What is needed for you to take initative and be proactive at a job?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This has been a regular topic among my colleagues during lunch time, and I wonder what opinions the Dopers have on it.

What happened was that in our really small company (with a full time staff of no more than ten people), partnering with a larger company, had been receiving a barrage of emails how we should take initiative,. go beyond the call of duty and etc.

Of course on our side there was expressions of outrage. Here’s the lowdown -

  1. The staff are already stretched to the limit
  2. The pay aren’t really stellar

So they were saying that if the bosses want the staff to go beyond the call of duty,they should increase the pay and perks and etc.

But besides just raw pay alone, what would cause you to go beyond the call of the duty? Or only the all-mighty dollar prevails?

2

Opportunity. Sometimes a small company partnering with a large one means that if the small one comes through, it means much more business in the future. More business means more jobs which means more opportunities which means more money.

Imagine if you had a small company and got a $250,000 contract from GE, or Microsoft, or Boeing. You don’t get paid until you produce the work, so no extra money now, but if you do a great job, it could mean a $5M contract in the future. If that $5M contract comes in, there are going to be a lot of promotions and raises, and who do you think is going to get those?

3

Well, the best motivators that I can think of are ownership and/or direct sharing of the consequences of ones own work, but I doubt that you can get these from the parent company. :slight_smile:

Beyond that, I have a pretty strong work ethic (yeah, I’m a lifer), but I have to manage my work as part of my whole life. I probably put in 100 hour weeks after my factory caught fire, but I have also cut back during a family crisis or two. I’m pretty fortunate to work with people that will take care of me if I take care of them. If I need to cut back, then it s with the understanding that they may have to do the same.

4

Ooh, just to clarify, the barrage of mails come from our own boss, not the larger one. The issue here is even though our company is a small one his attitude is as though he’s a big boss (partly due to the partnering, I guess)

5

I used to have stickynotes at work that said “People work for money. If you want loyalty, buy a dog.”

I do more and more varied things than most of my co-workers, mostly because I’m bored. I like playing with Access and Excel and Cognos and do special report development. But I recently told my boss that what I was doing was a free sample - if they wanted it to continue they’d have to pony up more money.

StG

6

That depends on the company, and can have a big effect on motivation. Some places will acknowledge and reward employees for working hard on projects that bring in lots of revenue, and some only reward the managers or executives. The company I work with keeps everyone informed on our revenues and profits for the year, and at the end of the year those profits are shared back with all the employees. This year-end bonus can equal six months’ to a full year’s regular pay. Not only is the money itself good, seeing a direct connection between work and reward is a huge motivator.

This office is the exception, unfortunately. Many others are not nearly as generous or transparent.

7

Having been in many promotion and reward meetings, the good stuff comes after the hard work, not before. That assumes hard work will lead to good stuff in a company - if a boss expects you to go the extra mile, and then tells you there isn’t money for a reward, then he shouldn’t expect anyone to ever do it again.

There are plenty of ways to reward people without breaking the bank. At Intel there are drawers full of little stuff, that almost anyone can give to someone who does something special for them. Little stuff like movie tickets and T-shirts. Sharing in the reward is good also, but that only happens at the end. The small rewards happen all the time.

8

Personally, I work at 100%, speak up when I think something being done poorly, will make suggestions for things my boss should have me do, etc. What I don’t do is work overtime. I agreed to work X hours per a day, and that’s what you’re going to get.

My wage guarantees that I’m there, not that I’ll work at a certain level of oomph. So far as I’m concerned, the instant I’ve accepted someone’s money, it would just be being an asshole not to do my best and try and make as much money for them as I can. That’s what I assume they’re paying me for.

So why wouldn’t you try and do your job, at your job? Wouldn’t taking money from someone and then not doing your best for them be being dishonest?

9

I recently left one employer that paid close to $40 k a yr and joined one that paid $28 K a yr.

Why?

several reasons

  1. Enjoyment/personal satisfaction. The job I left was a stress filled game of responsibility avoidance, managed by egotistical lifers who were only doing it because they were too ignorant, afraid and incompetent/dishonest to do anything else. I was literally having nightmares about going to work, only to wake up, and have to go to work… it sucked. New job, I get handshakes from involved management who have been promoted from the ranks, at the end of they day I drive home with a smile on my face, knowing I did a great job and that my talents were appreciated.

  2. Growth. The company I joined is growing, not just financially, or in number of locations, but in opportunity. With in 2 yrs I will be making at least as much as I made in the previous job, and after that the potential just goes up.

  3. Freedom… I am a creative innovative person. In my old position, that made me a risk, as upper managment were afraid that I would come up with an idea that would subsume their authority. My new job actually rewards such behavoir (innovation, creativity, that is). The old job was "don’t rock the boat… the new job is “wow, what a great boat design!”

