A Mercenary employee is one who has high job satisfaction, but low loyalty for the business. Such an employee has qualified academically and knows what to do but lacks the love for the employer. A Mercenary employee is self-absorbed, will deliver the work but do not care a lot about the business. Such people are results-oriented, energetic, may prefer individual working conditions, astute problem solvers, innovators, not interest in titles, dedicated follow-through, results for today are so key. Agile. Very good results, have positive energy, have access to knowledge sources, have access to knowledge sources/references, love recognition & guidance, etc
How do you keep the “Mercenary” staff?
- Every employee has a hot bottom. What is the hot bottom, of your mercenaries? If you give challenging tasks the mercenaries love, you will keep them engaged. Most of the time, mercenaries leave jobs because they do not have challenging work. Give them challenging work and they will be satisfied and happy. Look at their love language, so to say. Appreciate their paradigm and what motivates them.
What is the better way to determine that one is remaining relevant in the era of remote working?
- The pandemic has helped challenge our value system. Some people will say, they are working from home, and they do not want to be held accountable. How do you expect to be paid at the end of the month when you do not want to be held accountable? How does the employer evaluate your contribution to the team? You must keep the team up to date. You must share your daily tasks and keep your phones and points of contacts nearby for any calls or team collaboration requests.
- Now people are asking is it necessary to go back to the offices and is it still justified to rent the official space? There are now remote working policies – the new rules of engagement. Everything we do, we know results do not lie. Facebook and Google are starting to tell their employees, do not come back to work until 2021. They know their staff value system. If you have staff who are working and you know they are delivering, maybe there is no longer a need for them to return to the office.
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We need daily accountability. It is an absolute personal responsibility. You must self-drive and push yourself. And ensure there are no issues of disclosure of confidential information. Remote working is not all about logging in, it is about delivering results. Things must move. Results must be delivered and be seen.
- Better awareness makes better choices. We need to know what is being measured to win. People must know what their target is, and what will be measured to evaluate one’s performance. All the tools are there. There are TED talks, if you just apportion some time to personal learning, you will improve. If you just allocated one hour a day to self-development, you will win.
- As employers no one has set a target to get people to go. But no one takes a cow to the water and forces it to drink and that is where self-drive comes from. To win in this era, be agile. Invest in yourself.
Credit: the above article is based on the presentation by Mr. Paul Senyomo, CEO Mercantile Credit Bank.
Credit: Featured photo credit, Internet photo.
Copyright Mustapha B Mugisa, 2020. All rights reserved.
