Starting point is that people should do what they are best at and enjoy most. As career counsellor I have met very many people that are NOT doing this.
My idea is that an employer should coach and guide their employees in being becoming what they can be. Even if that means that their growth is into someone with skills the company does not need. So start outplacement. The employee will have enough time for that, because you can see it coming. The employer has enough time to look for someone new. Which shouldn’t be hard, because who doesn’t want to work for a company that really invests in you.
Another starting point is that making profit is not a goal. Making profit is a means (necessary though!) The goal is organising people to make the most of their talents by creating something of value.
A third starting point is that young people having trouble to fit in the school system have not enough opportunities to make the most of their talents. I want to give them a chance.
I am thinking to start a cleaning corporation. Creating a really good service should be do-able with these kids. They give their effort. What they get in return is dedicated coaching in what it is they really want to become. They can be mentored/educated in getting diploma’s necessary for their careers. They agree to work at least a year. They have income ad career opportunities.
Because they are working for their own goals. They should be motivated to: A. working hard an good B. get everything behind their study.
What do you think of this?
You may say that I’m a dreamer . . .
yes I am a bit romantic about my ideals, but Im am still serious about this.
Could this work?
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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In business, making a profit is not just a goal, it is a necessity.
The cleaning company might work, but over all I think you would find that owning a business that isn't focused on making a profit would not work.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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In business, making a profit is not just a goal, it is a necessity.
Yes it's a necessity but not the ultimate goal. I is a vital condition. But it doesn't end there. So of course a focus would be on making profit. But not the only focus. (If you use a propriate aperture in a camera you can focus on the subject as well as the background) I like to stay focussed on the background as well. That's where I am heading, my final goal: creating value by using talents.
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
The real no comes from the fact that why would I as a company want to invest training in someone just to send them off to another company. This is a cost that most companies do not want to incure so they obviously do not want to advertise a willingness to let such an activity happen.
Posts: 176 | Registered: Jun 2008
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quote:Originally posted by Lostinspace: The real no comes from the fact that why would I as a company want to invest training in someone just to send them off to another company. This is a cost that most companies do not want to incure so they obviously do not want to advertise a willingness to let such an activity happen.
There are plenty of companies that openly admit that certain positions are useful as a stepping stone to finding better placement elsewhere. These kinds of companies usually do employ students. However, I don't think a cleaning company would give most students the experience or the resume-building opportunities to advance in a career in an unrelated field.
posted
I think what you're proposing amounts to a cleaning company that offers, as a benefit, coaching/mentoring services to its employees. There is no particular synergy apparent between your business idea and the student services you plan to provide.
I suppose it could work, but you are at a competitive disadvantage to other cleaning companies who don't offer similar expensive benefits. You won't be able to offer the same combination of wages and cleaning prices that others will. Something will have to give.
Your compensating advantages will be: more attractive benefit package, possibly enabling you to hire more easily and with better employee retention, perhaps even at a reduced wage.
Also, potentially you will have a feel-good sales pitch that will convince clients to pay a bit more for your cleaning services. (Sort of like how some companies are willing to pay a little bit more for "green" products even though it doesn't always make good business sense.) If your clientèle consists of well-off private individuals, this might be an easier sell - they wouldn't have to justify the decision to higher ups, in other words.
One possible angle: Perhaps you can convince business clients that by hiring your cleaning services, they will have first access to a particularly good crop of graduates. They will have had the benefit of coaching/mentoring, and have proven work ethics. It would probably be difficult to find clients who are interested in your graduates who are also interesting to your graduates.
Keep in mind that many students work for one reason only: $$. If you can't offer competitive pay, the benefits might not be enough to sway them. (Sure they SHOULD think about their future, but they are going to school...they may feel they're thinking enough about it already.)
You should definitely conduct some market research if you're serious about this. Conduct surveys of students to find out whether the benefits you have in mind are important to them, and what trade-offs they would accept in return. Find out whether you can find a client base that likes what you're doing for humanitarian reasons, or would like to hire their entry level people from a base that has benefited from your program, and what they are willing to pay. Do a competitive analysis to determine what other cleaning firms are paying and what they are charging for their services.
