In two earlier posts on pride in the workplace, I wrote about some obvious reasons why having pride in your work, not only makes you a more valuable employee, but workplace pride also is a reflection of how one’s personal life is managed. If you are managing your personal life well, keeping everything moving the way you want it to move is reflected in how you perform your job. The opposite is also true.
There are other reasons for having pride in your job which many people do not appreciate because they never thought about from a different perspective. The more pride in your job, the more pay attention to the small things. Huge financially devastating lawsuits have happened over neglect of minor details.
Attention to minor details while you are working is noticed by your boss when they compare the quality of your work to that of your peers. It is the little things that get noticed by your boss as the big things take care of themselves. Your boss may see you cleaning up your work area, or taking care of something that needs to be done others have ignored. It is a good idea to make it a point to be seen doing little extras things others ignore.
What about when you are walking to your job. I have observed an untold number of people who think they are too important to bend over and pick up a piece of paper in their path ten feet from a trash can. I have seen heads of business, who make more in a restroom break than many people make an hour, take the time to stoop over and pick up an errant piece of paper on the ground on their way to the building entrance.
I was taught by a dinner chef, that it is the little things that hurt a business. Someone not paying attention to what they are doing with food could result in a correctly unhappy customer. Or worse, a handful of people become sick as a result of improper food handling procedures. A few unhappy customers can easily destroy years of building a good reputation.
One of the noted restaurants in town who enjoyed the major market share in their specialty, were discovered to be reserving food from picked up plates. This happened not once but twice in a short period. The company almost folded because their reputation lost through greed and neglect. Whatever the person who started reserving food thought they were saving in expenses, was not as much as long term customers who never returned to that establishment.
If you are in sales such as sales in a clothing store, a little pride and two simple things you can improve both your image and increase sales more than you have previously managed. All you need to do is look busy and smile. It does not matter if you redo something you did ten minutes earlier. Your customers appreciate the fact that you stopped doing whatever you were doing to help them a lot more than if you were standing frowning in the corner, and then come striding over to see what they want. As a customer, who are you more likely to ask for help, someone who looks like they are doing something who stopped to see if you need assistance, or someone who is standing in a corner looking bored staring at the floor.
These are only a few ideas of many that are available for you to use in your workplace. The sad truth is most of us think we are worth more than we are being paid, and we try to make up the difference by doing less. Reality is different; doing more has a better chance of balancing the scales of work verses pay than loafing will.
If you work with the public doing more has even higher dividends. It is quite possible that each and every day someone who your wait on or help is looking for an employee. While they can read resumes and listen to self promotion pitches all day long, another saying applies, “Actions speak louder than words”. You never know if the next person who sees you doing something extra will be your next employer. If they are who do you want them to see, you working with pride, or you loafing around, doing as little as possible.
Even when it seems that those little extra things you do are not helping you, they really are. Making it a habit to do those little extra things in your present job, is on the job training for your, “Real Job”. Take advantage of every opportunity to learn how to be effective for the future. While you are practicing, you will start taking more pride in your present job too. You boss will notice too, and perhaps you will be stepping out ahead of your coworkers and winning the next opportunity for advancement or more pay.
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If you are not doing anything different than everyone else is doing for the same position, whether you keep your job, or someone else does is a roll of the dice. You are really just holding a position, and from the companies perspective, whether it is you, or someone else in that position does not really matter. In other words you are expendable.
We need to look back to the day we were hired. What made us excited to be working at the job we now have? What feelings were present which we killed off, or allowed others to kill off in us? What extrinsic things is our work doing for us? Is it paying for our home, and car, and the food we eat? Does our work allow our children to be in college, either presently or someday?