Be A More Valued Employee
How to Make Contributions Your Organization Will Appreciate
Doing your job well is the most important contribution you can make to your organization. But most enterprises in today's competitive world need to constantly improve to remain profitable or effective. The experience and insights of the workforce are a valuable source for those improvements.
Demands and the resources to meet them change rapidly and are often out of balance. Equipment may have to be adjusted or replaced and processes may have to be revamped to keep up with these variations or shortfalls. While managers are paid to stay on top of these developments, staff members have specialized knowledge and a vantage point on the firing line that can spot problems early and formulate practical solutions.
Some Ways to Make an Extra Contribution that Will Be Valued
- Learn as much as you can about your company or agency, its missions and ideals, and the context in which it operates.
- Look at your daily routine, including meetings, communications, and processes, and think of ways to streamline what you and your colleagues do.
- Keep up with technical developments in your field and make sure to share significant new information with your co-workers;.
- Evaluate your group's relationships with customers and suppliers and try to think of ways to improve understanding and cooperation.
- Identify any morale or productivity problems in your group and try to determine what might be causing them.
- Offer to work on special projects or to help a co-worker swamped with unanticipated workload.
- Suggest ways to make the office atmosphere more relaxed and inclusive of all its members.
Threats to Increasing Value
Equally important, there are two impressions you should not create as you strive to make yourself more valuable to your organization. Basically, you should refrain from any word or action which suggests you are gunning for your supervisor's job or that you are seeking some advantage with him or her at your colleagues' expense. You should avoid:
- Frequent private meetings with your supervisor;
- Talking critically about your co-workers with your supervisor;
- Talking critically about your supervisor with your peers;
- Seeking more credit than you deserve for organization accomplishments; and
- Above all, neglecting your job.
Judgment and tact must be exercised at all times. If you have a useful suggestion for improvement to make, you need to meet privately with your boss to make sure it won't embarrass or upstage him or her in public. On the other hand, frequent one-on-one sessions will leave your co-workers wondering what's going on, so keep them limited.
The bottom line: do the job and be a team player.
