ASK HR: Is it wrong to have money as the only goal of one’s job?

Q: My colleague and I have been arguing about why we come to work. I want to acquire a lot of wealth, but my colleague says that she doesn’t value money, which I think is a lie. If I were to work without pay, I wouldn’t put in too much effort. Making money is important to me and I believe this is true for everyone. Am I being unreasonable?

While it indeed provides the opportunity to earn a living and support dependants, work could serve other purposes including offering the chance to deploy and develop one’s talent, to make a positive contribution in the lives of others, to productively channel creative energy and aspirations and to act as an avenue for achieving the purpose of one’s life, among others. Some commentators have suggested that the instincts to engage in productive activity and pursue fulfilment in life are woven deep into the human fabric.

Individuals relate with money differently, just as they advance varied reasons for engaging in work. Although you will be hard pressed to find an individual who detests money altogether, the notion of how much of it is enough inevitably lends itself to individual definition. For some, the rampant acquisition and accumulation of money is the very essence of life while others are able to find contentment living on little.

What does money represent to you? What would you do if you instantaneously acquire enough money to last the rest of your life? The idea of winning the lottery and sinking into a hammock for the rest of your life may sound attractive but doing nothing or having no structure to your days will eventually get tedious. There is a certain brevity to excitement. Your attitude plays an important role in determining whether engaging in work is worthwhile or dreary. To value work only for its output and ignore the experience is to deprive it of its full meaning.

Much has been said about human desire for money, not least by the poet Irwin Mercer who shares some of his sentiments in one of his poems, the second and fourth stanzas of which read as follows:

But as we grew, we looked and craved, and all too soon became enslaved.

The more we saw, the more we wanted.  Our quest for more became undaunted and when we're old with our treasures all heaped, a sad example of what greed has reaped.

Our fists still clenched in a grasping motion, till at our death, when our hands are opened.

Fred Gituku - Human Resources Practitioner; [email protected]