Do you remember the first job you loved?
Mine meant the world to me.
I thought I was in trouble when my high school guidance counselor asked to see me. Had I done something bad? Did I need supervision?
Neither of these, it turns out, was true. He had a job available and thought I could do it well. So it was that I began working at Four Seas Ice Cream, in Centerville, Massachusetts. I was intimidated and scared — all of the cooler, older kids worked at the shop — but I said yes, primarily for the pay. I jumped in with both feet, despite my trepidation, and that job grew to mean much more to me than just a paycheck.
Through high-school and college I worked summers at Four Seas. We worked 6 days a week, sometimes doing split shifts, and the work was hard and dirty. I remember being sticky up to my armpits, stinking of sour cream, and literally running around to serve an endless line of summer customers. Even more importantly, though, I remember feeling the bond of being part of a team and the reward that comes from working hard.
I felt I was needed. I felt competent. I felt trusted. I felt part of something bigger. I felt less dependent. I knew someone would notice if I missed a shift. My co-workers became my friends over time. I funded college and grad school largely from the income. After seven years, I grieved when life took me away and I finally chose to stop working there.
Those early days formed an impression on me that has never faded (and that I write about often): we need the psychological as well as the economic benefits we get from contributing to work.
What has me up at night is thinking about what work means to us during the global response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Since the USA first shut down, my company has been hosting Brave Council calls with leaders of small businesses around the world Please Join Us Mondays at 9 am! From Jordan to Italy and from Michigan to Oregon, I’ve heard story after story of leaders making hard decisions to furlough, layoff, and reduce hours of valuable and skilled employees, even as it breaks their hearts. And of-course the huge spike in unemployment over the past 8 weeks has caused immense economic fear to ripple through our world.
But there is something looming underneath this economic fear that is even darker and scarier to me: our basic need as humans to contribute, to have a purpose, to lean in — our simple need to work — is at risk. Even as our identities at home and community matter, our identity at work is a crucial rudder during volatility.
I think this must have been part of why Franklin D. Roosevelt launched the WPA program in 1935. Although imperfect, the New Deal programs offered hope for millions of people during the depression, while also constructing hundreds of modern, essential, and creative structures and programs from the Library of Congress to the early roots of the National Foundation for the Arts.
In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, we are pouring money into the economy through relief programs, which have already or will soon run. I am all for financial relief for those at risk, including myself as a small business and an employer, but that is only part of the problem that we need to solve. What remains steadfastly the same is the fact that we as humans need to work, to contribute, and to matter.
Business has a role here. Small, medium, and large businesses must reimagine the most creative ways to keep more people working. I love seeing some strategies unfold, like 4-day work weeks to stagger people’s contact while keeping people working or wage decreases for all rather than furloughs or layoffs for some. These are all part of the solution, and I’d love to hear how your business is doing its part to help keep people working in your organization.
In addition, isn’t it time for Federal, State, and Local back-to-work projects that give people purpose during the predictably long period of quarantine that is COVID 19? What are some of your ideas for projects that need doing in your community that such efforts could tackle?
What work can be done safely during COVID that matters to all of us? Yes, we need to maintain safety amidst the deadly virus still in our midst. And, let’s push
ourselves into innovation and creativity and envision work that works amidst COVID.
Let’s think, let’s collaborate, let’s experiment, let’s look for and elevate real leaders in every sphere who want to help, and let’s be brave. There is, after all, plenty of work to be done. Let’s not delude ourselves that getting back to work the way we did in February will lift us magically back. We can’t go back, can we?
Our focus needs to expand beyond just opening the free market to sell more stuff as a way of getting our economy going. Flipping the free market engine back on will still primarily benefit just a few (the already wealthy via the stock market,) while the majority of our citizens will continue to fall behind via the wage gap. The problems that existed before the pandemic will exist even more strikingly because he patient of our economy was sick long before COVID.
I believe that some work happens outside of economic benefit but matters to all. Real thriving at work, in any job, is about knowing we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves.
Work is part of our identity, and central to our sense of ourselves. Even at age 16, when I first donned my uniform at Four Seas Ice Cream, I felt the powerful benefit of contributing. Let’s get to work, like never before, in ways that help us all, not just the wealthy few.