  4. Corporate culture… Obviously the previous job had a toxic, negative and even poisionous culture. The one I am currently with has a warm, sincere and friendly, open culture…

  5. I am lucky… My wife is the main bread winner… (even at $40 k, she was making the "big bucks, and has a job which offers full benefits for family)… It gave me the room to make this financially negative move… and she says the smile on my face is worth it…

  6. Profit sharing. My good work counts, directly towards my pocket book. Current prifit sharing will kick in for me after 18 months employment… Given current growth curves, this alone will represent between 30-40% “bonus” over my regular salary…

  7. Corporate Ethics. My current employer supports many causes I believe in… My previous employer supported injecting mercury into war orphans and then making them wrestle for food … (not really, but close)…
    regards
    FML

10

I’m naturally proactive, but what I need is positive feedback. It can take different forms: some people are more motivated by a pay raise, some by a cash bonus, some by a moviecard. The good words are essential, always.

Case a: minimum-wage job. I noticed we were preparing every day 1L of a certain reagent but never used more than 200ml. I told the coworker who was training me “you know, our scales are good enough to weigh 1/4 of the amounts indicated in the recipe, maybe we should prepare just 250ml?” He verified the info I was giving him and thought it was a good idea. Yay! Even if my calculations had been wrong or he’d rejected the idea for whatever reason, just the fact that he took it seriously counts as positive feedback.

Case b: high-paying job where we’ve been selected specifically for being “ideas people.” Both boss and internal customers have complained repeatedly about the quality of the documentation (prepared by the people we’re replacing). We check it out and yes, that baby blows harder than a force five hurricane. One of my coworkers tells the boss that he has been thinking about how we can modify the documentation to make it easier to read and manage; she berates him for “wasting time.” He ploughs on, saying he’s prepared a sample modifying the smallest document and would she take a look at it? She curses at him. As you can imagine, a couple more incidents like those lead to a lot of naturally-proactive people doing our best impersonations of a baroque church’s wooden statues.

In your company’s case, I think management should have started by lauding those times when you have gone beyond the call of duty. I worked for 5 years in a factory that had two “accidents with personal injury” during that time (both minor and in a month :smack:), yet every year we’d get these letters and pre-made slide presentations from corporate saying “we’re not doing well enough in security” - workers would complain that Those Fs From Corporate didn’t seem to know who the hell they were talking to (it was also the first factory in the company to get ISO9000 and got ISO14000 before it got published, being part of its worldwide pilot, we breathed EHS).

11

There are 10 of you full time and the boss is sending out crazy Emails !

  • he sounds like a right idiot
  • he ought to be down there with you, with his shirt sleeves rolled up
    (even if that is geographically impossible, the last thing he should do is send out idiotic Emails)

Personally I have no problems getting motivated, provided I can actually do something constructive. I once worked for Xerox UK, and found the place so incredibly stupid (people doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons) that I quit - shovelling water with a sieve is depressing.

Getting paid reasonably well is also pleasant, but once one has enough not to worry about covering living costs, then money is not the main motivation.

@Nava before Uni I worked a Summer vac in a soft drinks factory for a large UK company. I was in the syrup room measuring out and mixing up the ingredients for things like tonic water. I spotted that we would be regularly measuring out pretty small quantities of things like quinine and citric acid.

It made me think that it would be quicker and more reliable to make up standard kits in bags, so one evening I suggested that to my father who just happened to be technical director of the company. He said: ‘Oh yes, we are looking into that, we call it project Chicken Soup’

Unfortunately my cow-orkers did not know my ‘connection’, and turned down my suggestion.

12

Sage Rat - I was hired to do a specific job function, and was given the pay for that function. Now they expect me to do the job for hich I was hired plus report developing on the side, which I do in my spare time, take home and do, etc. I feel like I am owed the pay for the job I’m doing, not hte one I’m being paid for.

If I were hired to be a janitor but was doing surgery instead, I would expect to be paid more than $5.75 an hour.

StG

13

A long time ago my younger brother’s boss gave him some good advice, it ran along the lines of: ‘you do the job, and eventually you’ll get paid for it’.

Both he and I found that it was true - but if you are working somewhere that you don’t think will pay you properly, even after you have worked miracles, then it is time to quietly look around.

It is quite odd, at a certain point sensible employers realize that someone is not indispensible - but very hard to replace. At that point one becomes one of the ‘inside’ rather than a ‘commodity’.

14

Indeed, as said, don’t work overtime. If they give you work which exceeds what you can do in your agreed upon work hours, then either refuse or figure out some sort of agreement with your boss.

