Praise is one thing. Giving a job is another. A job has an immediate deep impact..
I am an immigrant. I show respect to those who gave their lives to shield us by giving jobs to veterans.
I hire the hardest to employ and pay them more than minimum or even competitive wage. My workers are ex-military non -college educated men with challenges:
– Severe PTSD
– Damaged hearing, hard to hear
– Intense personalities and hardly visible to society, disabled veterans.
All have been a hairline away from homelessness or have seen that life.
We invest in them. We listen to their dreams, aspirations, and goals and mentor them to excel in their areas of interest, passion, and talent. For the time that the veterans work for me, they are cared for and they get respect as individuals. They even let their guard down and relax. They feel trusted and are indeed trusted. After a while, they can even smile and crack a joke. If you think this is trivial, try earning a veteran’s trust. Virtually everyone has abandoned them. From the military to their families, no one has the bandwidth to care for them. Many are ticking time bombs and will explode to hurt themselves.
It costs us more to give jobs to the veterans. We pair them up so that they don’t have a verbal outburst with a customer. It costs us in additional time. Some need more instruction than most, so we develop checklists and help them manage themselves. Most need additional time so that they can speak and be heard.
More expensive still, is the reality that they leave after 3-6 months. They are on their own personal healing and improvement journeys and need to keep going. We are glad to see them seek their Everest, their life’s full potential. They want to write, read, travel, or just go back into an invisible safe place working in warehouses or other invisible jobs. In all this they are also managing how much they should earn because going above a certain line can undo their military benefits. We wish them all well. Most often stay in touch. Some even come back to work after a while.
For me, an immigrant, this is a sober day of reflection. Will my workers find a stable life? What more can I do to both provide a competitively priced service to my clients and still support those who signed up to take a bullet for us all. The best way that I can show respect for the fallen is to be a scaffold for the ex-military people whom I can employ and mentor to achieve their full potential.
Want to help my work?
Learn my life lessons that I use to engage and inspire. They are in my book: (Find Your Everest before someone chooses it for you – Amazon reviews. Give me feedback. Join hands in growing my work that gives the veterans jobs. Invest in the work we do to uplift all whom we serve.
Raj@Rajrawat.com