How To Enjoy Your Job...
    Or Find A New One!

I have many Indian colleagues in the IT industry and many friends. India is increasingly important in the global economy, and has a huge number of office workers. I have many subscribers to my free eworkbook from India … and now….

“How to Enjoy Your Job” is now available in India – You can buy it here for 231 rupees plus postage.

Pothi.com is an Indian publisher who will print your book and ship it directly to you.

Click here to BUY THE BOOK NOW - ONLY 231 rupees plus postage.

“A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” is fair enough. However, a lot of the time you do go the extra mile and work the long hours.

A word of praise, a personalised email of encouragement or thanks can make all the difference to how you feel about a situation.

These mementos last longer than the pay cheque and show that someone has valued what you have done. There are some managers and even companies that people love to work for because they are known for having a special way of treating people. These managers and companies recognise that people really are their means of doing exceptional business, and treat them accordingly. However, too often it seems people are treated as resources rather than individuals who are valued for their own sake.

So why is this important? Isn’t it enough that we get paid for our work?

For many people in the modern Western world, the pay is well above the poverty level. It can be assumed that everyone can feed, house and clothe themselves so work is generally not just about survival anymore. Once the basic needs are fulfilled, then work must be about something more than that.

It should give people the opportunity to develop and grow, and appeal to something other than just financial gain. There must be personal growth, something that can be achieved, a goal to reach towards, respect from others and rewards appropriate to the situation. Your self-esteem is also affected by what peers and managers think of you, as well as how much you perceive you are valued.

What kind of work will make you feel valued?

People have feelings, aspirations and something to add to companies if given a chance to express themselves. The following areas contribute, in part, to making work more positive and demonstrating that people are valued.

• Self management and autonomy. Being trusted to do the job without micro-management.

• Helping others. Doing things for other people can help escape negativity, especially if the job seems pointless or repetitive. In being needed by others, individuals can feel useful and valued.
• Being able to make decisions and not have those decisions overturned.

• Taking control and responsibility over specific areas of work.
• Ability to achieve goals and succeed at tasks.
• Being given the opportunity and encouragement to take the initiative and act creatively without fear of blame.
• Being rewarded appropriately and in proportion to the job done.
• Confidence in being able to plan your personal life around work. Stability in working hours.
• Being treated well and respected as a person and not as just a company resource. Acknowledgement of your other important roles such as partner or parent.

Which of these would make you feel valued at work? Are there ways you could improve any of these areas for yourself?

Relaxation is important as it helps prevent and control the overwhelming panic that can occur when you are stressed. Relaxation may be a different experience for everyone but common themes are peace, quiet and calm. You need to be able to relax regularly in order to manage your stress. Give your mind and body some time off. It doesn’t have to cost you anything, but you do need to commit some time for relaxation. Here are some suggestions.

· Sleep more. Your mind is powerful and can work on problems when you are asleep. As well as feeling refreshed when you wake up, you may also have the answers to some of your problems.

· Turn off the TV and stop the constant noise and stimulation. Be silent or read a book.

· Listen to some relaxation or meditation CDs. These are often available in your local library if you don’t want to buy any.

· Learn a relaxation technique like progressive muscle relaxation or visualisation. Again, there are books and CDs available on these topics.

· Have a regular massage. Ask the therapist where you hold your stress in your body. This can help you identify which physical areas to focus on relaxing.

· Take a yoga class. Breathe and stretch more.

· Get a hammock and spend some quality time in it. There is something inherently relaxing about being in a hammock. You can get a stand instead of using hooks so you can put it anywhere.

· See a professional hypnotist for relaxation and de-stressing.

· Cry. Big sobbing bursts of crying can release tension and you will feel better when you are all cried out. This will only be useful if you find it socially acceptable but it does work!

· Laugh a lot. Get some funny movies. Play with your children. Go to a fun park and go on the rides. Be silly. Check out a laughter club at www.laughteryoga.org

· Get out into nature and walk. Go and look at something that is not the city.

Fortune magazine has just posted the 100 best companies to work for in 2009. Google has slipped from no. 1 to be replaced by NetApp – their policies include ditching a travel policy for common sense, writing future histories instead of business plans, and leave includes adoption aid.

They also have a perks list which includes: 100% of health care premiums, encourage work-life balance and telecommuting, and some even help with buying a home and scholarships for kids.

What does your company do that makes it a great place to work?

In the last week I have been laid off, and have found another fulltime position. I was also interviewed for MX, a commuter newspaper for Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, Australia. They used tips from my book, “How to Enjoy Your Job” to help people looking for work, and I took my own advice!

Here’s the article and the full page is below.

Here’s the full article.

Self-efficacy is your belief in your own capability to do something. It may be a proven capability based on something you have achieved or it may be the belief that you can do a new thing given the opportunity. If you believe you can do something, you will feel more in control and therefore less stressed.

If you try something new and it works, you will feel you have achieved. You will have increased your self-efficacy. If it doesn’t work, then you can learn from it and the lesson will also improve your self-efficacy.

It is about how you perceive the situation.

For example, I have started three businesses. Each folded within a year after much hard work and money spent. As much as the experience was painful, I learnt a great deal each time that has enabled me to go on to later success. I perceived that the failures increased my abilities to eventually run a successful business so my self-efficacy improved even though some would say that I “failed”.

