Companies are laying people off for any number of economic reasons. Laying off, firing, reduction in work force they sound different but the result is: you don’t have a job.
Here are some easy ways to avoid firing yourself.
1. Do what is expected. Most of the time your boss will tell you exactly what you must do, what is the minimum level of performance for the task assigned to you. If you choose to ignore it, you have fired yourself.
2. Do your job with good humor. No one likes a grouch around the workplace. Times are tough, but constantly whining about how tough it is at home because you had to cancel HBO gets old, fast.
3. Assume goodwill. Not every request comes with a hidden agenda that is out to trick or get you. Assume that the work assigned is necessary and helpful to your company’s goals.
4. Show up on time, ready to work. Here in Minnesota, we have bad weather and lots of it. From time to time, we get requests to ‘work from home.’ Trust me, if a company thought it would be more productive to have you work from home, they would be the first to suggest it. You shouldn’t bring this up yourself, first.
5. Listen and apply the lessons. “Hire for attitude, train the skill” is the mantra of many HR departments. If you are not applying what you have learned in training programs and insist on doing jobs your own way, you are firing yourself.
6. Performers get some slack, laggards don’t. I am not sure if this is in any management book, but this is how it works. If you perform well, when it comes time to go home early for an emergency, no one thinks twice about it. On the other hand, if you are a below average employee, you have not yet earned that respect. This is one of the lingering cesspools of low paid jobs…these jobs don’t allow the employees to build up any equity in the job, so to speak. If a kid is sick, they can’t stay home or take him to the doctor, so kid gets sicker, causing more pain and suffering. Etc.
No user commented in " Don’t Fire Yourself "
[...] From What Would Dad Say: Don’t Fire Yourself “Companies are laying people off for any number of economic reasons. Laying off, firing, reduction in work force they sound different but the result is: you don’t have a job. Here are some easy ways to avoid firing yourself.” [...]
Good advice for some large percentage of workers. But…not 100%. Because, sometimes:
1. Your boss doesn’t tell you what to do, or assigns you work far beyond your (or anyone’s) ability to complete, or applies contradictory standards of performance at the same time.
3. Some requests *do* come with a hidden agenda that is out to trick or get you.
4. Companies used to think it was more profitable to work people 16 hours/day. It took crackpot/genius Henry Ford to disprove them. Just because a hypothesis is not yet proven does not make it automatically false, and assuming that Those That Make The Rules always know what they’re doing is a short path to a pair of self-applied handcuffs.
5. Of course, sometimes the procedures in place need improvement. Kaizen is growing in popularity for a reason.
6. Sometimes performers don’t get slack. Sometimes laggards do (especially in politics-heavy workplaces).
[...] From What Would Dad Say: Don’t Fire Yourself “Companies are laying people off for any number of economic reasons. Laying off, firing, reduction in work force they sound different but the result is: you don’t have a job. Here are some easy ways to avoid firing yourself.” [...]
[...] jobdig.com Wspieraj nasz blog – promuj wpis [...]