Work Works

Napoleon Bonaparte once said that to know a man you must understand the world he lived in a twenty years of age.

In Eisenhower’s America and on and off since, work was ennobling, even if it was not glorious. There’s the story of a CEO visiting the Circus, passing the elephant’s cages only to come upon a large, muscular man in the cage shoveling the elephant’s droppings onto a truck. The CEO said to him: “My goodness, you are strong and you work fast – I could use a guy like you in my grounds crew” to which the cleanup man retorted: “What, and give up show business?”

Work is good, is natural and is what we make of it – particularly at a time when we “work” remotely, barely know our workmates and have new “freedoms”. Work protocols are new and evolving and  workers’ benefits are changing in use and application.

Came upon this statistic recently: AffordableHealthInsurance.com has shown that men are actually more likely to remain uninsured than women and…

• 56% of Americans who were laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic lost their employer-provided health insurance

• 81% of Americans who lost their health insurance when they were laid off are still uninsured

• 67% of individuals are still uninsured because they can’t afford private health insurance

• A medical emergency would “very likely” financially devastate 59% of uninsured Americans surveyed

Again and again lately, we read or hear visionaries predicting what the future of work will look like – and it is not about robots or drones, but about employment and remoteness.

The pandemic has caused in some a kind of re-evaluation of values, i.e./ the value and place of work itself. Same thing happened in the 60’s. What has endured is the incontrovertible fact that our future lies in hard work and personal financial responsibility. It’s a new year and the adrenalin and the promise in those words should motivate and inspire.

Opportunities abound especially in insurance that has recruitment and personnel needs galore. SA