Working Hard or Working Smart or Working Creative

Date: 08 April 2017

Previously when someone want to be rich or have a business or try to raise his income they advise him to work hard, which mean he work two or three jobs in the same time or working part time or he just work overtime. Workers tend to work long hours and try to extend their working even in weekends, holidays and special holidays so they can have more income or grow their business. The time pass and new concepts and development in business occurred regarding productivity, excellence, cost ratios, quality and customer service, these new concepts changed the idea of working hard because they saw that working hard alone cant reach the goal or even it reach with high cost and waste of resources like time, material, human capital cost, therefore the concept of working smart has become known and advised instead.

Working smart means that you work with the resources you have, time, money, human capital and materials by following and implementing quality and excellence approaches and apply efficiency and effectiveness in work place, working smart concept is growing and being recommended in business world these days since its more logical to reach your goals and objectives by using with you have already without extra cost, resources or time, the use of this concept promote the perfect idea for business to not waste their available resources and use it to its potential and not add additional cost on their operation cost, but the question here arise about can workers work smart only? Can new recruited work smart once they join the organization? is working smart enough in business crisis or economic recession?

Although working smart is very beneficiary for business since its help in using the full potential if their resources but working smart alone cant make the business survive, for example new recruiters need to work hard on their selves in order to fully understand the business need and carry out their responsibilities in short time, but at the same time they need to work smart using the resources and ideas to reach the goals and objectives in minimal cost of time and resources, but even though businesses cant survive by working hard and smart alone they need to work creatively as well, in business the competition is very aggressive and this generate new challenges for other business to survive as well, so they try to create new services, products, technology and methodologies to stay in business, working creatively is another element business need to survive and to be competitive.

So does that mean businesses need to embed all these concepts in their workplace? The answer is yes and they also need to embed more concepts, there is no one methodology or model that suit all or solve all problems, businesses face many challenges and obstacles since their environment is dynamic, and by using one approach or model they cant face the other risks that the environment rise, therefore embedding different approaches in the business and deciding which to use will depend on the situation the business face.

Mohamed Alzayani

Assoc.CIPD and Assoc.IHRME Certified ROI for human capital development