TOP 7 TIPS to keep your job in hard times

Top 7 tips to keep your job in hard times

The key to keeping your job in these hard times is being a great employee, a high performer and a value-adder to your organisation. What does that mean? Well, here are My Performance Coach’s Top 7 tips on what you can do to ensure you are highly employable. The key message is that you OWN your career and create your reality!

So do the work, make the necessary changes and see the pay-offs materialise! If you implement all 7 tips, you cannot, help but be successful!

Hot Tip 1: Prepare your SDOT (Strengths, Development areas, Opportunities & Threats)

Doing a self assessment is both a powerful and proactive act and will stimulate your creativity. The tool enables a proactive evaluation of your current situation and your future. It will help you come up with some great ideas top implement the rest of our hot tips.

The first step is to review objectively, any information you can get your hands on about your skills, performance and behaviours at work! E.g. recent performance reviews or peer feedback. You can also review any recent behavioural or personality profiles.

Use a variety of information sources to complete your SDOT. A SDOT is a complete review of your Strengths, Development needs, Opportunities and Threats. Be sure to ask your current manager and trusted colleagues about your strengths and development areas to assist you to answer the necessary questions

Get your free SDOT tool and further information here

My Performance Coach also has useful tools to assist you with your self assessment.


Hot Tip 2: Raise your profile within the organisation

I’m not suggesting here that you develop a huge ego and shout out at the top of your lungs how wonderful you are! However, many of us (particularly women) do a poor job of self promotion, letting people know subtly who we are, what we do and what our achievements are. So, know your strengths and being clear on your performance and contribution to the organisation.

The next step is to work out ways to get Brand YOU top of mind for the people that count. How do the people that need to know how fabulous you are, get to know that?
The first place to start is your boss and their boss! What is their impression of you? If you don’t know, simply pluck up the courage to ask. At least you’ll know where you stand and can figure out what you need to do to be successful. Think about your key clients, do they spontaneously provide feedback about you to the people that count? What about your immediate work colleagues, what do they say about you? What about other departments or key stakeholders?

Start proactively working on Brand You. You already have a brand in the workplace. The question is, it is your best possible brand? What are the key messages about you that you want the key people in your organisation to know about you? Take the time to come up with the key messages that make up Brand You. Be clear on what these are, make sure they are powerful and ensure that reality matches (i.e. your behaviour and actions reflect these core messages 100% of the time). If reality does not match, then get a plan to sort it out.

Key messages might include: No 1 sales rep; Service Excellence; Customers rave about them; Retained our top ten clients this year; Best people manager in the department.

When you have your top 5 key messages which should be all about how valuable you are to your employer, then test them out with people who know you. For example, you may ask your key clients, on a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being the highest, how would you rate my customer service skills?

Then take time to think about how you can develop your network, internally and externally, continually building Brand You as you go. The key to branding is consistency! Have a plan, write it down, take actions and continually review your success!!

Hot Tip 3: Avoid negativity and the ‘wrong’ crowd

It’s all very well and good to build a great Brand YOU, but you can undermine it in a second if you fall into the negativity trap!

Make sure you keep your thoughts focused on positives at all times. What you focus on is what shows up! So if you focus on the negatives, guess what, that’s what you will create. Everyone knows this at a deeper unconscious level and therefore avoid people who are deeply negative. So create the right reality, reframe situations and get yourself in a positive state and a positive state of mind.

Avoid the doom and gloom crowd. They’ll just bring you down and more importantly those that are in positions to make decisions will note negative behaviours, attitudes and groups. In hard times, the negative people are always top of the list for the exit lounge. When times are tough, what you need are people to rally, to be positive, and to go all out to get through the crisis. Negativity breeds negativity and bosses usually make the smart play or cutting loose negativity first up.

Note: if you think you can hide your negativity by not voicing it, think again! You’ll come across as passive-aggressive and you will definitely increase your odds of being escorted to the exit lounge!

Hot Tip 4: Know What is Important to Your Organisation

Consider these questions and answer them honestly:
• Do you know what your organisations vision is?
• Do you know what your organisations goals are?
• Do you know what your organisations values are?
• Do you know what your organisation considers to be of key importance?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions find out!

Ask your manager or HR. Check out your intranet. Many organisations have formally articulated this information, but just as many have not! Whether formally articulated or not, find out what is important around here! I.e. What are the key behaviours expected of employees?

Once you know what these things are, write them down and self assess yourself against them. Update your SDOT. Where are your strengths and development needs in relation to the expectations? Where are your Opportunities? Where are your threats?

Hot Tip 5: Make sure you are performing in the top 25%

Are you in the top 25% of performers in your team or department? Do you understand your performance and how you are rated? Do you understand your contribution to the business?

Employers do not normally cut their noses off to spite their faces! So think from an employer’s perspective. Who is the most valuable to you in times of crisis – the bottom 25% of performers or your top 25%! Ah, no brainer folks!!

If you are in the middle, i.e. a solid citizen, there is certainly nothing wrong with that! But sometimes, when hard decisions are required, some solid citizens need to be let go. So give yourself every opportunity to avoid the exit lounge.

Start now! Find out about how your performance is perceived, particular from your direct boss. Find out what they think you could do to improve your performance. Look around, who is considered the highest performer? What do they do, that you don’t do?

Hot Tip 6: Engage with the business and add value to it

Continuing on with our theme, when you know the business, when you’re passionate and positive about what you do and what your organisation does, when you operate at level 10 energy, then there is no chance that you will be on someone’s exit list! All organisations need highly engaged people to make them successful, particularly in crisis times!

Ask yourself these questions, honestly. On a scale of 1 – 10, 10 being highest, where are you right now?
• I love my job/work. I jump out of bed 95% of the time, looking forward to the day
• I am passionate about what I do, it’s my calling
• I love this organisation and want it to be successful
• I operate with level 10 energy, everyday to get the best possible outcomes
• I go all out, including extra hours to get the job done, because it’s important to me
• I continuously come up with smarter ways of working
• I continuously come up with great ideas to make this organisation more successful

If you answered less than a 7 to any of the above, you have some serious self reflection to be doing! Because the facts are, if you did not, you are not fully engaged with your job nor your organisation. And if that is the case, you may risk being put on the exit lounge list.

Assess what you can do. How can you re-engage? What do you need to do to get back in the game? How can you get yourself fired up?

Top Tip 7: Invest in yourself

What constantly amazes me is the number of people who leave their careers and livelihoods in the hands of others. If you do not have a strong independent Career and Development plan, then you are consciously or unconsciously assuming someone else will take care of this for you.

The facts of life are that you create your reality! Sure some organisations invest a lot in their people, but many do not! More importantly, and very unfortunately, in times of crisis, training and development budgets are the first thing to be cut. The last thing on your boss or the executive team’s mind is your career and your development.

People often find career coaching very powerful and it is certainly a proactive investment in Brand You! Don’t leave your brand or your future in someone else’s hands. Take charge NOW! Review your development needs. What do you need to do? By When? Come up with an action plan and implement it.

The secret to most successful people/high performers- They invest heavily in themselves and keep themselves top of their game and field. As a minimum, a professional should invest an average of 100 hours per annum on professional development, and be prepared to spend at least $3,500 in developing your skills, knowledge and competencies. It is no coincidence that people who employ coaches are highly successful!

Good luck!

Remember, Life is not about finding yourself...

Life is about creating yourself!