Category Archives: Benefits

7 Benefits Communication Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague

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It’s conference season in the HR world and as I’m traveling around the country and meeting HR pros face-to-face I can’t help but feel the pain we all feel when it comes to employee communications.

I love seeing real HR pros speak about the transformations they are making in their organizations, and one thing, for sure, is a common theme in almost every story I hear – communication is tough! HR leaders have gotten to the point that we all know this is super important, and still it’s hard for us to get it right.

In the spirit of making this stuff a little less tough, I’m going to give you 7 Benefits Communication Mistakes to Avoid Like the Plague, to help you through your own organization transformations. Here we go!

#1. Don’t assume your news is bad!

We know a few people will take pretty much any news we share negatively, so we build an entire communication to address those few. My advice: Stop doing that! A lot of people might love the news. What about them?

#2. Don’t build a one-size-fits-all communication.

Each of your employees is a unique and beautiful pink unicorn, and, damn it, they want to be treated as such! Okay, so you don’t have to make each communication unique to each employee, but think about your two or three biggest groups of employees (could be segmented by age, location, tenure…) and at least make an effort to make comms that speaks to their unique needs.

Check out #3-#7 over at JellyVision – MeetAlex where this post was originally posted by me!

The Greatest Retirement Benefits You Can Give Your Employees

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My Dad retired this past year. I’m already ‘leveraging’ him for some time. He has so much of it now! It’s like he won the time lotto and he’s throwing it around because he’s got so much of it. “Hey Dad, can I borrow a couple of hours!? It’s a busy week! I need you to pick up the kids!”

I read this article, The Huge Retirement Benefit You Probably Aren’t Expecting recently:

America is reaching a tipping point. Adults in the busiest phase of life, juggling kids and careers, number about 40 million, which is roughly equal to those near and in retirement, who typically have time on their hands. But the number of adults pressed for time is projected to grow slowly, reaching 49 million by 2050. By contrast, the number of retirees with plenty of free time will explode to 88 million, as more and more boomers retire.

When you add it all up, retirees will have 2.5 trillion hours of leisure time to fill over the next 20 years. This free time will redefine their habits and priorities—even their identities. And yet almost no one is planning for this sweeping change, according to a report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Age Wave.

Time is going to be the new currency of future generations. It’s like lake front property, there’s only so much. Unless you live in Dubai and have billions, then I guess you can make new lake front property!

The crazy thing is, organizations aren’t really putting that much effort into figuring this whole thing out. We’re treating it like we’ve treated retirement for decades. “Well, Bill’s retiring, let’s throw him a party, buy him a walker with a horn, and give his work to the new kid.” We aren’t thinking in a new context of what do these ‘new’ folks who are retiring really want?

What I’ve learned from Dad is we in HR are missing some things. Here are some ideas of Retirement Benefits you could offer, but you haven’t even begun to think in this new way of time:

1. Part-time, flexible Mentorships – Some people can’t wait to stop working for your organization. Many feel they’re being ‘nicely’ pushed out, or society makes them feel like ‘it’s time’ to leave. The reality, so many of your retiring employees would love to keep in touch. Help out the new kids. Lead mentor groups on how to deal with customer issues, leadership dilemmas, customer/client feedback, etc. And most would do it for free! They would volunteer their time!

2. Corporate Community Volunteer Programs – Remember, these super valuable, experienced, loyal former employees who love your brand, have a couple trillion (with a T) hours on their hands! Can you imagine how much good will you could leverage in the community if you activated your retirees as volunteers with some direction and leadership!?  It could transform your corporate presence within the markets you serve. BTW – hospitals do a great job at this! There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to do this in your organization as well.

3. C-Suite Bullship Detectors – Your executives don’t always know what’s really going on because they have a bunch of VPs kissing their ass telling them what they think they want to hear. Retirees are a great mechanism to tell your executives what is actually going on, versus what they’re being told. They’re like highly paid consultants, without the highly paid part!  We all need someone without a vested interest to tell us like it is, even when it stings a little. Your retirees would love to do this. Works really well for newer retirees who are still close to the business. Not so well once they get a ways out. You will be shocked at the bond your executives will build with these folks!

