of jobs in the United States and around the world right now that are under fire and are likely to disappear in the near future. There are many reasons jobs disappear, but the main one is because they can be done cheaper elsewhere. Every company and organization is constantly striving for greater efficiency. If your employers can do your job cheaply elsewhere, then they will.

There is no reason for them not to. The more cheaply they can produce a product or service, the more they can potentially sell of that product or service. The more of the product or service that’s sold, the more the company will grow and expand.

What does this mean for you and your job? It means the best use of your time and skill is finding jobs and employers where your role is one of increasing the efficiency of the company’s work. You always need to embrace efficiency and increase the output of the company at the lowest cost possible. If you fight efficiency, you will be seen as an enemy of the company and its growth. If this happens, you will most likely be looking for a new job shortly.

In the past there have been a number of phenomena I’ve watched with great interest:

-The emergence of China as a major economic power
-The massive decline of the American automobile industry
-The rise and massive success of various American companies like Intel, eBay, and Oracle
-The huge rise of jobs in places like India

China emerged as a force to be reckoned with because they can produce goods more cheaply. People will work for less money in China, and this makes it cheaper to produce products there. Incredibly, it is still cheaper to produce products in China even after accounting for shipping the products on boats all the way to the United States. All over the United States, hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs have disappeared due to the emergence of China as an economic power. If you are someone working in a factory in the present economy, you need to realize your job could be replaced very, very easily.

The American automobile industry has experienced a long and steady decline. Cars can be produced more cheaply elsewhere. American unions have set wages and benefits higher for American workers than for competitors. This has given competitors a huge advantage and also given American automobile companies less money to invest in improving their products. The products have continually gotten worse and worse. The companies able to produce the product at the lowest cost are winning.

The companies that have done the best in the United States over the past several decades are the companies that are increasing efficiency. While I could go into considerable detail about this, companies like Oracle, for example, creates database software which allows companies to save money by operating more efficiently. The efficient operation of these companies creates huge value. A company like eBay creates efficiencies by allowing people to trade goods without having to travel or do extensive research. This, too, creates efficiency. Companies like Intel make microchips that have not only aided the rapid spread of personal computers, but have also enabled companies to use computers which allow them to operate more efficiently.

India has been absorbing many American jobs for decades. They have call centers, programmers, and even legal work is being done there. The country has a lot more people than the United States and a corresponding level of talent. There is another advantage: people are willing to work more cheaply there for most jobs. It only makes sense for American companies to hire people there.

These are all examples of efficiency in action. You need to understand the world and your job are constantly being pushed to be more efficient. When you take a job at any company, you are entering an environment where you are at war. You are at war with the fact your employers are doing everything within their power to make their businesses more efficient. That means they want to save money on you and your work to the maximum extent they can.

The smartest thing you can do in your career is find companies that are increasing efficiency in the market and go to work for them, or find a company where you can increase the efficiency of what is being done. You need to embrace efficiency. If you fight efficiency, you will ultimately lose your job. We are not secure in our jobs and cannot be secure if we don’t embrace efficiency. The war for and against efficiency is something that is going on in every company and every organization. The employees and people who win this war are the ones who fight to make things more efficient.

Watching for Waste in Your Job

What You Will Learn When a recession is at hand, or when an industry is experiencing a contraction, companies look to save themselves as much money as possible. They look around to see who is working hard and adding value, and who is not. In your job, you need to ensure that you are providing as much value as possible. People who do not put in an extra effort, or who cause lots of waste in the company, may find themselves jobless when a recession or restructuring hits.

Several years ago I was moving from one house to another, and I hired three day laborers from outside of a U-Haul branch, where I had rented a truck. One of the workers was a man with a strong European accent, who seemed very intense. He worked as fast as he could–practically running as he moved things out of my house and into the truck. He also frequently burst out in a paranoid type of shouting at the other two men, talking about how they needed to be more careful or they might scratch or dent a piece of furniture. In a nutshell, this man was trying to save me money by working faster and trying to prevent damage to the furniture. At the end of the day, I paid him much more than the other men. I also knew that I would hire this man again for any future work, given the chance. I appreciated that he wanted to save me money by working efficiently, and that he was willing to protect me. This is the same thing your employers are looking for.

In a tough economy there are many forces acting upon us, and most companies are forced to cut back. Businesses often start by cutting advertising and other non-essentials, such as company lunches and expense accounts. Finally, companies start looking towards your job. Employees cost lots of money, which means that eliminating jobs can save a company a substantial amount of money. This is why unemployment numbers rise whenever the economy gets tough.

