Signs Your Job Is Bad
Tuesday, March 11, 2008 Filed in: People
Most of us have had a bad job or two, and certainly
more than one bad boss through the years. What are
the signs your job is bad?
The usual signs are common to most of us. We hate to go to work. There's too much month left over at the end of the money.
You Google to see the penalty for murder in your state. You're taking up voodoo lessons at the local community college and use your boss as the voodoo doll.
Most of us can boil our job and career frustrations down to three basic categories.
Anonymity - employees hate working in an environment where no one cares about their needs, whether management or other employees. We have lives, problems, desires, and workiing in a place that never shows a sign of care is bad for morale.
Employees, just like employers, have a hierarchy of needs, a list of what we want and need on the job. Invariably, they're never the same items in the same order on the respective lists.
Get those needs to synchronize and both employee and employer get what they want.
Irrelevance - employees need to know where they fit in the job and that it matters. Even jobs that are inconsequential can be satisfying if the employeee knows they're contributing. It's not satisfying if they feel they're not, even if they are.
Measurement - no one likes to work for an underperforming team. Employees want to know how the company and their efforts fare against others, including competition. Performance measured is performance improved.
When life on the job is good it's because of those three items being positive. Employees need to feel they're contributing something worthwhile, that they're considered valuable by management, and need a way to measure how they're doing.
Is that so difficult?
The usual signs are common to most of us. We hate to go to work. There's too much month left over at the end of the money.
You Google to see the penalty for murder in your state. You're taking up voodoo lessons at the local community college and use your boss as the voodoo doll.
Most of us can boil our job and career frustrations down to three basic categories.
Anonymity - employees hate working in an environment where no one cares about their needs, whether management or other employees. We have lives, problems, desires, and workiing in a place that never shows a sign of care is bad for morale.
Employees, just like employers, have a hierarchy of needs, a list of what we want and need on the job. Invariably, they're never the same items in the same order on the respective lists.
Get those needs to synchronize and both employee and employer get what they want.
Irrelevance - employees need to know where they fit in the job and that it matters. Even jobs that are inconsequential can be satisfying if the employeee knows they're contributing. It's not satisfying if they feel they're not, even if they are.
Measurement - no one likes to work for an underperforming team. Employees want to know how the company and their efforts fare against others, including competition. Performance measured is performance improved.
When life on the job is good it's because of those three items being positive. Employees need to feel they're contributing something worthwhile, that they're considered valuable by management, and need a way to measure how they're doing.
Is that so difficult?