Something to think about. How are your new retirement benefits helping your former employees spend and invest their most precious commodity? Time.

 

Maternity/Paternity Plans in 2016 #HRTF16

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Hey, gang! I’m at HR Tech Fest in Washington D.C. and so far there has been some exceptional content and keynote sessions!

One of those keynotes was given by Jim O’Gorman who is the SVP of Talent and Organization at Hulu. Jim spoke about the organizational evolution of Hulu going from startup to becoming a teenager. What I loved about the entire presentation was he works for a big brand, but he shared real world HR issues they have faced and how the solved them.

You don’t always get this from major brands. You usually get this very washed, clean view of how great everything is and perfect they are, and you leave really learning nothing. Jim gave solid ideas and examples of stuff any of us could do in our own shops!

One great idea he had was sharing their Maternity and Paternity programs that Hulu has recently put in place, and the challenges and results. Ironically, Dawn Burke and I just had this same conversation about her own HR shop and the challenges they have had with instituting a modern maternity program.

What does this have anything to do with an HR Technology conference!?

That’s the cool part. Jim, and Hulu, used their HR analytics and technology to prove that developing a new Maternity/Paternity program would increase engagement, loyalty and retention. The money it was going to cost, would come back in spades by the increase in these other metrics.

Sure it was the “right” thing to do, but it also have to make financial sense to the organization.

The Hulu program gives the primary caregiver 20 weeks of pay (12 weeks in a row – think the traditional FMLA time that is required but with pay), and 8 weeks of pay that can be used as transition time.  These 8 weeks is to be used to slowly transition those primary caregivers back into their work life.

Primary caregiver is defined as birth mother, same-sex parent who is going to primary caregiver or father if the father is going to be the primary caregiver.

On top of this, the secondary caregiver in Hulu’s program, traditionally the father, also gets 8 weeks of paid leave to use as they need to support the primary caregiver. That means a secondary caregiver can decide when this time needs to be used, within the first year of life of the child.

Hulu’s philosophy was we can’t build just one maternity/paternity program because everyone’s situation is different. It has to be flexible for all of our arrangements. Each family is different and unique, and if truly want this program to deliver our desired outcomes (increased retention, high engagement, and loyalty) we need to develop a program that is customizable for each person.

“Customizable”!? HR? Benefits? Policies?  Wait, that sounds different!

Sounds pretty cool to me. Sounds like the future of HR to me.

Combine great ideas with what our employees actually want and need with technology and organizations can make great things happen!

Check out HR Tech Fest – it’s their first year in the U.S., and they put on a really great conference. No detail was forgotten, the content was world-class and the attendees were highly engaged! I’ll be back!

What the Hell is Financial Wellness & Why Should HR Pros Care!

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I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t raised in an environment where much of anything was given to me. In my world, Financial Wellness meant our check didn’t bounce when we went to the grocery store or having to go to a different grocery store where we hadn’t bounced a check in a while! Luckily, my kids have no idea what it means to ‘bounce’ a check!

That is one of our challenges as HR pros to define Financial Wellness. For some of us, having the bills paid means we have financial wellness, for others, having the means to go on that annual trip to Florida means we have financial wellness. Some of your employees feel they have financial wellness, while others, in the same capacity, would feel on the verge of financial ruin!

Financial wellness, by definition, is a program or set of programs designed to improve employees’ financial behavior and outcomes while also driving business impact. Basically, it’s helping to ensure, the best we can, that our employees aren’t overly concerned with their personal money issues, that it impacts their work performance. An organization provides a good financial wellness program so that it can have happy and productive employees, who help drive great financial results for the organization.

Why do we as HR Pros need to care about our employees Financial Wellness?