I know the owner of an answering service, who also worked on phone systems during his spare time. I was speaking with him after September 11, 2001, when the U.S. economy was starting to slow down severely. I asked him about the status of his business. My estimate was that his answering service would be experiencing a dramatic slowdown due to the stress on the economy, believing that in a rough economy people would simply no longer have a use for answering services and would cut back.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “My business is going through the roof. Every business owner that walks by a receptionist and sees her filing her nails instead of working quickly realizes that’s not money well spent. If he gets rid of her and transfers all of the calls to an answering service, he’ll see savings very soon.”

This is the sort of thing I have been seeing in companies across the country, as we go into another economic contraction. This has a real relevance to your job, and it is career advice you need to understand. It is the difference between people who survive in recessions, who do well and stay employed, and those who end up being cut.

I want to digress for a moment and share with you a quick image. If you have ever been to Germany and watched workers in factories, you know that it is an amazing sight. As you may be aware, German factory workers are among the highest (if not the highest) paid workers in the world. What is so interesting about German factory workers is the incredible intensity they bring to their work. They are so serious in their day-to-day work that the difference between them and the typical American factory line is staggering.

However, the Germans also charge more for their work.

When a recession is at hand, or when an industry is experiencing a contraction, companies very quickly look to start saving as much money as possible. They look around to see who is working hard and adding value, and who is not. When my parents were in their prime, working in the late 1960s through the 1980s, most people would join a company and stay there for their entire careers. The United States at some point grew very arrogant, and its manufacturing, agricultural, and information technology sectors were pretty well isolated from the rest of the world–and from serious competition. Other countries in Europe and Asia still had a lot of catching up to do, while this country was awash in wealth and major waste.

My grandfather used to say that you should only buy cars made on Friday because the men on the line were typically still hung over from the weekend on Tuesday. This is literally something people used to request when purchasing cars made in the United States. This is an indication of how fat the United States had allowed itself to become during this time period. It is hard to believe, but true.

My parents lived in a world in which it was almost impossible to get fired from a job. When you joined a company, you typically had major employment security. There was a ton of money going around the United States, and it was obviously just a different time and place.

With the Internet, computer programming can be done anywhere in the world. Phones can be answered anywhere in the world. Designs can be done anywhere in the world. Engineering can be done anywhere in the world. Legal work, incredibly, is now being done everywhere in the world. This country is no longer isolated from the rest; it is now forced to compete with people from areas of the world where there are drastically lower cost structures. Americans’ jobs have become expendable in many respects.

This brings me to your career. In your job, you need to ensure that you are always providing as much value as possible. If you see waste occurring in your job, and you know the work you or others are doing can be done in a more efficient way, you need to point this out to your superiors. If you come to a realization that there is no way your employer can make money from the work you are doing, you should be concerned. This is not something that is in your best interest, especially when you think long-term.

In my career, I have seen plenty of people who have managed to constantly force themselves out of jobs. People who talk their bosses into one raise after another when times are good may find that, when the economy turns and the company realizes it can hire someone at half the cost, they will be out of a job. People who do not put in extra effort, or who create lots of waste in the company, may find themselves out of a job when a recession or restructuring hits. You need to ensure that you are always creating value–far more value than you are worth.

I once spoke with someone once who was telling me how everyone who did a certain type of recruiting received an annual salary of $80,000, plus a commission. When I did the math, I realized that it would be impossible for any recruiting company to make money while paying recruiters that much. Absolutely impossible! Why would any firm do that? However, assuming the firm did actually pay its recruiters that much money, it was certain that these would be some of the first jobs to go when times eventually got tough.

The people who become most impressive during downturns and who grow within companies are the people who point out cost-saving measures and capitalize on financial opportunities that benefit the company, not just themselves. I would encourage you to be one of these people. If you are a manager, you need to ask yourself if you can get more work done with fewer people. This will make your supervisors happy. If you are an extremely successful salesperson, you need to ask yourself if you can show other salespeople in your organization how to sell like you, and how to be more successful.

If you look around at your workplace, I’ll bet you can see numerous ways you could increase efficiency and save your company money. This is exactly what your employer needs to see you doing.

Watching waste and being vigilant about efficiency impresses employers and justifies your continuing, successful role in the company.

