employee benefits

Employee Benefits Why I was Not Taken In!

This is a story of me when I was growing up and the views or opinions I had started to develop. From an early age I felt that education was the best thing to get someone off to a great start in life. They listed the type of employee benefits I would get as an employee if I studied hard. This was the advice my parents and teachers sowed into me. Yes they were correct to a certain degree because after all we do need knowledge but something was missing. What I have since learned is applied knowledge is far better and more powerful than just knowledge alone. Today the various types of employee benefits don’t attract me any more. I want more. I explain why soon.

Just look at the PHDs who are so knowledgeable yet many of them live pay check to pay check. What I had no idea back then was as a young student I was groomed to be a good serving employee to help someone else or a large company to make more money. I at that time had no problem about this because I knew no better. In fact I had started to look down on the trading community for a number of reasons that I will mention further down this article.

Where I started to go wrong!

I was under the impression that the types of employee benefits that employees enjoyed were far greater than those of self-employed people. This impression was sown into my little head as a child by my parents. Seeing my Dad enjoy certain perks I gathered the impression that employed people were the privileged class. They did not have to work so hard. Once they found a job the employer would look after them all their working lives. How terribly wrong I was.

Forming opinions can be expensive in the long run.

Some of my friends in school had parents who were small business owners. I noticed that the parents were uneducated and did not know much where knowledge was concerned. I thought my parents were very knowledgeable as they could talk on many topics. After all they had gone to school and then to colleges to become managers in their companies. Forming an opinion can be costly.

We lived pay check to paycheck too.

Compared to the parents of my friends my dad and mum were very clever. Yet I did not see that being clever was not good enough. My father though he held a good job still brought in a fixed income each month. We lived paycheck to pay check. Many a month my mother would send me down the road to those very same small business owners to buy our groceries on credit. How humiliating that was for us. We just had to find ways to survive.

I wondered how did these simple business people managed to give out credit to many as my mum was not the only one. I never once had the courage to ask the rich parents of my school friends how their parents made money through business. If I had I’d have known better. It was only after I read the book ‘RICH DAD POOR DAD’ did I see the folly of our ways and thoughts back then. I now know that we can enjoy life far more than just the list of employee benefits given.

Most people go by what appears on the outside.

Yet we never once realized that these people had more money than us. We were brought up in a society that looked down on the business class. All we thought about was types of employee benefits we could get in our jobs.

After all the shopkeepers were working long hours. Most of the small business people back in the 70’s seldom sent their children to school or college. They out-worldly lives were far less impressive than to what salaried people enjoyed. They did not go to fancy clubs on weekends or talked big at events nor go for picnics as I was used to. Yet they all controlled the money in the town. Interesting when I look back and think about it – if only I knew how money worked..

In fact my family looked down or thought less of those that were shop keepers, contractors or small business people. These people were just keen in making money and not learning. My parents thought money and business were a dirty thing. Even though they did enjoy the services or products of the business community. For them business was risky and unsure. Rather have a safe secure job that paid on time each month was their advice. Even if the money was not enough it was better than business.

Well is it really?

What my parents did not realized was that these people did not need to be experts at everything. They could afford to have experts brought in to do the jobs they could not. They did not have to be the experts at anything as long as they could pay people they could get work done.

Employees on the other hand were the experts. They were hired by the rich people. They were working pay check to pay check and seldom could afford to out source work to others. Business people could. Quite smart to think about it.

The list of employee benefits enjoyed by the working class were conceived to be far better, giving the individual a higher social esteem over that seen by the business community. Employees loved this false sense of security.

Business people seldom took holidays. They ran their businesses from dawn to dusk. They worked long hours and rarely saw their children play. In fact many had their children too working in the shops. Yet they had more financial freedom. They did not worry about employee benefits.

Now the business community did have a life. They did not have to worry about employee benefits. After all they employed those people. They set the rules. They had peace of mind as they made more money than the working class employee who was on a fixed wage. These people lived simple yet invested their profits into land, houses and other businesses. They knew that investing money into other enterprises was the only way to increase they net worth. They some how knew the secrets of the wealth, the same secrets that Robert Kiyosaki talks about in the book CASHFLOW QUADRANT. If you know of a rich family ask them to teach you how to get rich too. I am sure they will only be happy to share why the types of employee benefits you receive today are not enough to get rich and financially secure.

Why Do We Just Think Laterally!

My parents thought owning land and buying houses were troublesome and tenants were a nuisance. They did not see the value of owning more than the family home. The biggest asset was to get a home only. Why would you want to take the headache of owning property. They only way they felt to become secure was to save in the bank and get paid interest on your money. Sadly they had no idea how money worked back in those days. Sadly we were the students of that era. We did not have the mentors needed to help us break free if we wanted to. We were blinded by what was around us. My parents taught us to feel secure with the employee benefits we received by bosses.

Sadly what we did not see is the types benefits the office workers enjoyed were far less than what really the business people did get. The business people had far more going for them than what employees like my dad had going.

Pride Can Be Dangerous To Growth!

Our pride was based on the fact that office workers were far more educated, which blinded us back in the 70’s and 80’s in comparing if the employee benefits is any better or not.

Back in those days when I was a young man in the 70’s and early 80’s financial literacy books such as we see today were few. Robert Kiyosaki with the Rich Dad series was not around. In fact he was just getting started himself and was being formed into the millionaire he is today. He was being groomed by his so called Rich Dad that employee benefits were not good enough.

List of Employee Benefits!

As a child and young teenager I was attracted to these most common employee benefits. Here are some of the employee benefits packages that spurred me on to become a good employee in the early 80’s.

Job security,
Regular pay,
Regular holidays,
Sick leave,
Holiday pay,
Medical allowances when sick or ill,
Work uniforms,
Free food,
Subsidized accommodation,
A yearly bonuses were a few of the benefits I started enjoy.

How Wrong I Was To Think That This List of Employee Benefits Would Last Forever!

Today looking back the benefits for an employee are far less. In fact job security is a thing of the past. Employers can sack you with little or no notice. Most employers will just keep you on as a casual employee so they don’t have to pay any loading or holiday pay. The yearly bonus is also a thing of the past. May be a carton of beer is all you may get if you are lucky. So why are we concerned about these employee perks?

What Do We Do...

So the world is changing and moving to a different business model to reward employees with new types of employee benefits.

Company benefits for employees: Companies still provided benefits but in form of bonuses. We need to perform and bring in results to get these employee benefits we were used to.

They are performance based models where the company has shifted the risk of performance back onto the employee. Unless you perform you get paid. If the employee wants better pay, more benefits he or she has to work for it. This new form of work place is a win-win for both the employee as well as the employer. The top performing staff shall see the rewards. Its now harder to get a free ride at the office.

If the employee brings in more business he gets compensated more.

Now you must be thinking how do you get to find these business models.

If you are open to know more get the Rise of the Entrepreneur DVD I have for you by clicking the link here. Its a free documentary to where the world is moving and how the money is to be made. It’s FREE for you today to watch.

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Claude Fullinfaw
Brisbane