For the past year, we have seen many Malaysians losing their jobs, primarily those in the oil and gas, aviation and banking industries. This short article attempts to put into perspective the importance of a career in our life and defines key concepts in employee-employer relationship, thus allowing for realistic expectations to be made when things do go wrong.

A career is a journey. Through a career, we earn money and satisfaction; one can be a bigger motive than the other. Through a career, we should also find a sense of purpose in life.

A career is a long journey as for most people, we would spend some 30 years or more being in a form of employment. Along a career journey, we would collect and gather skills and experiences, and hopefully wisdom.

To go far, there is no shortcut. A lot of hard work is required, and some sacrifices as well. If we are not careful, these sacrifices can be at the expense of our personal life, and that could mean at the expense of our family, too. Hence, it is important to take stock at our career regularly and look back at what we have done, what we have achieved and whether or not we are doing what we should be doing to meet our career goals.

To be happy, our career goals must be in line with our life goals. We must be very clear of what we want out of our life. Therefore, as our career is a big part of our life, we must be clear with what we want out of our career. We must also be flexible and make the adjustments along the way as life priorities changes.

Money is very important but will never be enough no matter how much is our income. One approach is to be highly focused in our job, to be very good at what we are good at, and money will come as a result. To be successful in our career, it is very important to be very good in our area work (be it technical or non-technical). But it is not good enough to be just good, the right people ie our management have to know that we are good.

A corporation is a profit-making entity within the confine of mostly capitalistic system. As we all know, capitalism profits the rich, not the poor, the haves in the society, not the haves not. Because of this, in the overall scheme of things, a corporation is always bigger and a lot more powerful than any individual employee.

And thus, any company that we work for is not a charity no matter how much it shows how it cares about people and the welfare of the employees. A company almost always has the upper hand. A key question is how do we survive or let alone excel in this kind of environment? Further complicating the situation are the times when we would find ourselves navigating through troubled waters of office politics, manipulation, hypocrisy, backstabbing, etc.

Strategies to meet our life and career goals

With all these in mind, understanding the realities and subsequently developing the necessary strategies to meet our life and career goals are essential to our survival and success.

An employment is a form of agreement, a contract bound by a set of terms and conditions regardless of whether we are permanent or temporary employees, high-flyers or not. Even high-flyers are not guaranteed to be safe from retrenchment when a company is not doing well. As an employment is a form of contract, it will work for as long as there are mutual benefits between the two main parties ie employee and employer.

When we join a company, we sign and agree to the terms and conditions of employment, some of which we may not fully understand. Others may not even read the full terms and conditions. One thing for sure though, employment terms will always protect the interest of the company while meeting the minimum interest of the employees as required by the law of the land. Thus, we would find a lopsided arrangement by default.

Obviously, these conditions vary from company to company and some companies are more employee-friendly than the others. While this lopsided arrangement may not be obvious during good times when business is as usual, the same cannot be said during difficult times particularly when provisions of the laws are deemed as inadequate to protect the interest of the employees.

In this aspect, it is hoped that the policy-makers would review the current employment regulations to ensure that the interest of the employees across all industries are adequately taken care of. This is important as it affects the livelihood of ordinary citizens and the well-being of the society as a whole.