Commentary: Call me a strawberry millennial, but being passionate doesn’t mean I’m willing to be exploited
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Commentary: Call me a strawberry millennial, but existence passionate doesn't hateful I'm willing to be exploited
Contrary to popular belief, not all younger employees believe a "fun" piece of work environment will necessarily fuel their passion. Some of united states of america merely desire to be adequately appreciated and compensated for our hunger.
Staying connected is paramount every bit new means of working come up into play. Photo: Shutterstock
SINGAPORE: When I began my first job bright-eyed and bushy-tailed six years ago, I pinned a postcard with a career platitude to my cubicle: "Detect a job y'all enjoy doing, and you lot volition never accept to work a day in your life."
The infamous Marker Twain quote had seemingly become the N Star for many idealists, including myself, around the time us 90s millennials started inbound the workforce.
Information technology implied that passion wasn't but necessary for career satisfaction, it was a notable achievement in itself. As though landing a job that didn't compel i to leap out of bed every morning time was something to exist aback about.
Having passion implicitly meant your 9-to-5 was better and cooler than everyone else's – one of the pinnacles of supposedly having successfully conquered adulthood.
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In practice, the nebulous term of passion translated into my peers and I aspiring for jobs in anarchistic companies that often modelled its ethos and culture after Western tech companies.
These companies boasted values similar a flat organisational construction and a workplace culture that reinforced the importance of being a "family".
For example, a friend who works in a start-upwards tells me that having worked in more than corporate settings, she romanticised the idea of having a "a shut-knit relationship with co-workers" that made workplace relationships akin to family bonds. This made her work harder to land her job.
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Similarly, companies that extolled passion tended to incorporate unique cloth office perks as status symbols, such as fancy pantries, pool tables and beanbag chairs, encouraging passion for the job by making employees enjoy staying in the workplace.
The underlying mantra was simple enough to subscribe to: If y'all truly loved your work, yous would have no upshot making it your life.
THE Night SIDE OF PASSION
But while its introduction to career speak must take begun with good intentions, "passion" eventually morphed into a dissimilar brute. Passion was more than a trending buzzword, a warm and fuzzy feeling towards one's task, or a deep pride in the work.
Over fourth dimension, notwithstanding, the concept of having passion for the job seemed to increasingly manifest in tangible, and often exploitative, practices in the workplace, such as regular overtime and unpaid or under-paid internships.
In a report on passion exploitation in the workplace published in 2019, researchers from Duke University found that "people consider it more legitimate to make passionate employees get out family to piece of work on a weekend, work unpaid, and handle unrelated tasks that were not in the chore description".
This is particularly prevalent in careers traditionally associated with labours of love, similar the arts and social services.
The study also discovered this tendency to exploit passion arose from two beliefs: "That work is its own reward, and that the employee would accept volunteered anyhow."
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In 2020, these beliefs and behaviour resemble "hunger" – an updated term for "passion" that, for meliorate or worse, still carries the same questionable connotation.
Hunger implies the willingness to go above and beyond for the job, in the name of experience and learning, whether this means regularly pulling long hours or taking on additional tasks outside i's job telescopic.
But even though "hunger" is simply "passion" on the same pedestal, younger employees take begun to push back against the notion that being hungry implicitly means being expected to overextend oneself without complaint.
Eventually, this creates tension between employers and employees, peculiarly millennials who already bear the burden of having to prove they're not "strawberries".
PASSIONATE TO A POINT
About a month agone, inspired by a semi-viral Facebook post on the seemingly ludicrous demands fabricated by seven local job applicants that reignited an evergreen debate virtually entitled job seekers, I spoke with employers, fresh grads, retrenched workers, career coaches and recruiters to empathize what younger task seekers want in this recession.
According to the Facebook post, 1 candidate demanded 21 days of annual leave because his previous company granted him such, while another candidate requested a salary of about S$half dozen,000 even though the job post had stated the salary range of no more than S$3,600.
While finding a job they were passionate about nevertheless factored heavily into their career plans, it appeared secondary to not-negotiable work-life boundaries and employers who respected and valued the private for what they brought to the table.
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Fortunately, change is possible, even if it isn't easy.
I, too, accept bought into the passion narrative one too many times in my life, having willingly even worked for gratis, because I believed it would stand me in expert stead.
Equally a consequence, I cycled through countless rounds of burnout, frequently coming close to quitting the industry entirely, earlier realising the insidious side-effects of blindly prioritising passion.
Merely I admit, if non for having to work from dwelling house during this pandemic, I might have connected barrelling down the path of passion.
At domicile, work and life has blurred into one. And in fact, having subscribed to passion for then long makes it harder to describe boundaries to protect my sanity, as the passion narrative reinforces the belief that piece of work is love is life.
CARVING OUT A NEW NORMAL
For a first, it means reconstructing my own view towards passion-driven office cultures and their practices, which I once would've done annihilation to exist part of.
For example, innocuous perks like beanbag chairs and nap pods are usually a grade of "signalling", says Patricia Teo, the Director of the Technology exercise at Kerry Consulting.
"It makes the employees feel that there is an employee-centricity chemical element when companies plan their 60 minutes policies or workspaces. It makes employees feel important," she tells me.
In reality, these perks might exist installed because "companies don't desire yous to be distracted by getting out of the office".
While Chua Ruo Mei, a career omnibus, acknowledges these efforts that employers put in to indirectly "create a sense of loyalty to the visitor", ultimately people want to grow.
"Y'all tin can requite employees the best gadgets and cafeteria foods, ping pong tables, and free menstruum of beer on tap. Merely when it comes to work, if you don't take them seriously or give them proper guidance and mentorship, people will leave.
These superficial perks won't retain them," she reminds me.
As for my friend who's with a company that prides themselves on being a family, she's since realised the importance of "clear boundaries that are typically drawn in more than 'traditional' companies, where y'all are constantly reminded of your purpose in that location".
"There is no need to become higher up and across to foster bonds with co-workers and extend the professional relationship to after hours. I feel the 'non-traditional' companies should beginning picking up on the repercussions of a coincidental or close-knit civilisation," she says.
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That isn't to say we plow into robots and wholly compartmentalise work and life. Only like my friend, I in one case lauded boundless freedom and autonomy, a "family unit" visitor culture, and cool perks, only to realise too much of a seemingly adept thing can exist a very bad thing.
One time the sheen of passion wears off, mere love for the job is no longer enough to keep i at said job, especially if that is all that's keeping us there.
6 years since I first entered the workforce, the things I value most now include construction, processes, and policies, which ironically requite me the mental freedom I need to do my job improve.
These boring and seemingly obvious aspects of workplace culture, such as medical benefits and work-life balance, weren't things I prioritised until I had no selection, simply they're at present crucial to making me feel valued for my intangible traits like passion.
I ditched the postcard with the Mark Twain platitude after leaving my first job, but I take an updated version inscripted in my listen: "Find a task you enjoy doing, and yous will work every unmarried day of your life until you learn how to draw and maintain boundaries."
I might never find ane "right" job, merely there are many that volition care for me right. What is growing upward just learning to tell the difference.
Grace Yeoh is a senior journalist at CNA Insider.
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