By Edwin Dadzie ABOTSI
“This article goes beyond theory; it’s the truth. I’ve lived it, I’ve felt the pressure of income-based underemployment, and now I’m building the solution.” Edwin Dadzie Abotsi
We often talk about unemployment, but there’s another crisis hiding in plain sight: income-based underemployment. This happens when people are employed but still can’t survive. This is when you are working full-time, yet struggling to afford rent, food, transport, and basic dignity.
It’s when the money you earn doesn’t match your effort, skills, and the local cost of living
For example, a trained teacher earns GH₵2,000.00 ($168.35) a month, or a university graduate works 8 hours a day as a waitress in a restuarant for GH₵800 ($67.34) a month, while the real cost of survival which includes two main expenses , cost of transportation for work, breakfast and lunch is over GH₵1,500 ($116.50) per month.
The big question is how does the employee pay for rent, utilities, or children’s school fees? The truth, however, is that you are not alone and you don’t have to stay there.
This is the story of millions of employees globally, but it’s not discussed nearly enough by policymakers, employers, and other stakeholders who are supposed to be promoting employees’ welfare. Having lived and experienced it, I wish to share 5 real, practical solutions that helped me overcome such limitations.
As individual employees, you have to take your welfare into your own hands, and you can do that by applying what I call the 5 principles of frog-lifting out of the low remuneration.
The 5 real and practical solutions that can alleviate anyone include studying financial literacy, skills monetization, collaboration, shifting focus from big enterprise to micro enterprise, and making vocational and entrepreneurship training more relevant.
On the subject of financial literacy, it is a global disease that must be tackled with all seriousness beyond just theory by policymakers and individuals. “Financial literacy is simply defined as one’s ability to understand and manage personal finances effectively”.
The concepts involved are budgeting and planning your finances, tracking spending, debt management, saving, and investing, which, when you study and apply appropriately, help you make effective financial decisions. The above concepts will be looked at in details in our next write-up.
“Those who receive financial education are typically better equipped to make prudent financial choices. The truth of the matter is that even those earning decent income often stay broke because they lack financial education or money management wisdom”…..BFT(14th February 2024
Even in the developed countries financial literacy is a big issue. For example, in 2022 a survey conducted by the Federal Reserve stated that 27% of adults in the US lack financial education and in Ghana, according to Business & Financial time of February 14, 2024 the rate of financial illiteracy stood at 68%.
This implies financial literacy is irrespective of a country’s economic status or well-being. It sinks into fundamental perspective and means we as a people or living being have a lot of work to do if we want to live a decent life for a long term.
I will suggest, you read this article as an individual or policy maker at whatever level you are to take this matter of financial literacy seriously and take steps to learn about it.
This may affect your health. The reason stems from the fact that depriving yourself or someone of economic resources may directly or indirectly lead to emotional and psychological disorders and therefore negatively impact your life.
Take a keen interest in studying this subject and apply it to your life and most importantly, if you are an employer, be encouraged to pay your hard-working staff what is due them or relative to employees’ effort, skills, and commitment levels. You can as well encourage your staff to learn financial literacy.
A testimony of Emmanuel Lartey, a staff of Motorway Supermarket. “Before knowing Mr. Edwin Dadzie Abotsi as the CEO of Klient Consult, I have been living from pay cheque to pay cheque, meaning I was surviving on one salary.
I had no idea of how I could increase or expand my earnings or double it or add few raises to my salary while I maintain my work. But today the situation is different.
I was a staff of Motorway Supermarket when one day in the year 2014, Klient Consult came to educate us on personal finance. I was moved by the education and acted on all their recommendations and took initiative to patronized one of the investment products mentioned namely FLIP ACCOUNT at Fidelity Bank Ghana.
Not just do I have savings and investment but I wake up excited to go to work. This has helped me financially. I remain grateful to Klient Consult.”
To live a dignify life, you have to MONETIZE YOUR SKILLS in order to get additional income. Monetizing your skill means turning what you can do well into a service or product that people are willing to pay for in full or in part consistently. Most people have skills and have not yet turned these skills into income because no one taught them how it can be done.
In today’s world, your skills must make money else they will become unused or limited potential.
Let me ask you, what skills do you have? List all the skills you have. List them now and not later. Listing your skill is and becomes the beginning of the transformation of your life. These skills may not be part of your regular skills with which you earn money but hidden. Furthermore, you may have regular skills and yet not have packaged it well for which reason you are stuck. We are here to help you.
There are many and unlimted skills, such as singing, cooking, sewing, writing, cleaning, data capturing, researching, baking, weaving, speaking, washing, gardening, designing, playing any musical instrument, drawing ( fine art ) storytelling, master of ceremonies and weaving and basketry ,and many more.
The daunting question you have been silently asking is “how can I turn my skills into money or make an income from my skills”? There are five realistic steps involved in making an income from your skills as crafted in the graph or map below.
Skill → Solution → Visibility → Value → Payment
Let me practically take you through. Once you identify your skill as BAKING, the next step is to scan and conduct a research in your community or neighborhood. During the scan, identify problems in your community. Having identify a problem e.g, “inconvenience of getting bread or meat pie or doughnut to eat as breakfast before going to work by community members”.
Next is to move to at least 10 houses and propose to them your intention of baking bread or meat pie as a solution to their inconvenience of waiting for the bread seller from the next community or walking a long distance to get bread. For first impression and convincing message you can carry along your first badge of the product as samples.
Be encourage that your samples are not waste of money or material but a bold step and a bait to catch more fishes. This can confirm your approval and feedback from the people after eating your type of bread (the taste, the texture, or the features).
The third step is to make your product (bread or the pie) visible by advertising. Remember that even the best service or product hidden or in the dark or in a small corner will not thrive and may eventually fail.
You do not need a huge capital to attain this step. Start small and grow it. One way you can advertise is by moving from house to house in your immediate neighborhood, making flyers, using social media platforms (WhatsApp groups, TikTok, Facebook).
The next stage is to show value as the graph indicates. What is this value?
Value here implies more of behavioral than technical. It means you have to be consistent in; availability of product, quality of product, good packaging, delivery time and safety, conducive working space or area. Always ensure a quick response to feedbacks. This generally improves upon your product and services.
To be consistent means you don’t have to disappoint your clients. If you show up at 5 am, ensure that you keep to that time, the taste of your bread must be the same every time, or be improved in the near future.
Your deliverables or packaging should be memorable for the client to return to you the next day. You could add advertising jingles or short motto suitable to you and appealing to customers.
If you are able to do all the above recommendations, your clients will begin praising or hailing your product or service as good and valuable, then referrals will begin.
Value creates sales repetition in business through recommendations and referrals.
The fifth and the final stage of our map above is the PAYMENT stage.
Now that people see your value, don’t be afraid to ask for what you are worth because naturally people value what they pay for. This is the time to earn your cash. I encourage you not to be afraid of pricing because your skill is not CHARITY, people must pay for it.
Set a clear price up front base on the cost and the value you are offering and do not underprice. For easy and convenience of your clients, accept both cash and mobile money as modes of payment.
Akua at Mamfe in the Eastern Region of Ghana is a professional Teacher who has monetized her skill of baking and generating income for herself and the family. She has applied all the above methods outlined in this article and she is doing quite well. You can also do it.
I’m E.D. Abotsi, Business development consultant ,Tax planning and Payroll Expert & Entrepreneur. I help Aspiring Entrepreneurs onboard well, SMES who are stuck to reset & grow, genuinely help SMES reduce their tax by 30%
Look out for part two of this article.
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