Money, the weapon of mass distraction of employees

Apollo Robbins is a performer, speaker, consultant and is acclaimed as one of the world’s leading experts on pickpocketing, confidence crimes and deception. As a performer, he can make things disappear and reappear right in front of his audience. And while many say he can get away with such a performance through misdirection, he prefers to call it managing attention.

According to www.masterclass.com, “misdirection—or direction, as some magicians prefer to call it—is the subtle, deceptive art of directing an audience’s attention toward one thing (a magical effect) so it does not notice another (the method or mechanics of a trick).

It can refer to both the effect of a spectator’s mind being focused on an unimportant thing, or the action that causes it.”

Misdirection is more than mere distraction.

The key to misdirection is for the audience to be unaware of it. In life, many are unaware that money for them has become a distraction and that misdirection is applied to them either by marketers or by themselves to compound their desire to have more money and thus be hit with more distraction.

Money is not bad in itself. But because it is an integral tool for acquiring even the basic necessities in life, a person can morph money from being just a tool to reach a goal to being the goal itself.

And when that happens, the pursuit of money for money’s sake becomes a distraction. Sadly, an epidemic of sorts (some would even say it is a pandemic) has been afflicting employees of companies even before COVID-19 struck. Many employees end up with high levels of debt, or at the very least live payday to payday because of poor personal finance management.

Wanting more in life and keeping up with the dela Cruzes make them distracted both at work and at home. The immediate solution for rank-and-file employees is to go on overtime work, which increases operating costs of companies.

The worst part of it is that the solution becomes part of the problem for employees as their families’ lifestyles adjust to the extra overtime pay, the latter now being treated as part of regular pay. The poor financial situation of employees can lead to more challenging collective bargaining agreement negotiations and make the nonmonetary part of compensation packages less effective.

For employees who are not entitled to overtime pay, being more competitive to get a raise or promotion is the solution. When left unchecked, however, such behavior can be at the expense of teamwork and lead to increased office politics.

If lifestyle cost has been reduced to what they perceive as the bare minimum, which many times is not, employees will resort to borrowing or growing their income from side hustles, both of which will exacerbate the distraction.

Abraham Maslow never used a pyramid to depict his hierarchy of needs. “Instead of stating that the individual focuses on a certain need at any given time, Maslow stated that a certain need “dominates” the human organism. Thus Maslow acknowledged the likelihood that the different levels of motivation could occur at any time in the human mind, but he focused on identifying the basic types of motivation and the order in which they would tend to be met.” Money isn’t the answer

Still, it cannot be denied that putting food on the table is a basic need for employees, in fact for all adults. That is why training employees on personal finance management needs to be a skill that is instilled in them together with all other organizational development training programs. More importantly, such personal finance training needs to offer a facility for tracking employee progress. Throwing employees more money and benefits is not the answer. The solution is to help employees manage their attention the right way.

Companies need to overcome the impression of employees that they will be given benefits by their employers that will take care of them and their families from cradle to grave. For example, the country’s system of defined retirement benefit plans can lead to retirement benefits running out sooner than later if a retiree has not acquired the necessary skills and frame of mind to manage his last pay well.

Dr. E. Thomas Garman, the founder of the Personal Finance Employee Education Fund put it well: “What could be more important to your employees, morally and socially, than to have them better off financially when they leave you than when they started with you?”

And as we say at our company, the Personal Finance Advisers, “Give your employees their periodic pay, and they’ll be fed up to their next payday; if you lead them to the investing way, they’ll be filled up to when they’re old and gray.”

Finally, 1 Timothy 6: 7-10 says: “We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it; but as long as we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that. People who long to be rich are a prey to trial; they get trapped into all sorts of foolish and harmful ambitions which plunge people into ruin and destruction. ‘The love of money is the root of all evils’ and there are some who, pursuing it, have wandered away from the faith and so given their souls any number of fatal wounds.” INQ

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Efren Ll. Cruz is a registered financial planner and director of RFP Philippines, seasoned investment adviser, author of bestselling personal finance books in the Philippines and a YAMAN Coach. To consult a YAMAN coach, email [email protected]. To learn more about personal financial planning, attend the 103rd RFP Program this Sept. To inquire, e-mail [email protected] or text 09176248110.