In the end, you might find that you'll do as much good by running a business for profit and investing what money you can spare in nonprofit organizations that provide this kind of service.
Posts: 4287 | Registered: Mar 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lostinspace: The real no comes from the fact that why would I as a company want to invest training in someone just to send them off to another company. This is a cost that most companies do not want to incure so they obviously do not want to advertise a willingness to let such an activity happen.
There are plenty of companies that openly admit that certain positions are useful as a stepping stone to finding better placement elsewhere. These kinds of companies usually do employ students. However, I don't think a cleaning company would give most students the experience or the resume-building opportunities to advance in a career in an unrelated field.
-pH
Point taken thanks
Which brings me to the following:
Bare (bear? Bair?) with me: this is a long one.
Case 1. A normal company that hires people with the intention of keeping them. Now you have a person that is not happy with where the job is taking him. (could be the “Peter principle”, could be that he realises that this might have been something he thought he was good at but now he’s not so sure.)
In stead of pulling a dead horse ask him what it is that he really wants. If that is something you can use in your company, great! If not make a plan to look for another job. In the meantime this employee will continue to do his work. It was not as if he was terrible at it, just not the high potential everyone was hoping for.
By encouraging this sort of guidance, you will find out in time that someone is not fit for the job. Think of the cost if someone stays in his job that is not fit for him. I have worked at the employments agency*, and I have seen disasters happen when people are in the wrong place and everyone is ignoring it.
*I was judging if employers had a right to fire someone. In the Netherlands you have to have a permit for that. In the procedure the employer is judged by the “good employers” standard. That is: has he done everything that you can expect to prevent the firing? (for example: if the employer can not proof that the employee wasn’t shown what he was doing wrong and didn’t get the chance to improve, the permit to fire him will not be given. In that case firing has to be done in court an will cost money: a month salary for every year the employee worked there)
Case2. My cleaning company. Now here is the intention of letting the people go when they find a job that is fit for them. The deal is: we help you get somewhere. You give us your best labour.
In the Netherlands we have employment programs that cost a lot of government money. They are not working. I my plan it won’t cost tax money and people have a real commitment.
The idea of the cleaning company is not to spend anymore tax money on this (Ayn Rand should be pleased, this is what I agree with her: a lot of tax money is wasted.)
My reasoning was that if you really invest in people, and they feel it that way too, they will give you their best effort. This would then be something you could use as unique selling point, because you can deliver outstanding quality.
The question becomes: does this deal work? Is what you get back from your employees worth the time and money you put in? Or will it still cost too much to invest in people that aren’t going to stay?
While I was composing this, scifibum has answered more than I was hoping for. Thanks!!
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: In the end, you might find that you'll do as much good by running a business for profit and investing what money you can spare in nonprofit organizations that provide this kind of service.
Yes maybe. But the whole idea is to do this not as a not for profit company. I want there to be a direct link between profit and commitment. Ans this is not about students who are in college (but you got me thinking about that), but for the ones who didn't finisch thier education because they dindt fit in the school system.
Thanks for the "you can have a pick and try-out employees" idea. I missed that!
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
Your goals sound a lot like the company my husband works for. There are companies out there like that. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I would suggest mentioning "Guaranteed Legal" as a selling tool. Many cleaning companies go for the cheapest workers they can find, which often leads to illegal aliens. If you don't use them, and use the fact that your college kids are all legally in the country, you may get people willing to pay you more in order to advertise that fact.
Now for the down side. There are two kinds of work, one done for career, and one done for survival. While you are wanting to stretch the survivalists into career minded people, many will not want to risk survival on the chance of career. In other words, working for $10/hr with a chance at a career is not as valuable to them as working at $12/hr in a dead end job. Further, if you ask someone at $10/hr if they see a future at that rate, they will not want to risk that $10/hr job by saying, "No man. It sucks" or even anything short of, "This is what I've always wanted to do."
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
I think bootjes is in the Netherlands. Not sure how much of an illegal alien problem they have there (well I know the immigrant situation in the Enderverse... ).
posted
It sounds like taking one of those novels where an anonymous rich benefactor is a patron to some promising poor kid, and making it into an institution.
