Tag: Job satisfaction

Goals 2014: 3 key questions to help you get more from your networks

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How is your job treating you at the moment?

Do you ever feel like your job skills are not being fully engaged?  Perhaps you are stuck in a dead-end post which does not help you meet your career development goals?  Or maybe your manager is not sufficiently interested in allowing your career to flourish?  Stressful isn’t it?

You probably want to do more to have your needs met.  The good news is that there are actions you can take, if the situations I described ring bells with you.

It doesn’t matter if you are in the US, the UK, the EU or further afield.  Your situation will improve if you are able to network effectively with peers, mentors, friends who can support your growth and whose growth you can also nurture.

Your three key questions

My experience suggests the basis of your action plan will flow from the following questions:

  • What precise outcome do you want from the professional people who will help you achieve your career goals?
  • In what way do you want your social network to provide you with more support?
  • As you take action on your own behalf what contribution will you make to the development of the people around you?

Your next step is to write down your responses, refine them, and fix a time to start your programme of action on the most important area on your list.

If you would like to see these principles at work, take a look at the link contained in the tweet below.  It sets out advice to an underemployed jobholder who wants their job satisfaction goal to be fulfilled.   Remember, taking action increases the likelihood your goals will be achieved; coaching support makes that outcome even more likely.

What’s your self-development goal this spring?  Check out the Archive at www.experienceyourlife.me for some inspiration.  There are more ideas On Facebook and Google+ too

Goals 2014: Six Actions To Help You Manage Your Stress Levels This Week

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Life is full of coincidences.  Fresh from posting about the impact of workplace stress, caused by poor management, I read a really useful article* by Lucy Dimbylow – @lucywriter on Twitter.

Lucy is responding to the question posed by the half a million UK workers whose stress and anxiety levels are too high: What actions can I can take to manage my levels of work stress?

The key actions I took away from Lucy’s article are:

  • Taking regular Exercise reduces stress
  • Following a healthy Diet aids positive mental health
  • Taking the Rest periods you are entitled to is beneficial
  • Making time to have Fun with family is important
  • Adopting a positive approach to Mindfulness helps you manage the aspects of pressure you can change
  • Seeking Support from those in a position to affect workloads, and job objectives, also helps

Having read that list here’s a final question for you:

  • What key action will you take, this week, to more effectively manage your workplace stress?

*The article appears in the spring edition of Benenden Healthcare Society’s subscription-only magazine ‘benhealth’.  Information on the society’s work can be found online at www.benenden.co.uk

Thin Blue Line

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Police Line (c) R Dennison June 2013

Police Line (c) R Dennison June 2013

Job satisfaction is important for most people, whether that is happiness for 40 hours a week, or during their shifts spread over a nine day fortnight.  If one’s goal is job satisfaction and that goal has been attained the world is a sunnier place.  Perhaps one might even say customers are satisfied interacting with happy workers, who in turn are able to enjoy life outside work.

Many people are not that lucky in their work.  According to its website there will be more than 31,000 officers and recruits in the Metropolitan Police Service in 2013/14.  From the customers’ perspective their mission to deliver Total Policing surely depends, in part, on job satisfaction and on all of the staff respecting the public and each other.

An easy milestone to reach would be ensuring the organisational culture support a goal in which ‘colleagues respect one another’.  Kevin Maxwell’s situation suggests there is still some distance to go before that milestone is reached.

The former detective has been successful in pursuing Employment Tribunal cases against the Met, after raising concerns having experienced some colleagues’ racist and homophobic behaviour.

I guess large institutions contain diverse views and there are management challenges involved in establishing a basic set of acceptable language standards.

It may seem a small detail, given the hugely challenging operational agenda the Met delivers.  Yet getting the details right may make organisational cohesion and corporate delivery a little easier in the long run.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/may/17/kevin-maxwell-gay-black-police-officer-hounded-out

 

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