In the history of HR, we really didn’t.  Sure there were some empathetic HR Pros who cared about someone going through a tough time, but rarely did HR, in the most well-meaning sense, ever want to touch the personal finance issues of an employee! Mostly, we would listen, try and pawn them off on the Employee Assistance Program, and hope it all went away.

The expectations of how we work with our employees, especially concerning things that impact their performance, have changed drastically over the past few years. The great recession is probably the main culprit for this mind-shift. We went through a part of our history where having financial issues, wasn’t rare, it was the norm for so many of our employees. Organizationally, we had to find ways to help our employees cope, get better and stay productive.

What we learned, through all of this, was that HR can make a huge difference in our employees quality of life. Having a great quality of life means that employees will stay around longer. Longer tenured employees, who love their jobs and feel supported, mean better overall outcomes for your organization.

The best HR leaders are now keenly aware of the organization’s bottom line, and what programs have a positive impact financially. Financial Wellness is one of those programs that drive overall better organizational financial performance, which makes it one of those programs HR pros need to care about, and need continue to drive across their organization.

Financial Wellness isn’t an easy program to just go and launch. We still live in a culture where talking about your finances, especially when things aren’t going well, is an extremely hard conversation to have. None of us want to admit we did a bad job managing our finances, and now we are in trouble. This is why HR is in a great position to own financial wellness and help employees. We are trained to be able to handle these types of situations and help our employees.

I joke about growing up in a family that bounced checks at the grocery store. I can do that now since I’m far from that scenario, but it was soul crushing to be a kid and have your mom handing you items to go put back on shelves because we couldn’t afford them. You have employees who are doing this. They need your help. They don’t need a handout, they need the knowledge to change their situation forever.

(By the way, if you’d like to hear me, and my special guest Laurie Ruettimann, get even more passionate and detailed about this topic, don’t miss the free webinar I’m hosting with ALEX, March 8th at 2pm EST. It’s called “Show Me the Money (Tips)! Six Ways to Improve Your Financial Wellness Program!” P.S. You’ll get an amazing Financial Wellness Communication playbook from ALEX as part of the deal too. A twofer!)

 

T3 – @Benevate

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This week on Talent Tech Tuesday (T3) I review a new and unique benefits solution called Benevate. Benevate is a solution that will help you attract and retain talent and improve employees’ financial wellness. “DRINK” – that’s the new HR drinking game for 2016! If anyone says “Financial Wellness” you have to drink. You might recall that “Candidate Experience” was the HR drinking game code word for 2015.

But, seriously, I really, really like what Benevate is doing!

Benevate is built on a really simple premise, which is how all the great products start. Your younger workforce faces two major hurdles, for the most part:

  1. Student Loans
  2. No Cash to buy a house.

Benevate gives you a simple to use Saas software platform that allows you to manage these two issues with a Student Loan forgiveness program and an Employer Assisted Living loan program.

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Why is this important? Either one of these programs will give you great ammunition to attract and retain a younger workforce.  I can tell you the first time I used ‘student loan forgiveness’ was about 12 years ago when we did this recruiting Pharmacists right out of school, and it worked like a charm! I also used this in healthcare to attract CRNAs when you could find them anywhere, we were fully staffed! I’ve seen companies recently do this with hard to find IT and Engineering talent.

The problem with doing this yourself is that it’s a major pain in your ass, for HR and for the organization in general. HR isn’t built to be a bank/loaning institution. The last thing in the world I want to do in HR is manage a bunch of loans and worry about some kid defaulting, then what do I do. That is why Benevate is so awesome! They take care of all of this, but at the same time allow you the flexibility and freedom to design the program you want for your organization.

So, right about now you’re asking yourself, well all this sounds great Tim, but how do we pay for it!

That’s where it’s important to understand what the true cost of your employees are cost you.  51% of young employees go to the doctor once or less per year! These young workers cost you a ton less to ensure.  They don’t even use their health benefits, for the most part! As an employer, you need to offer them benefit equability. Benefits they’ll actually want and use.

