how much value do you bring?

How valuable are you?
I used to be the laziest person I knew, at one stage in my life I think I slept about 14 hours a day and not the other way around. Fortunately I had a friend who knew someone who offered me a job.

The job wasn’t the most complex. Admittedly I couldn’t do it for a long period of time but it taught me a lot about deadlines and commitment. Being young I didn’t have family commitments, so I didn’t have to worry about rushing home to see the kids therefore I had no problem with working long hours and public holidays, the job had to be done after all.

When I moved to Reebok a lot of my laziness had been beaten out of me, not at first, when I started I still didn’t truly understand why work was called work and not fun. My time at Reebok was a serious learning curve. I was on a commission structure and therefore if I didn’t work, this meant, I didn’t receive any money for the month. I felt like giving up so many times, thinking this just wasn’t for me. What taught me was that things don’t happen overnight, you have to work for them.

My time in my first job taught me just how much you could get done in a day if you put your mind to it and my time at Reebok taught me that if you push eventually you make things happen.

Then I moved to the big city, Getting up at six in the morning and leaving work at 7 some nights isn’t fun, but I’ve realised that times are hard and although I have a job my salary is still based on my performance so long hard hours have become a part of my life. Admittedly I never really gave too much thought to this because it’s just my ingrained in my personality to work hard if it means I will earn more, let’s face facts I like nice things.

So I work hard, now to get to my point I need to give you some background, I am in recruitment and we are heading into a recession, if people aren’t being employed my company isn’t earning money. So my company like many others have been going through a bit of a hard time and they are looking to stream line. If you are not a contributing party these days you are not going to stick around, the days of doing the bare minimal are gone.

My bosses had a meeting with us the other day where they put our last six months earnings up on a screen and where the figures show I was the top earner over the last six months, now I’ve only been in this position for the nine months so to be achieving the way I am is very unusual, but I put it down to gritting my teeth and working till I sweat. Looking at our figures I was safe to say the poo hit the fan I would probably “fingers crossed” still have a job.

Have you asked yourself recently if you are bringing value to your company? Or are you just coasting by getting your pay check every month but not really contributing?


Just some thoughts let me know what you think and please feel free to join this blog.