Viewing Your Job from the Right Perspective

In today's world of work, many employees have developed a needless proclivity for job-hopping rather than finding and improving themselves on a stable job. The situation is far worse in organisations that do not provide a conducive work environment for their human resources. But is frequent job-hopping really the solution to finding a great job? Going in search of the perfect job is an elusive dream that will eventually be crushed by the harsh realities of the labour market. The uncomfortable truth is there is no perfect job anywhere, but you can make your work perfect by taking pleasure in it and this means that you choose to stay your mind on the immense benefits that you stand to gain rather than focusing on what is missing in your current job.

"Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work" - Aristotle

Is the sound of your alarm in the morning signals misery or you never want the weekend to ever come to an end? This is a clear sign that your job is uninteresting and has become a pain in your neck. Unfortunately, this is the daily reality of quite a lot of people who do 9-to-5 gigs.  What you probably may not realise is your current job is someone else's dream job. The same job that you do that has now become a demoralising bore is what another person might be wishing for. So be delighted in your present assignment even as you are on the lookout for openings that will aid your career advancement.

For a long time, many people have always thought the purpose of a job was to offer a source of income to employees and enable them to meet their personal and family needs. But if money is all your job has to offer, then you might as well consider looking elsewhere. Typically, a good job should offer you two basic things - opportunities to earn and learn - amongst other benefits. You should be able to earn a liveable and reasonable wage and also be able to improve yourself personally and professionally. When a particular organisation only gives you one of the above, we can safely conclude that it is a glorified sweatshop.

Now we will examine some of the other benefits that a good job can offer you, aside from the conventional opportunities to both earn and learn, and this exercise should enable you to better appreciate the work that you do on a day-to-day basis. These benefits include:

• A sense of community - Essentially, organisations regardless of size or nature of business are made up of people and when human relations among employees and managers are cordial, it most likely enhances employee satisfaction on the job.

Employees also tend to perform better on their jobs when they are genuinely happy and can find supportive relationships around them. Workplace intangibles like company culture and the social climate within an organisation matter just as much as the physical resources at its disposal.

• Opportunities for career growth and advancement - Employees do not tend to give their best to their employers when they feel there is an iron ceiling over their heads and that no matter their level of effort, opportunities for promotion would be hard to come by.

Women often feel hard-done-by when it comes to career progression because of the age-long sentiments held up against them in the workplace. People perform better on the job when a level playing field is provided for all irrespective of ethnicity, gender, social class, or religious inclination.

• A Sense of Authority and Initiative - A good job could give you a platform to unleash the "intrapreneur" in you and this might just be a vital dress rehearsal for your entrepreneurial endeavours when you finally quit that job. Intrapreneurship would also allow you to demonstrate your indispensability to your employer and you may never have to worry about job security.

Intrapreneurship gives room for employees to try out their ideas, no matter how unconventional those ideas might seem at the beginning. Such employees are allowed to fail on multiple occasions - usually at the expense of the organisation - until they finally get it right.

• Opportunities for Exposure - A good job could give you opportunities for exposure far beyond what your daily experiences would normally give you. Many people have had to acquire new language skills, travel around the world and even meet public figures by virtue of the jobs that they were doing at the time.

Such exposure on the job often remains with the individual for a lifetime and would usually form the bulk of the memories that the employee has about that job. While there can be no solid argument against the relevance of formal schooling, exposure can still give an individual what traditional education could not give him/her.

• Opportunities for Mentorship - A good job could give you fantastic opportunities for mentorship with persons who you might not have had the chance to interact with outside of your job. Mentors can help you accomplish in five years what took them ten years or more to achieve. That's the power of leveraging that mentorship makes available to you.

On the flip side, you might also get the opportunity to mentor others and make a significant contribution to the next generation of leaders and managers. The mentorship experience can be deeply gratifying and may also help you connect with a higher sense of purpose in life.

Does your current job offer some or all these benefits? If your answer is yes, then you should focus on the benefits that you stand to gain from your job; see the glass as half-full rather than half-empty. Dwell on the good things that your job has to offer rather than thinking about those things that are missing in your current job. Focus on the positives and ignore the negatives.

Looking at your job from the lens of the listed benefits may help you to realise that your job gives you much more than just learning and earning, it could help you build a solid resume that will help you secure a better job as well as many other benefits. It all starts with going into a time of reflection about your current job itself.