You pay for it by giving benefits to your younger workers that they actually want, which in turn comes with a loan guarantee from them that they’ll stick around. The cost of replacing great talent is crazy high, a heck of lot less, than what you’ll spend on a loan forgiveness program.

Love the program and concept. More companies should use this idea, but they don’t because it was always a pain in the butt. Now it’s not!  Take a look at Benevate, they make loan forgiveness super easy!

T3 – Talent Tech Tuesday – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on T3 – send me a note.

Chipotle’s HR Just Had a Major Screw Up!

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If you pay attention to the news at over the past few months you’ve heard about the E. coli outbreak at a number of Chipotle restaurants all over the U.S.:

“The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) along with state and local officials are investigating two separate outbreaks of E. coli O26 infections that have been linked to food served at Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurants in several states.

As of January 27, 2016, the CDC reports a total of 55 people infected with the outbreak strain of STEC (Shiga toxin producing E. coli) O26 from a total of 11 states in the larger outbreak: California (3), Delaware (1), Illinois (1), Kentucky (1), Maryland (1), Minnesota (2), New York (1), Ohio (3), Oregon (13), Pennsylvania (2), and Washington (27). There have been 21 reported hospitalizations. The majority of these cases were reported from Oregon and Washington during October 2015.”

No restaurant wants this to happen, ever! It has an immediate and lasting impact to sales. I worked for Applebee’s, one of the largest restaurant chains in the world, food safety was our single biggest focus and a constant worry.  Chipotle’s entire company went into immediate crisis mode when all of this was going down.

So, much so, that they decided to do an unprecedented all store closing to ‘re-train’ all employees on current, new and additional food safety measures. From Fast Company:

The company is still not clear on which ingredient brought on the E. coli outbreak, though it again confirmed that the norovirus was spread through employees who came into work while sick.

“If you are feeling sick, or if you have vomited, either at work or at home, you need to tell your manager or field leader immediately,” co-CEO Monty Moran told workers. Managers are also expected to report if an employee gets sick at work, and if a worker or customer vomits in a restaurant, the location must be shut down immediately.

Most people won’t catch what just happened. E. coli is major! Both Chipotle and the CDC never found out where the E. Coli came from. Norovirus is completely different. Restaurants have norovirus outbreaks. It’s not frequent, but more frequent than you think. It’s usually caused by a worker with stomach flu coming to work and spreading it to cooking areas, thus giving it customers and other workers.

Two very different things!

But, since we can’t find out where the E. coli came from, which was more than likely a supplier of some fresh ingredient – since it showed up in so many states and so many locations, not connected any other way, let’s show our customers we solved something else!

The problem is, Chipotle doesn’t really have a Norovirus issue. Sure they might have had one or two restaurants with an outbreak, but that is solved with a good bleach cleaning and some retraining.  Chipotle’s executive team and HR went off the deep end and instituted the following things:

  • Sick employees who have vomited at work or at home, now get 5 paid days off before they can return to work. 
  • If an employee or customer vomit at a restaurant, that restaurant must be closed down immediately. 

This is unsustainable. HR should have advised the executive team that this isn’t sustainable.

Do you know who goes and works at a Chipotle? Mainly college aged kids who love to drink and eat giant burritos!  Can you imagine the number of Chipotle employees who will be calling in sick the Monday of Spring Break to tell their manager they just vomited!? Sorry, but I’ll take my five days of pay, and I’ll do my recovering someplace warm!  I can see Chipotle restaurant managers pulling their hair out already!

Also, dumb drunk people throw-up all the time at restaurants. They don’t have Norovirus. They have the brown bottle flu! You don’t close a restaurant over that.  You clean it up really, really well. Investigate the circumstances and make a decision on what you really need to do. Chipotle just made a black and white decision, that will hurt their company.

So, I’m so freaking smart, what would I have done?

