The Financial Times had a very interesting article in their weekend edition called Sweet Child of Mine. The article discussed the transition of the way children are being perceived today compared to centuries past. Children from the age of 5-6 used to work around the home, later they would search for employment in mines and factories, from an economical point of view “children made sense”.
Today “children are worse than useless. Far from making any economic contribution to the familiy life…they loaf around at school all day…”

The writer, Richard Tomkins, goes on that now that children “no longer generate cash, the whole of their value lay in the emotional gratification they brought”. Thus this shift has resulted in parents who approach child-rearing by being obsessivily worried about “health, safety and academic achievement”.

Even though parents “embark on a programme of enhancing…cognitive, motor and social skills…further learning, organized sports and cultural enricing activities…none of it makes a scrap of difference to the way the children turn out…[as] about half the variation in a person’s personality comes directly from their parent’s genes and the rest is shaped by the forces outside the home.”

So why post this here? What does this have to do with WorkVitamins? One of the fundamental issues regarding the implementation of WorkVitamins is a greater emphasis that individuals place on themselves, all of which have an effect on how we look at the work environment. Companies not only compete for business, but will increasingly compete for staff as well. Finacial benefits alone will not get you the best staff, but emotional benefits might. I see the shift between companies who see their staff as purely financial commodities to those who tread their staff as a sweet child of theirs. Thus the importance of the design of the work environment, the continuous training and the “soft” benefits.