The rewards of working for free

Choose the right boss and the payoff in skills can be valuable

THE thought of working for free must be unimaginable for many job-seekers. Especially in a society like ours, where sometimes your worth is assumed to be synonymous with the material possessions you own. We are quick to rush off and buy flashy jewellery and apparel as soon as the pay cheques start coming in.

Unemployment remains high in South Africa and has been above 20% since the ’90s. The current economic outlook and ongoing retrenchments mean that these numbers will not improve any time soon.

As such, the idea of working for free might not be such a remote idea to consider after all.

The reason many do not even consider this is due to the lack of financial rewards, especially when they have no alternative means of meeting their living costs. The upside is that you can start accumulating the work experience that recruiters expect upfront. But for aspiring entrepreneurs, the benefits of working for free go beyond this.

One benefit is that it gives a sneak preview of what it actually feels like to be an entrepreneur. Many people take it for granted that entrepreneurs work without pay in the early stages because the business has not yet started generating profits. In some sectors — for example, capitalintensive industries — it can be a few years before the final product is delivered to market.

Working for free at least gives people a chance to assess for themselves if they would be able to survive this. After all, the entrepreneurial path is not for everyone. There are individuals who need a financial incentive to keep the motivation to work alive.

For those who can circumvent being motivated by money, focusing on

SHINING EXAMPLE: Felicia Mabuza-Suttle is the sort of famous South African entrepreneur those starting out look up to the learning experience presents a great growth opportunity.

There is no shame in working for free in an environment where you are guaranteed to learn the right skills. Let the learning opportunity be the motivator, not the salary you could be earning. It is sad to see people staying in jobs with high financial rewards but where the learning opportunities are nonexistent.

Hence it is important to be picky about who to learn from. For example, choosing to work for another entrepreneur, with or without pay, presents a steeper learning curve for aspiring entrepreneurs than choosing to work for an already established company.

For one, it gives you first-hand experience of what you will be doing when you are actually an entrepreneur. Since teams are small during the early stages of a new venture, you get exposure to many different parts of the business — from strategy to marketing to human resources. This is much more exposure than you would get from working in one area of an already established organisation.

This experience should also help in alleviating the fear associated with venturing off on the entrepreneurial path. Sometimes being close to the action can make the path seem less daunting and much more accessible.

Helping a fellow entrepreneur also increases the chances of them being there for you too when you start out on your own journey one day. Having enough cash flow to pay staff can be a big challenge in a start-up and many remember the individuals who were there for them in those difficult times.

We can all name famous South African entrepreneurs we look up to. A few commonly cited ones are Felicia Mabuza-Suttle of Pamodzi Investment Holdings, Patrice Motsepe of African Rainbow Minerals, Khanyi Dhlomo of Ndalo Media and Ludwick Marishane of DryBath.

I wonder how many people actually reach out to them with a request to work for them for free, if only for the chance to learn the valuable traits that led to their success. I doubt that their admirers have considered this.

I look back on my first part-time job, where I worked for free. Perhaps I was young and naive or too focused on the learning opportunity, but I never once requested a salary, even though I was working there a few hours a day for a year.

It was one of the steepest learning experiences I ever had and I do not regret it to this day. It is where I learnt practical experience related to cash flow, staff management, stock control — long before I studied these concepts in a business textbook.

I hope more people look into the idea of working for free — if not for the potential learning opportunity then for the chance to help an aspiring entrepreneur progress on the path towards creating employment opportunities.

There is no shame in working for free in an environment where you learn the right skills

Sikhakhane advises and funds African entrepreneurs. She is an international retailer, writer and motivational speaker, with an honours degree in business science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from Stanford University Comment on this: write to letters@businesstimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za