1. Give individual restaurant General Managers and Area District Managers more control over how to handle these situations, like when to close, or force an employee to stay home, and make sure it doesn’t hurt them financially by making these decisions. Local managers don’t want to close a restaurant because it impacts their bonus, which is a huge part of their compensation.

2. Hire a PR firm to explain to America that what happened at Chipotle, what really happened with the E. coli outbreak, had nothing to do with local restaurant food safety procedures. Also, what they did to ensure a higher level of safety moving forward.

What they did was all smoke and mirrors, to make people feel like they have the problem handled. By the way, they probably could have done nothing and still be in the same position. Young people are notoriously forgiving on these types of cases because they believe it still won’t happen to them!

Okay, I’m off my soapbox. What do you think?

Open Office Spaces Now Suck…But wait for it…

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This just in! Google got it wrong! It seems like we keep hearing that more and more these days. The company that seemingly invited HR and Talent Acquisition keeps getting it wrong. This time, it’s around the open office concept. To be fair to Google, they weren’t the first ones to jump on the open office bandwagon. They just became the poster child for crazy office spaces gone wild. From The Washington Post:

Despite its obvious problems, the open-office model has continued to encroach on workers across the country. Now, about 70 percent of U.S. offices have no or low partitions, according to the International Facility Management Association. Silicon Valley has been the leader in bringing down the dividers. Google, Yahoo, eBay, Goldman Sachs and American Express are all adherents.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg enlisted famed architect Frank Gehry to design the largest open floor plan in the world, housing nearly 3,000 engineers. And as a businessman, Michael Bloomberg was an early adopter of the open-space trend, saying it promoted transparency and fairness. He famously carried the model into city hall when he became mayor of New York,  making “the Bullpen” a symbol of open communication and accessibility to the city’s chief.One more reason we should be allowed to work from home!…

…But employers are getting a false sense of improved productivity. A 2013 study found that many workers in open offices are frustrated by distractions that lead to poorer work performance. Nearly half of the surveyed workers in open offices said the lack of sound privacy was a significant problem for them and more than 30 percent complained about the lack of visual privacy. Meanwhile, “ease of interaction” with colleagues — the problem that open offices profess to fix — was cited as a problem by fewer than 10 percent of workers in any type of office setting. In fact, those with private offices wereleast likely to identify their ability to communicate with colleagues as an issue. In a previous study, researchers concluded that “the loss of productivity due to noise distraction … was doubled in open-plan offices compared to private offices.”

But wait for it…

Why is all of this Open Office hating coming out right now? Are open offices really that bad? My own opinion is that the office furniture industry is truly behind all of this anyway. Every decade or so, they need to sell new furniture and the way to do that is to tell executives that a new design will give them magical productivity gains and super happy employees! Just buy our new desk and chair!

I suspect this round of Open Office hating is coming from another corner of the universe. Can you guess?  So, closed offices don’t work. You don’t get collaboration. Open offices don’t work, because you don’t get privacy. So, what are we HR Pros to do?

Oh, I have an idea, came from the corner, of the employees who just don’t’ feel cozy enough at work!  The NEW research says that Working From Home is the real answer to all of our problems!  Yep. Open offices suck because working from home is soooo much better!

Did you see that coming?

There are seven-year-old kids in China making $100 Nikes by candle light, and amazingly their productivity goes up every day! Be careful about getting pulled down the rabbit hole of what next great office design will ‘fix’ your company.  Everyone has an agenda. Your employees who really would rather just work from home. The office supply companies who need to push product. The HR executive who needs productivity increases to show the board or at least, a reason we aren’t getting them!

What is the magical office design after work from home crashes?  I hear working from the beach in Cayman really, really increases productivity!

Does Buying Sex Go Too Far In Getting The Best Talent?

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Louisville’s basketball program is under fire because of recent allegations by former recruits and players who claim that Louisville paid for strippers to entertain them on recruiting visits, that included paid sex.  From ESPN:

“Five former University of Louisville basketball players and recruits told Outside the Lines that they attended parties at a campus dorm from 2010 to 2014 that included strippers paid for by the team’s former graduate assistant coach, Andre McGee.

