Employee and Employer: A Bitter-Sweet Love Story

You are a job aspirant. Having come across a suitable opening, you apply for the job. Your C.V. is so impressive that you immediately get a call for an interview. You attend the interview and are appointed as well. You undergo an orientation training that cements your bonding with the company. After that, you start working for the company. In other words, you get cozy with the company.

You complete all the tasks entrusted to you perfectly. You give suggestions as well to improve the output of the company. So, your employer develops a liking for you. This is a sweet love story.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

Very soon, people on your team and other employees find fault with you. This may be due to jealousy. Or you may be going overboard and in your enthusiasm to improve your reputation further, committing a few mistakes. In your eagerness and obsession to prove your mettle and to beat others in the race, you may commit the solecism of prioritizing wrongly or omitting a few vital aspects while carrying out your tasks. This may prove to be expensive for the company. Now, your employer may start disliking you or may even begin hating you. The love story, which was originally sweet, has now turned into a bitter one. 

Another scenario.

Noticing your efficiency, your employer may start dumping more work on your platter. You have all along been enjoying the appreciation showered upon you. Now when you have to do more work, you find that your work-life balance is in jeopardy. You start hating your employer. Thus begins the bitter chapter of the love story.

Should an employer-employee relationship always be a bitter-sweet love story?

To this question, the answer is: It need not be. The question now is: As an employee, what should you do to maintain a consistently cordial relationship with your employer? A few tips may help.

1. Never nurture an obsession to impress your employer. As an employee, you have to work to your optimum potential and there should not be any compromise on this. But while carrying out your tasks, you should have the company's good in your mind. Earning the employer's appreciation is secondary and you will get it automatically if you carry out your tasks sincerely and with the utmost focus.

2. Do not always be expecting appreciation. Some of the employers are stingy and they do not appreciate even those who perform well. According to them, employees get their remuneration and it compensates much more than their output. So, don't get addicted to appreciative remarks. This means that when you don't get an appreciation for your good work, you must not allow your buoyancy to diminish. Remember that the appreciative words of such stingy employers are just formal proclamations and are devoid of hearty effusiveness. 

At the same time, these employers will always take advantage of every opportunity to find faults. Expecting appreciation from these employers is akin to expecting inanimate things to show gratitude.

3. Don't try to monopolize appreciation. You want to climb the career ladder quickly. This does not mean that you and you alone should get appreciation. There may be a few other employees like you who may be nurturing similar aspirations. They may also be performing as good as you, if not better. They also deserve appreciation, so you should not be envious of them. The only advice experts give is that you should carry out your tasks with the utmost sincerity and focus without worrying about the appreciation of your employer. It is better if you continue to be companionable with those employees because their eagerness to perform well will help in keeping your motivation level high.

4. Keep your enthusiasm alive. Regardless of whether you get appreciation from your employer or not, you should not allow your enthusiasm to come down. Enthusiasm is like a nasty precipice. If you do not motivate yourself regularly, you may slip and it may result in troubles in your workplace. Of course, your relationship with your employer will get strained also. So, employ all your resources and keep your enthusiasm intact.

If you use the above tips, you will find that the relationship between you and your employer need not be a bitter-sweet love story. It will always be a sweet love story.

Are You a Procrastinator? Knock That Habit off.

If you have the habit of postponing things, you have to necessarily get rid of the habit because the habit will not allow you to progress and achieve your goals, whatever they may be. There is no doubt you have to think through and consider various factors before making any decision. But this does not mean you can keep on postponing making decisions. So, how to go about the process of getting rid of this dangerous habit? The following tips may help.

Are you postponing tasks because they are unpleasant?

If you have been postponing tasks since they appear to be unpleasant, it is high time you change your perception. By postponing these tasks, you will be missing out on several viable and worthy opportunities. The best way to induce yourself to take up the seemingly unpleasant tasks is to attend to them when your efficiency level is at its best. 

The efficiency level of a few people will be in full force during the morning hours. For a few others, their system and the mental faculty will be working at their optimum level of efficiency in the nights because these people are "owlish." So, these nocturnal 'creatures' will not hesitate to burn the midnight oil for carrying out their tasks.

You must know the time when your faculties are sharp and you can work in top gear. You should take up the so-called unpleasant and cumbersome tasks during such hours. In fact and surprisingly, you will find that the same tasks are easily executable when you try carrying them out at the "best" hours.

Are your tasks big?

If the reason for your postponing habit is because your tasks are big, you can adopt another strategy for winning over the habit. The simple suggestion is you should split the big tasks into several smaller milestones. You will then not feel the heat of the size of the tasks. You can easily complete them as well. You will ultimately be amazed to see how you have won over your postponing habit.

Dispense with your fear of failure.

A strong reason for your postponing tasks is that you may be afraid of failures. Never forget the fact that failing and achieving success are parts of the learning process. Unless you fail and know what mistakes you commit, you cannot improve yourself. How can you achieve personal growth if the mistakes you used to commit continue to stick with you? So, you must get rid of the fear of failure and start acting upon your ideas. If you purposefully work on this suggestion, you will certainly be able to put your firm foot on the track of knocking off your habit of procrastinating.

