Jennifer Baker

How valuable are you to your organisation? You must add some value, right? Otherwise, why would they employ you?

In a disruptive and fast-moving world, what’s valued today is unlikely to be the same as what’s needed tomorrow. The most successful organisations deliberately and continuously pay attention to where and how they add value. Not just frivolous tweaks but authentic added value that makes a real difference. All organisations need to think about improving efficiency. People are a significant resource where efficiency and added value cannot simply be increased by calling out an engineer.

As reported recently by the BBC, the debate about whether machines will eliminate the need for human employment is no longer just academic, with a study from Oxford University suggesting that 35% of existing UK jobs are at risk of automation in the next 20 years.

The most successful people live the wise words of Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”

Adding value is about identifying and understanding the needs of your organisation, your job and the key stakeholders. People who add value take control of their careers by:

  • Knowing their strengths and weaknesses and seeking to grow and develop
  • Understanding what motivates them
  • Finding a range of ways to show how they add value to the organisation
  • Communicating how they closely match the needs of the organisation
  • Understanding how others perceive them and actively managing these perceptions
  • Learning how to adapt and improve their jobs

As organisations evolve, jobs change to reflect the needs of the business. Employers strive to secure the right people with the right skills to remain viable in the short-term and sustain competitive advantage in the long term. These organisational requirements determine how jobs are structured, the sort of individuals recruited and how employees are developed once in place.

Taking control of your career means ensuring your skills, knowledge and experience mirror what your organisation wants now and in the future. How in control are you and what can you do to continue to add value?

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