One of the former players said he had sex with a dancer after McGee paid her. Each of the players and recruits attended different parties at Billy Minardi Hall, where dancers, many of whom stripped naked, were present. Three of the five players said they attended parties as recruits and also when they played for Louisville.

Said one of the recruits, who ultimately signed to play elsewhere: “I knew they weren’t college girls. It was crazy. It was like I was in a strip club.”

Before you come down on Louisville, the reality is, this is probably happening at many institutions. Jalen Rose, former NBA player, University of Michigan Fab 5 and ESPN Commentator, also said his recruiting visits to UofM, MSU, Syracuse and UNLV were like bachelor parties and all included having sex and alcohol.

I think most of us would completely agree that taking seventeen and eighteen-year-old boys onto a college campus for this type of activity is wrong.

My question is where does recruiting cross the line when it comes to adults and working for your company?

I can’t imagine ever ‘paying for sex’ for a recruit, since it’s mostly illegal, unless you’re in certain counties in Nevada.  I also can’t imagine providing drugs to potential recruits for any company I might work for, but then you see what’s going on in Colorado and Oregon.

I think you cross the line in how you recruit when you cross the line of your moral makeup of the majority of your employees and stakeholders. Some companies are very comfortable taking recruits out to bars and getting drunk. Many companies can’t even fathom that kind of behavior!

But, doesn’t wining and dining have a place in professional recruitment?  If you could get a great software developer, one that might cost you a $25K headhunting fee, doesn’t it make sense to drop a few hundred dollars on a potential candidate?   It certainly does, if you know who your best candidates are!

That’s the problem, right?  Many of us don’t know ‘better’ talent when we see it.  So, giving out hundreds of dollars in recruiting swag doesn’t work when you give it out to everyone!  It only works when you give it to the best.  Then, it also doesn’t work every time. It’s like the famous line from Anchorman, “60% of the time, it works every time!”

Louisville didn’t get every recruit who they paid hookers to have sex with them, but they landed some of those recruits.

Buying Beats headphones with your logo and sending them to software developers won’t land everyone you send them to, but it will attract some to take that next step.  Those cost $199.  Is hiring great talent worth $199?  Oh, hell, yes it is!  But, no one is sending Beats to software developers.

I’ve always said that college athletics is always on the forefront of what true recruiting is.  Highly sought after talent. Hard to attract to your organization. They find ways to make the best candidates feel extremely special. This is way beyond candidate experience. This is closing.

Paying for sex goes beyond what I’m willing to do, to get the best talent to come and work for me.  But, I’m willing to do alot of other stuff to attract the best talent! What about you?

5 Tips for Creating a More Human Workplace #WorkHuman

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Better Than Robots: Why Your Employees Deserve a More Human Workplace

This is a Free Webinar sponsored by Globoforce – Register Here – Wednesday, October 14th at 2 p.m. ET | 11 a.m. PT | 1 p.m. CT | 6 p.m. GMT

This is going to be fun! We won’t be coming to live from my Camry, but we will be Live! Just two HR guys sharing the tips and tricks on making your workplace and environment more human!

Admit it. Life would be a lot easier if our employees were robots. They’d be more predictable, and a heck of a lot more manageable. As we seek to gain more and more big data in HCM it seems like that’s exactly what we’re trying to do. Measure and manage our cultures into a robot paradise. But that way lies danger. It is the humanity in our employees that provides the creativity, the innovation and the heart that makes our businesses really succeed.

We’re in the ‘real’ people business, and our employees need a real human workplace and culture to thrive and prosper. This webinar will give you the insight to what works and what doesn’t, and help you reimagine the concept of work-life balance.

You will learn:

  • 5 tips for creating a more human workplacGloboforce
  • A case study of how one company built a better culture
  • HR “best practices” that actually hurt workplace culture

 

What else will you get? 