Get Security By Concentrating on the Needs of Your Employer

If there is a lack of any kind, whether it is need for employment, or for money, or for guidance, or even for healing, something is blocking the flow.  And the most effective remedy: Give!  Spiritual Economics: The Prosperity Process, Eric Butterworth

What You Will Learn For security in your job, you need to concentrate on yourself and the value that you can provide to your employer. You need to also concentrate on the needs of your employer and be exceptionally good at your work. Give your job everything you have and be seen as a productive unit that is working on behalf of your employer. Creating immense value is the only way to true security.

Several decades ago, people would start with an employer in the United States, and the chances were quite good that the person would be working with that employer for the majority of their career.  This was how it was for my parents for the most part.  It was probably also this way for your parents, as well.  Both of my parents spent the majority of their careers with just one employer.  There are still some pockets of this today; however, for the most part, this is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.  Today, most of us will have had several jobs over our lifetimes.

While this means many things, its significance is that there is really no such thing as employment stability and certainty in your job.  In fact, with very few exceptions, no job is immune from going away.  Most of us crave stability in our lives.  Stability in our careers is an incredibly important thing.  People search for and get stability in their lives in numerous ways:

• They get married.
• The get educations.
• They participate in certain religions.
• They send their kids to certain schools in the hopes this will give them security.
• They follow a certain routine.
• They exercise because it makes them feel a certain way.
• They eat a certain type of food to get enjoyment.
• They use food for comfort.
• They read.
• They act sick or helpless.
• They smoke cigarettes.
• They control others.
• They show up for work at a certain time each day.
• They buy cars which are safer than others so they do not get injured.

Why do we all do one or more of these things?  We do them because we are seeking a certain level of security in our lives.  We want to feel secure, and we expect each of these things we do will give us that result.  Security is coming home to the same home each night.  It is about having a job to go to tomorrow.  It is about having people in your life who love you.  It is knowing you will be alive tomorrow.  It is about being comforted when you are tense and agitated.  How we define security is unique to each of us, but something we all have a need for.  It is among the most important needs we have as human beings.

The need for security in your career is real, and it is something I am sure is exceptionally important to you.  We need to have a purpose in the world, and we need to know that we are going to have the ability to make money and support ourselves in the future.  This is the reason people typically chose one profession over another.  This is also the reason people typically get educations, for example.

When I was growing up, the most secure career you could go into was medicine.  The reason for this was largely due to the fact that doctors typically were guaranteed a pretty good income if they managed to get into medical school and graduate.  They could count on making enough money to live in a nice neighborhood and drive a nice car.  They could send their children to good schools and be respected in their community.  Much of this has been shaken recently and, within the past several months, I have even read some incredible stories about doctors going bankrupt due to being unable to find work.  This is not the case everywhere, of course, but it is a sign that there is not as much security in this profession anymore.

The most secure job you could possibly get in the early 1970s in Detroit was a job with an automotive company.  If you got a job in a factory, you would get a good hourly wage, health benefits, and a pension.  This is, of course, no longer the case at all.  Life and business is a continual cycle of creation and destruction.  What is alive today may not be alive tomorrow.  What goes up often comes down.  This is what makes our careers so hard when we are seeking security.

Most people do not realize this fact, but in the Great Depression there was a severe crash with unemployment rising to 25% from 1930 to 1933.  These stunning unemployment numbers are a sign that we should never take our future security lightly.  Things can change, and any and all security you currently feel  could be gone in a heartbeat.  One of my favorite economists whom I have been reading for years is Harry S. Dent, Jr.  In his most recently book, The Great Depression Ahead, he writes:

Businesses need to understand that a “survival of the fittest” battle is coming between 2008 and 2012 that will determine the leaders for many decades to come.  The businesses with the largest market shares or niche dominance and with the lowest costs and strongest balance sheets and liquidity will grow stronger and gain long-term market share, but many more will fail and be taken over by stronger companies.  Banks need to understand that they haven’t seen anything yet when it comes it comes to home foreclosures and business failures.

This extreme shakeout process in business, along with the great over-expansion and credit expansion of the bubble, will cause this downturn to see much higher unemployment than in the recessions of the 1970s and the early 1980s; our best estimate is 12% to 15%.

I have been reading Dent for years, and, in my experience, he has always been right on.  I believe that there is a strong reason at the moment for you to pause and question whether or not your job, your profession, and your life is secure.  I am asking you to do this so that you can understand the forces that are acting on your career.  Regardless of how secure you think your job is, regardless of the quality of your education, you do have reason to potentially be concerned with what is about to happen in the economy.

