No, I’m not kidding! And I’m not being insensitive! With so many layoffs almost everyone knows someone who is unemployed and looking for work.
Given this, I propose that those who have jobs extend a hand to those who are currently unemployed and take them to their place of business for a day. This would be a win/win/win situation; the unemployed, their friends who bring them to work, and employers would likely all reap substantial rewards from such a day.
The Benefits for Unemployed People
- They could be exposed to entirely new places of business and industries.
- They could be exposed to entirely new jobs and job tasks, widening their perspectives about the job market.
- They could become motivated to learn an entirely new set of job skills.
- They could better focus their job search by acquiring new examples of economically viable careers.
- They could develop valuable contacts that might help with their job searches outside the visited company.
- They could find themselves giving a few “outside the box” suggestions for improvement to the places and people they are visiting, thus allowing them to feel better about themselves as contributors.
- In short, they are likely to get a whole bunch of new ideas that will contribute to their personal and professional growth and development.
The Benefits for Those Who Bring Their Unemployed Friends to Work
- They could find themselves developing new perspectives about the mechanics and politics of their work, as they try to explain what they do for a living and attempt to share the experience of it with their unemployed friends.
- They could get “fresh eyes” to look at what they do for a living… inviting input for ways they might improve the mechanics of their work or ways they might better handle the political or interpersonal dimensions of their organizations.
- They might even, albeit temporarily, get a little extra help with some tough assignments that are under-resourced.
- They could simply feel good about themselves knowing that they shared a valuable experience with someone who’s currently having a tough time of it.
The Benefits for Employers
- They could (depending on how they structured the visits) obtain valuable “outside the box” input into their organizations and work processes from people who might not have the same preconceived notions, shared assumptions, or reverence for the local “sacred cows.”
- They could get a days worth of help at a time when ultra-lean staffs are already stretched to the breaking point.
- They could have an opportunity to get to know, in the context of their workplace, potential new hires to whom they might offer employment when this miserable recession is finally over!
The world of work has a long history of apprenticeships, internships, student assistantships, and so on that have almost always been winning situations for all the players involved. True, these relationships are never single-day engagements. However, can anyone deny that there is typically much learned in the very first day of these relationships?
The bottom line: There is great potential for a significant amount of learning, shifting of assumptions, and all-around growth on the part of everyone involved from simply having a single day in which employees bring their unemployed friends to the workplace.
In short, this just might be one amazing free training event for everyone!
