#88: Retire the Word "Job"

It's about time that the word "job" hangs up its hat and retires. There is a good reason behind this too! Listen in to learn why the word job leaves your employees feeling less than special and wanting to put in minimal effort in your business.

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Prefer to read what we talked about in the episode? Read below!

Hello everyone! Excited to spend today with you! All right. So, Happy Wednesday! We're going to talk a little bit about employment because we know that's a hot topic right now, and as I said in one of our short videos out there that we have in social media, what we've been noticing as a trend over the holidays where a lot of people have experienced some form of turnover, either - and it's really been bizarre. We have clients with long term employees, who just stopped showing up to work, totally ghosted them. We have other employees, clients who've had to fire their employees, we have clients who had more than one employee give them proper notice. And they were great employees, and they're really sad to see them go and everything ended on good terms. So we've seen a lot of this shake up in employment lately. And it all has happened in the last four weeks or so. So technically, when we see that happening with several of our clients, and several of the people in the communities, we expect that it's a trend. And there's a lot of things happening in the employment world right now, of course, we have been dealing with a staffing shortage for quite a while, but now the bigger corporations, especially the tech companies are doing a lot of layoffs. So when there's a movement in this industry, and in this part of business, it typically trickles all the way down to us small business owners. And we are in the process too of hiring some new employees. And we're so excited because I will tell you, the candidate pool out there is absolutely amazing. We are getting just amazing people to apply for our jobs, they're showing up for interviews, we're having great, intelligent conversations. I love the topics that they're bringing to the table, the questions that they're asking us. And that really brings me to today's topic, which is retiring the word “job”. And the topic actually came from one of our candidates. She mentioned this in the interview and said, "I really feel like we need to retire the word “job”. That got us thinking it got me thinking and, and I thought, you know what, she's right. And we're gonna break it down today as to how can we empower our employees to really embrace ownership over their role, embrace that responsibility of doing more than just executing the role, but taking the role and expanding it, right? Taking the role and seeing where, “hey, I have the ability to fill some gaps and I want to bring that to my employer's attention and have a discussion about the gaps that I've recognized how I believe we can fill them and I want to take the initiative and get it done because I see how it can make us better both in growing our revenues but in reaching our mission. And that's really the type of employee that we want, right? But isn't that the type of employee that you want? Isn't that the person who you desire to have filling your roles? Because when you have that person working for you, or let's talk about having multiple people who fit that description working for you, that's where you get to experience business owner freedom. That's where you get to take a week long, two week long vacation with your family, and not have a worry in the world. Not just worried, you know, no worries that the place is gonna burn down, or that the customers aren't going to be taken care of. But the underlying worry that business owners have when they step away from their business, which is, you know, “I know it's not going to burn down, but I also don't expect it to grow while I'm away”. 

Let's get that out of there - you should be expecting your business to grow, whether or not you are the one behind the cash register. So getting rid of this word job and retiring the word job, is a great way to begin examining and articulating what we really want to create as a work environment as a culture, and how we want to attract the right people to support us as the business owners in our jobs of strategizing and growing the business. So why do we want to retire the word “job”? Well, think about it, the word job has a subliminal message to it, that it's a chore. Think back when your kids, and you do your chores, and you get an allowance, right? The word job has that same connotation. And it feels like there's not a choice involved, I have to have a job. Having a job brings me money, I have to have money to live. So I guess I'll go get a job. You'll hear people talk about a job in this way, even young people who say like “I just need a job”. Why are you applying? All of you, as small business owners and franchisees, who are a lot of you employing high school and college kids? If you ask that question in an interview, what makes you want this job? I need a job. I want to get a car. So it boils down to “I need money”. And I know I need a job to make money. And this was a job. Right? 

So that's the, that's the subliminal messaging of the word “job”. And that's the connotation of having a job. Do we want our employees to feel like that? Like this is somewhere you have to be, this is somewhere where you are going to be completing activities that maybe you're not passionate about, perhaps you don't even enjoy doing? Perhaps you don't know how to do them. And all of these possibilities lead very often to employees not executing well, or not executing all the responsibilities in the position to make it work. And so what if we start reframing it? And instead of using the word “job”, we begin by exploring what other terms we could substitute it with. Let's take “career” for example. Career has a subliminal messaging that you have a choice. Career feels long term. Career feels like there is potential for growth in the role. Just the differences between the word job and career bring a different feeling to the position. So, career would be a better choice than job. But we also know that for a lot of us, our positions are not going to be a career for most of our employees in a traditional sense. For many of you, in these high turnover positions, you're looking for the high schooler who's going to be with you until they go off to college, or you're looking for the college students who's going to hang out and work for you until that hanging out but and work for you until they graduate, right? So that may not quite resonate with the applicants if you use the word “career”. So what else is out there? Well, there's the word “opportunity”, and there is an opportunity in working for you. But if you frame it as an opportunity, you need to know what is the opportunity, and you need to be able to explain the opportunity that comes with working for you. So if you explain if you call it an opportunity, but you explain it as a job, people are going to see through that. There has to be an opportunity for growth, an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to develop new skills, an opportunity to make an impact on other people, an opportunity to have a different social group and opportunity to be mentored, and an opportunity to gain a reputation for excellence. And really, when we think about it, these are things that we want to provide to our employees. So when you are talking to your potential employees and your current employees, whether it's through the job posting - there  again, I use the word “job”. 

So let's change it through the posting about the “opportunity” through the interview, through the opportunity letter. We have to really be focused not just on the job, not just on the tasks, not just on the, you know - I need you to do these things hit these quotas, you're going to be making sandwiches, but on the opportunity. In this role, you will have the opportunity to learn new skills such as: Grow in your professional development through mentorship. Gain a reputation for excellence that you can use in your future endeavors such as on college resumes, and future career opportunities, right? So you can really paint the picture of the opportunity. So that's a couple of different words that you can use, instead of using the word “job”. 

You can also use the word “role”. You don't have a job with us, you have a role. Just think about the difference in emotion that those two words Ignite. If you just say them to yourself, immediately, you're going to feel that they have a different energy. A job feels heavier. A role feels hopeful. A role is taking ownership, taking responsibility, it's taking accountability for its cause and effect. “I am the cause. And I can create an effect in this role”. So that's another great word to replace the word “job”. 

Any of these are fantastic options. And in fact, you may come up with an even better option than the traditional words. That's what's happening in today's society is we're throwing the old things that aren't serving us out the window, and we're saying “How can we be more inclusive? How can we be more diverse? How can we be more open and really allow our minds to explore what's possible, instead of just subscribing to what we've always done because we've always done it?” And so that is my challenge for you this week. How can you think differently about the word “job”? How can you begin using a different word than “job”? And then how can you be a catalyst to helping others embrace a different energy and belief around the words that you replace it with? Because as a business owner, you have an opportunity to really change the world. And that is one of the four reasons that most business owners decide to take the leap and leave their old job for an opportunity. So that is your challenge this week. We'd love to hear what terms you come up with and how you are going to begin replacing the word job. What you're going to start using instead and then run it by your staff and see what kind of response you get. We will talk to you next week.