Your comfort zone is where you are happy doing your work or using your abilities. Part of developing self-efficacy is to stretch these comfort zones and increase skill level so you can function without being stressed in the outer limits.

If you don’t challenge yourself, you will never know what you are capable of.

Here are some ways to improve your self-efficacy in work situations.

• Identify what you have achieved – at work or in other areas of your life. Really look at what you have done and acknowledge that you have skills, and that you are valuable.
• Identify where your comfort zone is. Where are the boundaries of your skills? Where do you lose your self confidence? For example, you may be happy speaking in front of colleagues at a staff meeting, but not at a conference of 500 people.

• Find ways to apply the skills you have to the boundaries of your comfort zone in order to extend it out further.
• List ways you could improve in specific areas by developing new skills.
• Aim to put yourself in these situations in manageable ways in order to increase your comfort zone without being too stressed.
• Once you have tackled a new situation, add it to the list of what you have achieved and learned. Celebrate another step forward!

A friend of mine just started an office job after working in a different industry and noted how many meetings he was suddenly involved in. Many of the meetings did not have an agenda, and there were not clear actions afterwards. He felt that sometimes the communication could have been done by email. Are all your meetings necessary? or are some a waste of time?

A recent NY Times article notes that many meetings are not productive (even when they are discussing workplace productivity!). Here are some tips from the article to make your meetings more successful.

• Have an agenda and set clear objectives for the meeting. What do you need to achieve in this timeframe?
• Think about opportunity costs for the meeting. How many people do you really need? Do you need all those senior managers?

Here are some more tips:

• Have stand-up meetings as they don’t go on for so long
• Minute action points and follow up – ensure there is a lasting benefit from the meeting
• Know the difference between a meeting and a workshop, and when just an email communication will suffice

How effective are your meetings?

1. Assess why you are stressed

What are the situations in which you get stressed? Who makes you feel stressed? Here are some examples of workplace stress to help you identify your stressors.

• Trying to do a job that doesn’t match your values or skills
• Conflict with other people
• Working long hours which leaves you so tired you can’t function at home or do things you enjoy
• Not enough time to do a quality job and then being criticised for under-performing
• Lack of support from other team members

There are many more things in the workplace that are stressful. Write down the things that particularly affect you.

2. Use time management techniques

You might feel stressed because you do not have the time to do everything that you need or want to do. The key is to actively manage the situation and bring it under your control. Try the following time management techniques.

• Write down everything you have to achieve and by when. Even the small things add up.
• Estimate how long these things will take and rate them in terms of urgency and importance (although this list will keep changing, sometimes it is necessary to write it all down so you can get some perspective).
• Review your work related items with your manager so they are aware of the competing demands on your time and ask for more help if necessary. You may find that they are unaware of your workload and there may be others who can help you with it. Managers prefer to know in advance if deadlines will be missed.
• Ask people to book your time rather than turning up at your desk with impromptu requests.
• Start saying ‘No’ when people ask you to do things outside the boundary of your prescribed job. This may be very difficult for some people who want to be helpful all the time, but it is essential if you are to be less stressed.
• Some workplaces have “no meeting days” or only have meetings in the mornings so people also have time to achieve their actions by the next meeting. You could suggest this for your workplace or your team.
• Only check your email twice a day, or turn off your email program when you are doing a piece of work. This prevents regular interruptions from incoming mail.

In what ways you could implement time management techniques to make your work life less stressful?

3. Take control

If you blame your stress on aspects of your life which are not under your influence, you will not be able to reduce or control your stress.

Take ownership of what is stressing you and be in control of it.

If you acknowledge that you have control over what stresses you, you can deal with it by actively solving the problem. If you believe it is someone else’s fault or responsibility, then nothing will change.

Own it, change it.

Unemployment has been rising steadily for the last 6 months as the global financial crisis deepens. Many white-collar professionals have been laid off including management, sales staff and office workers.

So what can you do if you have lost your job?

• Use all the information and help that your company will give you to improve your chances of re-employment. Take any courses you can that they will pay for and use the work time you have left to its best advantage.
• Update your resume – you may need to include more detail about aspects of other jobs you have had to broaden your appeal in the market
• Cut back on expenses and look at your budget
• Use the time to think about what you really want to do for a job. Maybe this is your chance to move into something new?
• Try to stay positive – there are jobs and it is not personal. Your skills can be used elsewhere, you just might have to be flexible in what you do and for how long.
• Actively search for work opportunities – get a profile on LinkedIn or other social networks and see what is out there. Many jobs are not advertised, but if you know someone who can submit your resume, you might just find something.
• Remember temp agencies if you have office skills. Many companies may lay off staff and then find themselves without key people. They will use temp agencies to fill the gap instead of employing staff. You may be in a different place every week, but many people also find fulltime work after being placed with a company.
• Consider being a contractor or self-employed. You can offer a daily rate making it easier for companies to afford you short term.

My contract has been brought to an early halt by the global economy altering my company’s share price. So I am joining the list of those people looking for work.

Is your job safe? A new report shows what the safest and riskiest jobs are in 2009.

Safest jobs include: Biotechnology, Online Information Services, Online shopping and surprisingly, waste disposal!

Risky jobs include: Car retailing, real estate, investment banking and bricklaying