Before I go any further, I want to be very clear about a few things that I believe have a major affect on your life.  With the Internet, population growth in various parts of the world, and more–the world is now wide open, and many of the jobs that we formerly did in the United States can be done anywhere.  These jobs can also be done much more cheaply and by people who are incredibly enthusiastic compared to many Americans.  The jobs can be performed with less bureaucracy and delivered to consumers more cheaply.  Businesses must operate as businesses, and the role of all businesses is to provide the best products and services they can at the lowest possible cost.  If the business can produce the product or service at a lower cost, then the business will also be able to sell more of the product by lowering the price.

In fact, in practically any office in the United States, most of this work could be taken and moved overseas to a place where the work can be done more cheaply.  This also goes for work that occurs in factories.  Call centers have been being moved overseas for over a decade.  Sophisticated accounting and tax work can be done at a fraction of the cost overseas.  Computer programming can be done overseas.  I remember 10 years ago, it was difficult for me to hire programmer in the United States because they were demanding incredible amounts of money and stock options–if they knew what they were doing.  My experience was no different than the majority of American employers.  A decade later, most companies I know have put most of their programming staff overseas in areas where it is much less expensive.

They would be crazy not to.

If you can have something done better and more cheaply somewhere else, why would you not do this?  This is something I am confident has eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs.  The same goes for manufacturing.  A tremendous amount of manufacturing in the United States (and throughout the world) has now been moved to places like China.  Even taking into account the costs associated with taking shipping containers across the ocean, China is still able produce goods at a much lower cost than in the United States and elsewhere.

Not too long ago, I was on vacation in Hawaii and shopping in a store which apparently had “authentic Hawaiian apparel.”  Everyone working inside of the store appeared to be genuine native Hawaiians.  I started looking at all of the labels, and, within a few minutes, I realized that every single thing in the store–whether it was a straw hat, or a flowered shirt, was from China.  There is nothing wrong with this.  The business was just doing what any smart business needs to do–it was getting its products from the lowest cost producer so it could make the largest profit margins.

What is going on is not just confined to products and programmers, however.  Legal work is now also being increasingly outsourced to places like India.  People can now have legal work done there.  Imagine what the implications are for the long-term job security of American attorneys due to this.  I have heard others say that the education industry is safe; however, this is now even being questioned.  I read recently in The Great Depression Ahead, that even this may not be immune:

There are likely to be big changes in education ahead due to this Shakeout Season over the next decade.  Just as with the housing or technoloy or emerging market or commodity bubble, there is an education bubble.  Does it make sense that education costs should be rising so fast when education is an information-intensive industry during an unprecedented information revolution?  Bureocratic management structures, real estate intensity, and tenure-based systems have sustained high costs, while high demand from frantic parents has exacerbated the price spiral.  Why can’t parts of education be conveyed online with greater access to experts and peers around the world?  Why do we need sprawling campuses with elaborate landscaping, buildings, libraries, etc., in an Internet world?  Why should students be restricted to teachers and experts in a local area when they can have video and interactive feedback from around the world from the best experts, peers and blogs?

Education can be delivered at radically lower costs through a combination of online programs, in-classroom programs, and internships with companies.  However, it will take a shock to the system to force such changes in the most complacent, academic and tenure-based system in our economy. Page 306.

My idea here is that no industry and no job will necessarily guarantee you the security you crave in the future.  One proposal being batted around is that the Obama administration may decide to create a massive number of government jobs.  This may very well occur, however, if this does occur, then even these jobs may not have a lot of security because they may be eliminated when a new administration comes in.  Everything goes in cycles of creation and destruction.

I believe the next 10 years or so in the present economy are going to witness a massive shakeout that is beyond anything we have ever seen before.  In a poor economy, businesses do everything they possibly can to cut costs.  This will mean that many of the jobs they have will be relocated overseas, where possible, and done in much cheaper ways.  In addition, I believe that productivity enhancing tools are going to increasingly put pressure on the human equation to lower wages.  I recently read a September 10, 2008, article in the Wall Street Journal, “Retailers Reprogram Workers in Efficiency Push,” which I am confident is a huge indicator of what lies ahead in most retail jobs:

Retailers have a new tool to turn up the heat on their salespeople: computer programs that dictate which employees should work when, and for how long.

AnnTaylor StoresCorp. installed a system last year. When saleswoman Nyla Houser types her code number into a cash register at the Ann Taylor store here at the Oxford Valley Mall, it displays her “performance metrics”: average sales per hour, units sold, and dollars per transaction. The system schedules the most productive sellers to work the busiest hours.

Ann Taylor saleswoman Nyla Houser, a retired teacher, has gotten fewer work hours under a new ‘workforce-management‘ system.

