photo from google search

It is up to you to keep your job

The first thing that comes to the mind of every fresh graduate once leaving the university is the question “where am I going to work?” how do I get a job. While some people get jobs immediately after leaving the university through connections or by merit, others settle to do just any jobs they can lay hands on just to get by while they wait to move on to something better. The rest may never work, some sit at home, others try their hands on new things; petty business or menial jobs. The Nigerian unemployment rate was at about 23.11 percent in 2019, according to reports projected to reach 33.5 percent in 2020. This is for some reasons we have the yearly influx of fresh graduates into the labour market and workers laid off from their jobs just to name 2 factors.
Working in an organization, be it an office, a factory etc can sometimes be as challenging as looking for a new one.
So how to keep jobs has become a very important question, people seek ways to keep their place in the office, nobody wants to go home, everyone wants to be in their bosses’ good book so people do all sort of things to keep their place, there is sabotage, there is animosity, betrayals, friends turn to foes bridges are burnt, gossips, office politics just all manners of sad stories. But are all these necessary for one to keep their place in an organization?
Well, in my few years of working the white-collar job, I have had some experiences, the good the bad and the ugly, I have also seen people who keep and even ascend in the office by doing things differently. So I want to share a few tips on how you can do things differently to be relevant and keep your place secured at work.

1. Know your job. Everybody who comes into an organization comes in to fill a particular need. It is always about doing something. No employer will recruit personnel just because he or she likes the person. You are employed to solve a particular problem. Find out what problem you are employed to solve, know about that problem, solve the problem.
2. Provide solutions; yeah you have identified your primary job in the organisation so that’s all you are going to do, I will just come to work, do my job and that’s all, that is what they are paying me for, I Can not do more than my paycheck, hell if you want to keep your job when or if things get uncertain as it is now in this pandemic season, then your job does not end there, you can find new ways to do your job, find out easier ways to do your job, be innovative, be resourceful, use your head. Always try to find out new ways to do old things, always do more than they pay you for.
3. Be a team player, no man is an island, especially in Nigeria, it is very difficult to do anything alone. It is not different in the office setting, people are there to help you and it will also be great for you to do the same for others. Do not see your colleagues as competition, avoid the too know sickness, be yourself, help people. At my former workplace, I had a colleague who usually made reports every day and each time she made the reports two out of every six reports she submitted to her superiors, there was always an error in the calculations she did. She had been working like that for over a year until about a month after I started working with her in the office. I pointed out that she could use the office excel to create a template and put in the formulas, this way she will have excel do all the calculations for her. I created the template for her and until I left the place, she used the template I created. There were no more errors in her reports. It was a simple idea and you can imagine how much it helped her work. She no longer got queries from her superior for the constant errors in her work. It also created a reliance on me because my colleagues always came to ask for suggestions on how to make their work easier for them.
4. Be a purple cow. When I read this book by Seth Godin, it talked about how to transform businesses by being remarkable. The same applies to persons who desire to be remarkable and indispensable in their organisation. Train yourself to be remarkable. People always expect their organizations to enrol or put them through training, which is a great idea, so Even though a few companies might do that for their staff, many other organizations will not do that. They would rather employ people who have gone through required training at the expense of the staff who is waiting to be sponsored for training. There are so many training one can enrol for depending on the relationship to your field; ACCA, ICAN, HSE, coding, public speaking, creative writing, Excel, PowerPoint presentation. Notice that these training can be done online from your home, and they do not require a bachelor in any specific majors. so after work instead of going home to Netflix, you can fuel all that energy into more productive tasks that are self-development. Find out relevant skills or certifications that will be necessary for your work, that will aid your promotion and start taking classes. The best time to start classes is NOW. the best investment you can make is in yourself the words of Warren Buffet.
5. A positive mindset, staying in a job has a lot to do with your state of mind, the vibes you give out. When you are always negative, it sends the wrong message. Things go wrong. Always stay positive.
6. Hygiene, have you ever come close to a waste bin, how bad does it feel to have one nearby? The moment you get into a room and perceive something foul, natural instinct is to find where the smell is coming from and get rid of it immediately. I can say the same of some people. At first, I really did not want to comment about this but honestly, people have lost jobs because of poor hygiene The reason people will not keep proper body hygiene is still not clear to me, like bro, this is your body, love it before another person can want to love you. Be it bad breath or oozing body odour or dirty clothes, nobody I mean nobody wants to be around these elements and no boss wants to have such persons around, they will find any slightest reasons to fire such staff. So looking good is very crucial. Looking good, differs from being expensive. Clean well ironed and fitting clothes, wear a perfume, brush your teeth properly, please I beg you to get an antiperspirant deodorant, this is the most affordable thing every person a man or woman should have in their closet.

I am sure you might have drawn some conclusions based on the suggestions given above, take the relevant points from here to make up for the deficits to ensure we keep our jobs after the pandemic

I hope everyone makes it through these rough times, keep safe, wash hands with soap and water regularly and stay at home.