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PROGRAM D-7753
Lots of people are job hunting these days, and many others are concerned that it could happen to them.
One way to make yourself valuable to your organization is to be an extra-miler, the person who does more than he or she has to do. As a manager myself, I know how I value the person who volunteers to take some work off of my desk, or comes up with a good idea and is willing to implement it, or seems glad to stay and get a job done to meet a deadline. Jesus taught us to go the extra mile, to give more than is asked of us. He didn’t teach us to become doormats and let people run over us, but there’s a big difference between that extreme and being a person with an extra-mile attitude.
In addition to going the extra mile, a valuable asset in an employee is being willing to do the dirty work, so to speak; the hum-drum, mundane stuff that no one particularly likes to do, but it has to be done. It’s great to have an employee who is flexible and understanding about those kinds of jobs.
Have you ever put yourself in your boss’s shoes and tried to understand the pressures he or she faces? Have you ever really tried to think of ways to make your boss’s job easier? Think about it—if you were the boss and you had an employee who thought about you and really tried to help you, wouldn’t that person become very valuable to you? Might be the last person you’d let go if downsizing became necessary.
Another characteristic that will make you a valuable and outstanding employee is to look for new and better ways to do what you do, and to think outside the box and come up with some new ideas that will be profitable for the organization. In other words, don’t be limited by your job description. If you see an opportunity, get creative and pursue it.
Doing what you can do to keep your job is really important in these days when jobs are very hard to find.