Confessions of a Corporate Shopaholic

Contractors, contract staff, temps, permanent staff, consultants.  They all have similar jobs.  They work in the same team, under the same boss, who is almost always on permanent headcount.  These are all inventive ways to commoditize human capital, and they are designed to wiggle through the tightening policies in the workplace.  Regardless of what the rationale is, leaders should know that there are distinctively different ways to incentivize human capital according to how they are hired or engaged.

From the way I set this up, you would sense that I am not really seeing this being mastered.  Some leaders know these terms by heart, but they are simply dumbfounded by the workforce who are knowledgeable about all the risks and rights of these engagements.  When a work friend of mine complained about disloyalty of a contract staff some time ago, my reaction was simply: “What do you expect?”

I know it may sound totally unrealistic from the job market we are in today, but as I have said over and over again in the past, we all got to “de-commoditize” ourselves.  Only when we do it can we set ourselves apart and regain some power back, as an employee.  In my friend’s case, his contract staff has one of the highest sought after attribute in the workplace – the ability to close projects.  There are many who are fantastic in the whole song and dance but lack the ability to pull people together to make things happen.  This person exhibits strong cohesion that allows him to lead projects successfully toward completion.  With that track record, he will be grabbed by other aspiring employers in no time, while my friend is still trying to bad-mouth his contractor’s seemingly disloyalty, in sheer disbelief.

A leader who fails to see through an employee’s strengths and weaknesses will always find himself or herself stuck with the worst people.  On the other hand, workers who fail to develop themselves out of a commodity will continue be taken advantage of in the corporate world.