Kris Dunn is coming on to talk about how he and his team are building a more human workplace at his company Kinetix.  Get some great insight and tips from Kris on how you can begin building this in your own workplace as well! The Kinetix team has one of the best cultures around, and you’ll want to hear how they’ve built from the ground up.

This isn’t your normal webinar. This is real advice, brought to you by real practitioners, letting you know what works and what doesn’t!

Register Today! 

 

Sometimes a Job Isn’t Worth It

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Linds Redding, a New Zealand-based art director who worked at BBDO and Saatchi & Saatchi, died last month at 52 from an inoperable esophageal cancer. Turns out Linds didn’t really like his old job and mad hours he spent creating a successful career. Here is what Linds wrote before he died:

“I think you’re all f—— mad. Deranged. So disengaged from reality it’s not even funny. It’s a f—— TV commercial. Nobody gives a s—.

This has come as quite a shock I can tell you. I think, I’ve come to the conclusion that the whole thing was a bit of a con. A scam. An elaborate hoax.

Countless late nights and weekends, holidays, birthdays, school recitals and anniversary dinners were willingly sacrificed at the altar of some intangible but infinitely worthy higher cause. It would all be worth it in the long run…

This was the con. Convincing myself that there was nowhere I’d rather be was just a coping mechanism. I can see that now. It wasn’t really important. Or of any consequence at all really. How could it be. We were just shifting product. Our product, and the clients. Just meeting the quota. Feeding the beast as I called it on my more cynical days.

So was it worth it?

Well of course not. It turns out it was just advertising. There was no higher calling.”

When faced with death, I wonder how many of us will look back on all the time and effort we put into our career and will feel the same?

That all being said, sometimes I think a job might be worth it as well.  Here’s the other side of the coin.  I frequently see articles and blog posts, recently, written by people who have given up their careers to travel the world.  It  all seems so glamorous and adventurous. Until you realize you had a career and job to pay for all those glamorous adventures! From Adweek, “The Couple Who Quit Their Ad Jobs to Travel the World Ended Up Poor and Scrubbing Toilets The uglier side of a year-long creative journey”:

 “You remember Chanel Cartell and Stevo Dirnberger, the South African couple who quit their agency jobs this year to travel the world and document the experience. It sounded like a dream, and the lovely Instagram photos have made it look like one.

But halfway through their year-long odyssey (they’re currently in Athens, having traveled 25,000 kilometers so far), they’ve posted a reality check on their blog—a post titled “Why We Quit Our Jobs In Advertising To Scrub Toilets”—in which they share “the uglier side of our trip.” It turns out that following one’s dream—while working odd jobs in exchange for room and board—involves a lot of dirty work, and more than a few tears.

“The budget is really tight, and we are definitely forced to use creativity (and small pep talks) to solve most of our problems (and the mild crying fits),” Cartell writes. “Don’t let the bank of gorgeous photography fool you. Nuh uh. So far, I think we’ve tallied 135 toilets scrubbed, 250 kilos of cow dung spread, 2 tons of rocks shoveled, 60 meters of pathway laid, 57 beds made, and I cannot even remember how many wine glasses we’ve polished.

“You see, to come from the luxuries we left behind in Johannesburg … we are now on the opposite end of the scale. We’re toilet cleaners, dog poop scoopers, grocery store merchandisers and rock shovelers.”

We work for a reason. Your reasons might be vastly different than my reasons, but we all have reasons. I hope if I look death in the face I won’t regret my choices to work and create a successful career. I’ve missed my fair share of school events and sporting events that my kids have participated in. I’ve missed many of their most joyful and sad moments. Those I already regret. What I won’t regret is that I work to allow my family to have so many of these moments.

I lived poor.  I lived with a single mother who wasn’t quite sure how she was going to pay for dinner that night. I work because I never wanted my family to feel this anxiety.  Sometimes a job is worth it, sometimes it isn’t.  It’s all up to you to decide, though.