I love the idea of people getting career counseling while working a low-paying job--my husband would have loved this back when he was working 3 jobs at a time to get through college--but what do you do about kids who aren't really interested in finding out what they are best at?
Or who aren't interested enough to make your career counseling worthwhile?
Will you nicely ask the remora fish to leave and go work for a different janatorial company?
Posts: 575 | Registered: Jan 2004
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Or who aren't interested enough to make your career counseling worthwhile?
I have worked for more than 10 years as a career counselor. Now I work with juvenile delinquents. I have only met two or three such people.
There are restrictions: drugs, mental illness, too much domestic problems etc. These should be taking care of first. And IQ must be high enough for some degree of self reflection. (these are the same restrictions for kids in my line of work: social skill training as a way of punishment).
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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quote:Originally posted by scifibum: I think bootjes is in the Netherlands. Not sure how much of an illegal alien problem they have there (well I know the immigrant situation in the Enderverse... ).
bootjes: it's "bear"
thank you, you're right. We have had a general Pardon for our illegal immigrants.
(bear, was my first thought, but then it made me think of the polar bear in Lost and thought this would be out of place as well)
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
I just thought of one reason why I want to do this: I am like Salieri (in Ammadeus) (except that he was a good musician and I am not a talent of any kind) I do recognise talent. That is in fact my talent. It is what I use in my work now. Also I see too much waste of talent. Want to do something about that.
Posts: 129 | Registered: May 2008
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posted
I like the idea proposed. Although I can't help but think that kids who did not do well or fit into the school system may (for the same reasons) not be good employees either. This is of course an over-generalization and there would be lots of exceptions.
Posts: 369 | Registered: Apr 2007
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posted
Schools are education factories for children, and I think factory education best fits students bound for factory lives.
Therefore I think the kids who don't fit into The System are precisely the kids who need more career counseling.
Posts: 575 | Registered: Jan 2004
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posted
I was just discussing the Dutch education system with a resident whose children attend. It seems that in some ways it is much better and in some ways much worse than ours. Very compartmentalized in many ways.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Sachiko: Schools are education factories for children, and I think factory education best fits students bound for factory lives.
Therefore I think the kids who don't fit into The System are precisely the kids who need more career counseling.
exactly my sentiments, and my mission.
PH and Ketchupqueen are right, but this (the quote) is stil true for the dutch school system.
We have had a lot of discussions lately. There even has been a government comittee to study what is wrong with the system. Turns out that the main problem is that the governement interferes too much. Prescribing what schools and teachers should do, and changing this with each new governement so the schools and teachers went crazy.
We now have two opposed camps:
A. The new education: a variety of new ideas that could be summed up by: ":if you want learn someone to build a boat, don't explain how, but let them long for the open waters". I am not doing this group right by this. It is more, but it has to do with not just pouring knowlegde in. A lot of this comes from the US so you will probably know what I mean. Another bit is from Italy, Reggio Emillia: "Kids have a 1000 languages when they come to school. We take away 999."
A. The other group is a reaction to all this new stuff, the traditionals: school is for learning and frontal approach (keep quiet and listen)
Sad is that they are fighting eachother in stead of combining forces. I think a school should have both approaches because kids are different. And you can only differentiate if you don't have classrooms with 30 children. Smaller classes would be great.
More sad is teachers who can't cope and take it out (even in small ways) on children who are not mainstream. And I know how easy it is to become like that:
I tried to be a teacher and know how difficult it is. I stopped before this (taking it out on kids)happend to me. I realised I could not do what I was good at. I did not have the energy to see the best in kids. I had to worry about everyone paying attention, everyone finishing the lessons, following the Method etc. The kids dind'nt get the best of me.
So I have the utmost respect for teachers who pull it off. And thankfully there are a lot of them.
My worry is for the kids who don't have a teacher that really sees them. And the systemn doen't make it easyer for teacher to pay attention to their kids. They have to much other stuff to worry about.
Oh, and yes! I am romatic about this: I still cry (even when re)watching "freedom writers". But I have had similar moments with kids in training. (not as heavy though).
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