15

Easy: Get out of the way and don’t be overriding my choices, priorities, and decisions. I’ll figure out what needs doing, how to do it, how it should look when it’s done, and then I’ll do it. If you don’t like the results, either hire someone else or rescind the whole “please take initiative” thingie.

In short, if you want me to take responsibility, well, with responsibility comes freedom and authority.

16

For me, my amount of effort into the job can vary. Though I’ll try to do a good job always, giving “above and beyond” is basically an expression of my loyalty (or, in the absence of doing extra, lack thereof) to the company.

My last job had an atmosphere of always shouting and haranguing people to do more than was expected – all the while giving far more work than could reasonably done just to meet basic requirements, paying less than industry standard, and being a horrible place to work. That never works.

I moved to a different job for slightly less pay and I care more, and take initiative more. Why?

  • I feel that the pay, while less than at my old job, is appropriate for my job responsibilities. I don’t feel “underpaid”. At my old job, I did.

  • My boss and the company in general is flexible. I feel that it’s appropriate for me to be flexible and “give more” when they return in kind. My old place was “take take take”, always asking for sacrifices but never making any. If I want a day off here, I’m sure I’ll get it (or a very good reason why not). At the old job, it was a hassle, but I was expected to sacrifice my own personal time and change my schedule around without complaint.

  • My boss respects my opinions and is graceful in pointing out when I’m wrong, but generous in pointing out when I’m right. At the old place, any mistake was a sign of weakness that managers pounced on. Along the same lines, bringing ideas to the table was often seen as a hassle to deal with by management, so they weren’t particularly open or accessible.

  • There are resources to work with. I have time to look at different ways of doing things, or to improve things. At the old place, I didn’t have time, and even if I did, nobody else had time to work on new projects and we had no money to work with either.

  • The company is a good place to work and I see myself here in the long term.

Future profit-sharing and bonuses are nice, and certainly make me cherish my job more, but I wouldn’t say they’re a huge factor. Really, it’s more about my value of the job. When you are stressed out and having a hard time paying the bills, the last thing you’re going to do is spend time and effort on something you really don’t “need” to do - especially if, as it was at my last company, that any achievements wouldn’t be remembered come performance review time, and managers would often take credit for your work.

Plus, we had a big “kill the messenger” thing going on - anyone pointing out some basic changes to make to a certain thing would often be bogged down with a gigantic project to fix all of it, and then culpable when it failed due to lack of management support.

Overall, I guess, it comes down to morale and trust. Companies have to understand that they are in a relationship with their employees. Relationships can be positive but that has to mean that you’re not trying to squeeze every cent out of your employees every minute of the day.

17

I like to shape my environment instead of my environment shaping me.

In my current role as part of the management team of a consulting firm, I have a lot of opportunities to do that. I run recruiting for our group (I’m not HR but I work with them). I project manage multiple projects with pretty much a free hand. I get involved with selecting vendors and selling to clients. I help make corporate policy and establish procedures. As it happens, my company pays me handsomely to do these things and the more I do them, the more they reward me.

The catch is that I had to get an MBA and ten years work experience being a worker bee, jumping from job to job until I could find the right company.

18

So I received one of those ‘emails’ from my boss too.

I was working on the company website (I’m just a student intern there, not a fully paid staff), and from my experiences with freelancing, I know it’s a good idea to keep the ‘client’ updated on my progress. So from day 1 I have been feeding the boss with updates and static screenshots on the website.

The site called for some fanciful PHP coding too. So I concentrated on getting those done instead of the visuals stuff, which I figured are minor stuff. (Dumb me recommended those cool PHP extensions. You know, going the extra mile and being a good corporate citizen and all that)

Then over the weekend, I got a 3 page email nit-picking on things like colour scheme, layout, the number of lines between the header and the paragraphs, why I am still using placeholder pictures etc.

The greatest beef I have is he said, something along the line, “Even though this is just a test website, I would like you to keep in mind that consistency of formating and appearance is very important to maintain a corporate presence.”

Hello, which part of “this website is under development and is just a draft” does he not understood? Worse, I only have one day to implement 10 changes before a review meeting. He had all month long to comment on everything I was doing (I got the email trail to prove that) and he chose just to do pull a whammy like this.

What really, really ticks me off is that never once in the email he thanked me for those PHP features which I have voluntarily implemented, or pointed out which are good parts that he would like to keep (I got a super-generic “Change the colour scheme to fit a prior design” instruction, and I changed everything only to find out later he meant it specifically just for some text elements). The whole email was nit-picking, bitching and whining.

At that moment, any desire to go the extra mile died the sad death of a small brown dog. I guess in the end it’s not just raw pay, it’s also how you have been treating the staff.