Not long ago I worked for an American company whose staff coming from 90 different countries all over the world, were all chasing and trusting the American dream of “opportunity of prosperity and success through hard work”. We were all so naive, as work was hard indeed, but nothing more; I got to experience and understand more the modern slavery.
And thinking of hard work, I must say that I am more than proud of my Romanian fellows. From what I was given to see in my life so far, I believe that no other nationality can raise up at the working standards of the strong Romanian: adaptable, quick and easy learners, active, problem solving, stress resistant, and capable of high quality and volume of work. It’s true, all that comes with only one condition: motivation.
And the Americans were the first to understand it: put on a wall the picture of a factory man that works 12 hours a day, and call him a “Star” (of the month), and then you’ll see he works 13 hours. Just like that, because the man received the validation he was looking for, he increased the work productivity, at the small cost of 2 USD for the plastic frame and colorful paper diploma.
Or, commonly seen in USA, the motivation of the employee with food: “hey people, let’s focus and work harder for these few more hours, and then we can all order PIZZA!!!”. Yay.
Unfortunately, the bigger the company, the higher is the level of masses manipulation.
But coming back to Romania, I realized that recently the businesses started to copy this “successful” far western way of motivation, which I honestly think does not apply here at all. Romanians cannot be lied or manipulated, or to believe in empty beautiful words, delayed with answers, mesmerized by parties or beautiful trips, as these things will not last for too long.
If I had a voice, I would have wanted to use it for the companies to understand that they need to stop disregard the intelligence of their employees, and to shut up for a while, and just listen to them. Listening is productive and a more efficient motivation than pizza. The same thing with validation: most of the Romanians I know don’t need it, as they are already confident of the quality of their work. They only need more money.
At the end, I believe it all comes down to no other way than mutual respect: performance has to be linked to a fair pay.
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