“We are under the gun to be a much more efficiently running organization,” said Scott Knaul, director of store operations at the women’s apparel retailer, which said earlier this year that it is closing 117 under performing stores over the next few years. There was an initial “ego hit” for some employees, he said at a gathering of retailers in May. But the system, he said, has helped turn more store browsers into buyers.

Such “workforce-management” systems are sweeping the industry as retailers fight to improve productivity and cut payroll costs. Limited Brands Inc., Gap Inc., Williams-Sonoma Inc. and GameStop Corp. have all installed them recently. Some employees aren’t happy about the trend. They say the systems leave them with shorter shifts, make it difficult to schedule their lives, and unleash Darwinian forces on the sales floor that damage morale.

“There was a lot of animosity” toward the system, says Kelly Engle, who worked at an Ann Taylor store in Beavercreek, Ohio, until late last year. “Computers aren’t very forgiving when it comes to an individual’s life.”

Tools like this are enabling retailers to squeeze as much work as they possibly can out of their workers.  They are also shaking inefficiencies out of the system and making our jobs less secure and certain.  In this article it was discussed that this efficiency increasing tool is creating tremendous downward pressure on the wages of the most marginal sales people in the stores.

The quest we have for security is there because we are all trying to survive.  How do you do this, however, when the world around you is constantly changing?  We fight for security in our jobs.  Unions are there, for the most part, to give people employment security.  Most of the worry and anxiety people experience is due to them worrying about what may happen or not feeling secure.  There are a lot of ways people try and get security:

• They save money.
• They limit their relationships to people where they are not likely to be disappointed and continually experience security.
• They look for people, situations, substances and other things to calm their anxiety and make them feel secure.
• Some people consistently underachieve because they believe there is more security in being average than being extraordinary and taking risks.
• Many people isolate themselves.
• A salesperson does not take risks and make certain calls to get new clients for their firm so they do not have to feel rejection, for example.
• We do not take the risks we should in meeting as many people as we should so we do not experience rejection.
• We do not apply for jobs we are likely to be rejected for so we can experience security.
• We do not follow up with applications we have submitted because this makes us feel more secure.

Not all of these things may apply to you, but I am sure many of them do.  You know that you have a need for security.  The problem with this need is that you should understand that there is no such thing as security.  Every inefficiency in every business and job you could possibly have will eventually be eliminated.  This is especially so in the current economy where employers will do everything within their power to reduce and eliminate unnecessary expenses.  This is something that happens in all recessions, and it is happening at the moment, and is likely to be severe.  Many people you know are about to lose their jobs if they have not already.

Where does this leave you? What about your security?

You are not going to be able to find security in almost any career you go into.  I do not say this to you to frighten you, but it is a stark reality.  Concentrating on security and searching for this is the wrong approach to your career.  What you really need to be concentrating on is yourself and the value that you can provide an employer.

• How you can reduce your employer’s costs.
• How you can make your employer more money.
• How you can create efficiencies where you work.
• How you can present a better image for your employer.
• How you can outsource work and save your employer money.
• How you can look out for and defend the employer’s interests.
• How you can improve your skills in your chosen profession for the benefit of your employer.

All of these ideas (and I could write them down all day) are things that you can do that are meant to give someone else (i.e., your employer) security.  When you concentrate on the needs of your employer and being exceptional at your job, very good things happen to you.  I have been faced before with the choice between letting one or another person go in our company during cutbacks.  If there is someone out there I know is always trying to cut costs and increase the revenue of one of our companies, then I will do everything within my power to save this person’s job.  Other people do not seem to care, and these are the people who are let go.  People who are constantly improving themselves are also kept around over those who are not.  People who are aware of inefficiencies in various operations and point these out to the employer are valued.

In 1927, Bruce Barton, the co-founder of the BBDO advertising agency wrote: “If a man practices doing things for other people until it becomes so much a habit that he is unconscious of it, all the good forces of the universe line up behind him and whatever he undertakes to do.”"

In order to experience the security you are seeking, you need to focus on the needs of others.  Focusing on your own security is something that is often counterproductive.  There is a chance you could lose any job that you are doing, even after having done the job for decades.  We are going into a frightening economy where a lot of bad stuff is about to happen.  It will be, in many respects, a true survival of the fittest.  The fittest are, and always have been, the ones who are providing the most value.  They are anticipating and catering to the needs of other and, due to this, they are staying ahead of the game.

This is what I want for you as well.  You need to give your job your all and be seen as a productive unit that is working on behalf of your employer and creating immense value.  Not the opposite.  This is the only way to true security.