Part 1 — How Not to Get Fired!
It is never easy to write a piece like this and may not be in not in good taste — sorry. More so at times like this year in 2023 wherein global economies aren’t looking great and news of layoff surface frequently, rampantly. My belief in job stability is limited because one is only as good as the next project, the next manager, the next appraisal or the next recession.
My point of view is not what many would advocate, like, or align with. But then the idea here is not to agree or disagree or follow my point of view blindly but to stay alert, should such events surface around you, even if your compass is not aligned to these points. None of these is a figment of my imagination. I have seen them cause job losses over the years. Just one of the points that follow alone may not affect a job, for these points permute and permeate with the others in the list.
Happy, progressive and healthy organizations minimize signals, traits and practices that I have listed. And that means people become happier, create impact for their organizations and vice-versa. It creates a cyclic effect of input-output where organizations and people succeed interdependently.
So, please have a look. Ignore these if you don’t like them but I hope you will find at least one valuable. I used an approach and gave each point a title — in that if you don’t do it or track it, you run a risk.
Not Serving the Clients
No excuse will work on this if you are planning to offer one.
Clients, we know, are the reasons why we and the companies get paid. If you don’t have good relations with the clients; if you don’t serve them well then matter will escalate quite badly. Your organization can lose business and goodwill. Not paying attention to the clients will cause serious damage to your team and organization.
Not Complying with The Statutory or Security Goals of The Company
Easier to illustrate this with an example. Let us say an organization makes it mandatory for their employee to follow a certain protocol, education requirements or behaviors. It might be because:
· The client has awarded a sensitive project with some prerequisites.
· Certain protocols must to be followed.
· Business requires you to continue to be certified in some areas.
· There are audit or sanction requirements.
· Security requirements pertaining to process and data.
If you don’t meet these expectations then you may be off boarded from the project and in extreme situations, even asked to leave.
Not Exercising Integrity and Honesty
If a person is caught violating the values taught right from the school, then organizations can show the door.
Not Keeping Information Confidential
An example is insider trading. There are hundreds of examples of how one person or a group of people brought down empires of businesses by releasing confidential information to market. Whether such information goes out intentionally or not is secondary, the fact remains, people are held accountable by business and law enforcement.
So, exercise full and complete integrity in such situations — this is all about the values we were taught in our school days. No debate, or argument on this I presume.
Not Meeting Key The Performance Objectives
If you are amongst the lucky few who are given written performance objectives then make sure you work on these. Ask you leadership specifically what constitutes having met these objectives and how will your supervisor measure and agree that you have surpassed these expectations.
Schedule regular meetings to monitor and measure progress on your performance objectives. Get feedback early on your work and behavior correct the course. (You wouldn’t want a surprise at the end of the year.) Side benefit of this exercise is when you check performance progress periodically, you finish your annual assessments quickly and may not have to worry about the disagreements in the final hour.
Not Keeping Your Eyes Open Enough
Keep an active eye on — recession, revenue, net profit, funds coming into your organization, raises people are getting, liquidity, timely remittances, timely salaries and reimbursements. Money runs businesses not fancy presentations or lofty words. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. A large part of 2023 is the economic slow down causing loss of work.
People lose work because organizations run out of money or head towards bankruptcy. It helps if you save for the rainy day — at least 40% of your salary — every month. When you are in-between jobs, it provides the much-needed sleep and food on the table for your family.
Not Connected to Organizations’ Informal Social Networks
This claim is controversial. People that focus
a) only on work, or
b) don’t attend office parties, or
c) don’t socialize in the office
…are unfortunately at a disadvantage (sad but true). In that they don’t know the underbelly of the organization or what is happening behind the scenes. Often rumors are discussed and bickered inside these “informal networks”. Occasionally, some information emerges that indicates what may not be right in a team or the organization in general. Take it with a pinch of salt.
I am not at all advocating that you waste your time in parties, it is not a good idea. (More so, for dedicated and devoted people. It has the potential to throw them off-balance).
All I am saying is that such networks banter, and the chatter is abuzz, the trick lies in what to believe.
Not Getting Promoted (For A Long Time)
I don’t have to tell you this. You might be doing well in your role but still stagnating. Despite the incredible work you have done, the goals you have meet and quality deliverables you produce, you may still find yourself missing in promotion list. Why?
All merits being equal, organizations may not have budget, and you may not have a state-of-the-art relationship with your manager. I had heard someone say once,
“I see these 2 members doing so well and are same in merit but I like John so I will promote him.”
Result? You end up in a designation (quite) long and people tend to formulate opinions about the “real reasons” behind your inadvertent “slow down”. Ways to deal with this are to change:
· Your role
· Your team
· Your manager
· Or as a last resort, your organization.
Lack of promotion may be unintentional and it is brutally factual. Regardless, it affects you and you “appear” different to others.
Not Being Suspicious of Motives of People Around You
Trust people but use visors. Believe your hunches when people show their colors that you find odd. You can worry later if your hunch was wrong. I once worked with an ex-space scientist who said
“Always be little suspicious of what people report to you, so you can ask questions in that frame of mind.”
People that are genuinely nice and honest eventually become believable and you will know them as diamonds but until that happens, trust your instincts and do not ignore non-verbal signals. Better to see things factually, observant until you have established trust and bonded with people.
I once worked on a project where a person took the credit for my work and didn’t come to know about it until at least 3 months later. Of course, the mistake was mine in hindsight but then I too am trusting like most humans are. This person also bagged accolades and promotion at my cost. So, this is first hand.
Not Delivering as Per Your Experience
If you hear this, despite your rich experience — that you are not asking the “right questions” in line you’re your experience (though I wonder what right questions are 😊 and how people come to the assessment of the right versus the wrong questions, when saying goes
“There are no stupid questions, just unanswered ones”.
Business organizations tend to make heavy weather of people that they “believe” are not working as per their “experience”.
Interestingly, there is no metric or standard on what certain years of experience should translate to in the human capability and IQ. Yet HR and managers repartee as if they are scientific basis for such assumptions.
That said, they have the power to steer and rein in your career, so setup periodic checkpoints on the expectations before you are labelled. If your organization has mature processes with a documented expectation on years-of-experience to skills and behaviors, please use it. Such expectations are known by many names — skill map, skill matrix, competency levels, quantified role expectations etc.
If possible, observe how the tenured employees with your experience are doing. Perceptions are arduous to alter and can take forever to reset.
Part 2 follows.
Disclaimer: Views mentioned herein are my own. All copyrights, patents and trademarks belong to their respective companies and owners.
