BECOMING AN ASSET TO YOUR EMPLOYER
Last week on Career Exploits, I asked you a question, Are You a Resource or Nuisance to Your employer? The essence of the question was to get you to think critically about your relevance to your employer. This week, I want to share with you thoughts on becoming an asset to your employer.
Becoming an asset to your employer is not a chance thing; you have to be deliberate about it. You must consciously work to develop and commit yourself to your job to become an asset. The fact that many people are nuisance to their employers tells you and I that if you don’t make deliberate effort at becoming an asset, you will become like one of them.
Becoming an asset to your employer entails becoming very resourceful and create so much value for your employer such that your impact becomes undeniable. It means that just as the generating sets generate power that ensures efficient operation of the company equipment, you generate solution, ideas and services that is profitable to the company.
When you become an asset to your employer, there won’t be any doubt about your usefulness. There won’t be any doubt about your essence. Everybody will be clear on what will be lost when you leave the company. No sane employer wants to lose an asset to his organization. That is why when you develop yourself to become an asset, your employer won’t just wake up one morning and sack you to satisfy his ego.
Developing yourself to become an asset is core to your relevance in your place of work and rise in your career. That’s why it’s something you can’t take for granted. It says a lot whether you are in your position forever or rise to the top in your company and even your industry.
The starting point of becoming an asset to your employer is developing yourself to become resourceful. Arm yourself with knowledge, skills and experiences you need to be efficient on your job. That’s why I suggest you do only jobs you are competent to handle. Don’t accept job offers you can’t deliver well on and are not willing to get trained on; otherwise you will make a mess of yourself.
Take on jobs you have what it takes to do and even when you take up such jobs, don’t remain at a spot. Learn more and get better. Self educate yourself to become better than you were when you were hired. Learn from those ahead of you in your company and elsewhere. Usually, the resource you have today may not be relevant tomorrow. That’s why you should be able to learn more and develop yourself daily.
If you are still at the phase of learning and job search, the most important career step you should take is not writing CV or calling everybody you know to get you a job. Settle down and develop yourself into a resource. You should not just be an applicant; you should be a walking solution and that’s how you should present yourself to any recruitment panel.
It’s not all the time that the training and teaching we get in school is sufficient for the career path we want to pursue; that’s why you should take out time to refine yourself and train your hand to be able to do more and better work. Go for extra training and learn more from people. Get better equipped for the work you have to do.
When you can’t afford formal training, you should take advantage of the large volume of free resource at our disposal on the web. There is almost no limit to what you can learn on YouTube. There are many free books, podcast and blog posts that will enrich you with knowledge.
You can practice on your own to refine your skill and develop confidence in your ability to do your work effectively. Do free jobs just for the opportunity to practice. Get better until you become nearly indispensible to your employer!
I am not just writing to you; I share with you what I have always done and even now that most of the works I do is contract based, my client is my employer and I put in my best to become a valuable asset to them. I invest my money in books and consciously make out time to read them and take relevant courses to get better.
My point?
Build yourself into an asset for your employer by developing yourself into a resource person through learning, acquisition of relevant skills and a good grasp of your job description.
Meanwhile, if you need help with becoming resourceful to your boss, get in touch with us for a live or online coaching session that will help you put your time to maximum use. Do well to freely share this post with another person. It may be what someone needs to attain peak performance in his life and work.
