Anxiety, stress, and depression are all now part of the daily life of the Egyptian employee in the majority of sectors… Even if most of the employees will report in their company/corporate feedbacks that everything is in tip-top shape.
The main drive for people in Egypt for working now is not success, nor teamwork; it’s to make some money to barely make ends meet. And also the global company and corporate trends where companies are competing to gain more market share, which is normal, but at what expense?
Because of the infinite loop of wanting more, companies tend to advertise for themselves , which is great, and they take you down the walk of how their company hire only ‘above average’ employees. But within these companies it’s either you are a star or a nobody. But how does that affect us?
First of all people are categories, and not everyone is able to do the same effort or handle the same situations in the same manner, nor do we all have the same visibility of our own capacities, nor do we have the same level of awareness of our own capabilities. And for this my dear employee you are blamed, you are blamed for not having that piercing vision of being able to always see where you best fit, or what skills you can grow. And in fact you are considered weak.
The issue is that we have not built any sort of systems that enable people to learn, so it is every man/woman for themselves. You have to walk on your own, dig on your own, and learn through experience, which depending on your capacities can take you from several years to several decades.
Does it mean that grass is greener on the other side? Is it only in Egypt? No, it is not. It’s a global trend, but at the same time it doesn’t’t mean it is right. The world has managed to turn people into slaves even if the companies are giving you high levels of freedom. You are chased by this constant fear that you have no place, and that hard work is no longer enough. Yes, a hard worker is considered a hard worker, but that is no longer something of great value! It’s just a qualification, and the answer will be that there are thousands like you.
Working environments no longer appreciate the individual; the employee is just a name on a chart, a number from a target, an overhead on the company.
The cultural trends are leading people from people who work to enjoy life, to people who are working to barely survive. Which is catastrophic because it creates a more aggressive nature in humans because everyone wants to preserve their spot, their place, their income, their role, as they know that it wouldn’t take more than 30 minutes for management to decide to give you the famous ‘your services are no longer required’ letter.
People now work on their weekends because bosses think if the employees are not pulling their hairs on their weekends from workload then ‘you are not productive enough,’ if you are not staying day after day at least 2-4 hours after working hours then ‘you are not dedicated enough!’ And this reflects on every aspect of your life as a person.
We will pay the price of the speed and aggressiveness with which we are moving and unwilling to reconsider.
We will pay for the time we take away from people by weighing their happiness with the salary sum we are paid. We will pay for all the potential people we kill constantly every day because we do not believe in coaching, because we give no directions and are not willing to help.
It’s not just corporates that do so, it is every job from the simplest to the most complex. And I think the repercussions are easily felt in even every one of us day-to-day life. No vacation gives you enough recuperation, the personal time you take you spend most of it thinking of tomorrow’s work and tasks if not also working on them till late night.
My question to you is: When does it end?
By: Tarek Hassan Refaat
Photography: Mahmoud Mansi
Editor: Roaa Gaber