A Tip For Keeping Your Job
Best Selling Author Connie Glaser
Most of the publicity about the dismal job market has focused on big corporations. But an even greater effect has been felt by small businesses. The local diner, the neighborhood “Joe the Plumber” and the hometown newspaper have also drastically reduced employees. Whether you are a financial analyst at a big bank or a waiter at a local restaurant, there’s a real possibility that your job is in peril.
As we are all learning, the entire work landscape has shifted. In what we now refer to as “the good old days,” measurable factors like education, training and experience trumped intangibles like attitude, enthusiasm and cooperation when it came to employment status. But in these challenging times, the decision to keep someone on the payroll often has less to do with degrees and diplomas than with personality and attitude.
You may not have even thought about this before, but this is the time to spend a few minutes looking at life from your boss’s perspective. If you do, here’s what you may discover:
Most bosses hate to lay off employees. It’s no fun to sit across from someone who needs, wants and sometimes even loves a job and hand them a pink slip. Letting someone go is not a power trip. It is a painful part of being an executive, manager or business owner.
Most bosses don’t need or want more headaches. These are tough times for everyone, including your boss, and he or she probably has serious problems that you are not aware of. For this reason, an employee who doesn’t add to that long list of irritants, has an advantage over one who does.
This is not the time to be “high-maintenance” or “complicated.” If you, say, have a temper or a tendency to miss those Monday morning sales meetings, you may find yourself out of work sooner rather than later. This economic climate can’t accommodate workers who have personal issues that interfere with the smooth running of an office or a business.
Check your ego at the door. It would be nice if we lived in a world where our concerns, priorities and egos were important to everyone with whom we came in contact. But until that new world order arrives, our best job insurance is to slap a smile on our face, be as helpful and cheerful as possible, and go out of the way to make life as pleasant as possible for the people who sign our paychecks.
Lots of people who never imagined that they would be out of work now find themselves unemployed. The good news is that these tough times will eventually pass, and the economy will stabilize. But the bad news in that we are all facing challenges for which we are unprepared.
Whoever thought that banks would fail, Starbucks would become a “treat” rather than an “essential,” foreclosures would hit our block, or layoffs would affect our family? One of these days, we’ll look back on this recession and consider the way we all had to recalibrate our coping skills.
You’re smart and you’ll manage to re-educate yourself about the coping skills needed to ride out these rough times. The same way you now “pause” before parting with your hard-earned cash, you’ll soon learn to shift gears when at work. These are the times when great employees and great companies go into an survival mode, and now is the time to make sure that your boss considers you absolutely, positively essential to his or her wellbeing.
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In: On The Job Advice · Tagged with: Business Owner, career, Challenging Times, Connie Glaser, Diplomas, Economic Climate, Employment Status, Executive Manager, Financial Analyst, High Maintenance, Intangibles, Irritants, Local Restaurant, Looking At Life, Monday Morning, Personal Issues, Pink Slip, Plumber, Power Trip, Sales Meetings, Tough Times