 

The First Great Secret That Can Help You Grow in Your Career.

That you have to work very hard to grow in your career can be the most dangerous untruth you may have come across. While making this statement, experts have obviously distorted the truth. As the German philosopher Georg Christoph Lichtenberg said, "The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted." So, what is the truth that has been hidden by this distorted untruth? What is the secret that can help you in your career growth? Let us find out.

Know this big myth and treat it as you treat a cobweb.

That hard work can help you in your career growth is a big myth. In fact, hard work can sometimes hurt your growth. An example can explain this clearly. If you work hard, you will be increasing the likelihood of getting burdened by more work than what you are capable of executing efficiently. Unfortunately, you will have a tendency or may feel a morbid pleasure that is derived out of wrong thinking that only because you are impressing your boss with your hard work, he is giving you more work. In reality, your boss knows that he cannot rely on other employees. Since you have always proved to be a reliable employee, he is dumping all the work on you.

An unfortunate fact is that there is a saturation point in everything. This means that your efficiency and focus will come down steeply beyond a certain point. So, the quality of your output will be much below par when you reach the point. Hence, at the time of writing your appraisal report, you will be rated as an "average" employee whose output is just average. When your work is viewed as "average," how can you expect to have exceptional career growth?

What is the great secret?

At the time of recruiting you, the recruiters of your company may have interviewed you and checked your credentials to ensure that you possess the academic and other qualifications that are required for carrying out the job for which you are being considered. But they may not have the complete scope to check all your skills. Of course, if you are an experienced candidate, they may scroll through the testimonies your previous employers may have given. 

Only after you begin working for the company and only after a few days after you begin executing your work, the company may know how capable you are. To put it differently, the quality of your output alone will decide your career growth. So, the great secret that can help you in your growth revolves around how you go about executing your work and how you keep improving the quality of your performance.

So, the secret that can help you grow in your career lies in being curious, asking questions, and learning  During the course of executing your tasks, you will have certainly have lots of chances to mingle with your superiors and employees who have more experience than you. Instead of discussing with them about the weather or the baseball matches of the previous day, you can ask questions about your job and the tasks you are carrying out, and how you can excel in your work. By adopting this approach, you will not only impress them with your curiosity but will be able to learn a lot from them as well. If you blend your creativity with the insights you gain from them, you can come out with unique and unimaginably great ideas. If you put these ideas to use, you can vastly improve the quality of your output. What more do you need for achieving the career growth you are aspiring for?

Create a fun environment at the workplace to increase productivity

In the present-day context, we allow our official life to dominate our personal space and this takes a toll on our health. Especially, work-related drudgery can wreck a havoc. So, it has become imperative that we have to find out ways to increase our efficiency and productivity so we bestow enough attention on our personal life as well. Studies have clearly revealed that if we have a fun environment at our workplace, our productivity will go several notches up.


In other words, we should willingly go to our workplace. Only if the ambiance in the office is fun, we will be eager to go to office. Otherwise, we may try to find some reason or the other to escape from the workplace ambiance.


It is unfortunate that even some of the so-called great business leaders do not accept the fact that fun environment in the office will improve the productivity of the employees. These leaders have a notion that people will naturally and automatically enjoy the workplace.  Especially, most of the HR managers wrongly believe that by creating a fun environment in the office, companies will be draining their limited financial resources.


These HR managers also think that such an environment may make the employees lax and the employees may break the basic rules that govern etiquette or may cross the thin line that separates decency and vulgarity.


But HR people will do well if they realize that if employees are suitably trained to use the fun environment of the office wisely, they will certainly enjoy their work and will be more productive. HR folks can bring out a drill that defines what fun is. They should put in place clear rules stating that employees should not make fun of other employees or the managers, they should not indulge in sarcasm and make demeaning comments about others, etc. In short, HR managers should make it clear to employees that efficiency does not lie in tiring oneself while working.


The role of humor in creating a fun environment at the workplace


Humor can do a world of good by easing the stress at the workplace. But not everyone can speak wittily but almost everyone may be able to participate and enjoy humorous situations. Such situations at the workplace can create a bond among employees. This will go a long way in helping the employees in working together to achieve the goals of the company. But again, people should be careful not to be sarcastic and not to pass demeaning comments about others.


Some of the ideas to create a fun environment at the workplace are:


1. Conducting events periodically for helping employees to showcase their talents in various spheres.
2. In the United Kingdom, companies conduct what are known as the "mobile phone throwing" contests. The person who throws his or her mobile phone to the farthest point wins the first prize.
3. "Office-chair race" is quite popular in Singapore companies.
4. Similarly, Polish companies use the "suggestion box" for generating innovative ideas from employees. The employee who comes out with the best idea is rewarded
5. Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart, was ready to wear a hula skirt and go dancing down the street when the challenges he set were met by his employees.


In short, if employees work in a stress-free environment, it will certainly lead to greater productivity. As Joe Neulinger who authored "The Psychology of Leisure" puts it, "Those not interested in doing anything but work are not likely to be CEOs."