A comment that I regularly get from the old school is that you have to have Pride in your work. Why don’t you work harder? Why don’t you stay longer? Have some Pride in what you are doing!
I am intrigued, why do you have to have pride in your work? As far as I am aware you are employed to complete your work to an agreed standard and you will receive a wage or salary to a agreed standard. Having pride is not necessarily the most efficient way of achieving this result.
But hold on, don’t you need to work harder and longer and show pride if you want to progress in your chosen field?
Well maybe.
I have found that the same people who have made these comments about working harder, longer and with more pride are perhaps the ones who have worked harder and longer than the people who have been promoted ahead of them. They may be hard working, but at the end of the day their strategy for progressing through an organisation is flawed.
Don’t get me wrong, I strongly acknowledge that at times you will be required to work longer hours and go through periods where you work really hard, but there are time where you will be able to button off a little and produce the results that allow you to collect that paycheck.
A friend of mine, Karl, (Not his real name!) is having a few problems with the old school. A person who he assists believes that he should work harder and longer and have more pride in what he is doing.
Now the work that Karl produces is second-to-none and the person who he is assisting goes to great lengths to tell him that he is not calling his results into question. Karl delivers the results direct, on time and in full every time.
The friction is caused by the fact that Karl does not look as though he is working hard, he comes in a 8:30am and has lunch for an hour at 1pm and leaves at 5pm. Karl follows the guidelines and ticks all the boxes and produces the results.
Karl is still regularly told “You are not working hard enough, you must have more pride in your work”, it seems that Karl’s workmate is more interested in the process, and making the process as difficult as possible rather than concentrating on producing quality results.
In this instance it would seem that if Karl made it look hard and did not produce the results, his workmate would be happier. Which is ridiculous.
The person who wants you to work harder and longer with more pride would seem to have a greater emphasis on the process that you take to get the end. Process is important in some jobs, take the Bank, processes need to be followed to protect the customers and stakeholders money which is fine, however these processes should not get in the way of providing good service to customers. The processes at the bank are engineered not to impact too greatly on customers, however employees interpretation of these processes can impact on the service that they receive.
If the results are achieved to the agreed standard, shouldn’t that be more important. Basically who cares about the process? A firm is judged at the end of the year on how profitable it is. Results improve profitability, process impedes profitability.
How has the work harder and longer brigade impacted your job? Do you produce results in quick time and the old school still not acknowledge your output?
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Pride is not something one can “force” on someone else. It has to come naturally and willingly.
I think that not everyone *likes* the work they do. They are forced to do it for monitory reasons. As a result there is no pride in what they do….
Some people will be naturally talented but for those that aren’t I believe we need to put in ‘the hard yards’ to develop the skills and experience to be able to produce the work that we can be truly proud of. The key part however is that the hard work should be put in with the focus on learning and also building a reputation.
I guess what I’m saying is that at first you need to work hard in order to build the skills necessary to work smart which is what will get you the promotion. At the same time however, learning how to promote yourself and take advantage of opportunities is also a necessary skill. There is no one skill that will make you successful it’s the combination of several.
I have just started a new job (as of three days ago at the time of this posting). With this job has come a dilemma:
Should I work longer hours (or ‘appear’ to work longer hours) in order to get off to a great first impression with my colleagues (and more importantly, my boss)?
In my three years of professional full-time working history, the majority of said ‘work’ has been conducted in cruise control. Show up when I need to, do what needs to be done with minimal effort, then get the hell out of there as soon as possible. I’m young and I don’t take kindly to responsibility!
As I get older, is it time to change the way I think in order to climb the ladder faster? Should I show more initiative, be more proactive, and possibly even take my work home with me in order to be 100% prepared for each and every day on the job!?!
Some people will have the opinion that “They’re not paying me enough to work this hard”. I’ve heard this many times before. But how can I expect to get pay rises in the future if I’m not currently viewed as a hard worker? How can a company justify offering me more money if they think they’re going to get the same (or possibly less) work out of me? How will I ever reach that level where my pay reflects the amount of work I put in AND I am getting paid enough to satisfy the majority of my needs (and greed)! Does this even exist? It seems to me that I’m chasing the end of a rainbow here.
Agree completely with your post Luke…
Perhaps the term Pride has been replaced with ‘Quality’ in this day and age by the new-school?
I think there has also been a shift from the blue-collar (i’m not trying to sound class-est) mentality of being on time, doing the hours & the work will get done, to a priority of getting the work done & moving on.
FYI- i dont work for pride, i work for money, as everything i want to do in life (travel, food etc… i.e. living) costs money…
@ Shamelle: “that not everyone *likes* the work they do. They are forced to do it for monitory reasons. As a result there is no pride in what they do”
@Emerey: “i dont work for pride, i work for money, as everything i want to do in life”
I agree, I guess where I headed with this post is that if we can minimize the parts of a job that we don’t like, either by cutting them out if they are unnecessary, of finding faster ways of completing those tasks then we can concentrate on the aspects that we like, generally these will be the parts of the job that add the most value (Profit/Wage/Salary) for all involved.
@ Emerey: Good point about quality, quality work should be rewarded, if the results that were sought are obtained then who cares if you have pride!
@Conor: It sucks how sometimes you need to appear to be working hard, what sucks more as that some workplaces will reward you for your appearances rather than the results you produce. It shouldn’t matter that you can produce the results by concentrating on work for only a couple of hours a day!
The problem is that some workplaces will argue that they pay you to be there from 8-5 (or whatever you are contracted to) Surely it would be more beneficial to say; we pay you for the results you produce and we don’t care how long it takes, if it takes you more that 40 hours a week, then you have to work out how to do it faster, if it takes you less than thats fantastic, lets reward you for it.
@ryanchadwick; granted you are not able to just waltz in to something and be able to do the job faster/better/stronger. It does take time to learn what the job entails and the nuances of getting the work completed. Learning the ropes can be completed faster by working longer and harder.
But, once you are able to complete tasks faster, shouldn’t you be able to take advantage of the time you save to use how you like? Learning should be apart of this new use of time.
Yes, that is pretty much what I was saying. You need to work hard at first to learn in order to work smarter which tends to get the job done better in less time.
Now what is done with the extra time is a good question. I guess there are a lot of factors involved like the type of work you do, how you are rewarded for it, what your boss is like, what promotional possibilities there are etc. Everyone will be different.
I’ve figured out that the amount of time I spend at the office is more important to managers than my actual output. So, I stay back an hour some days and…read blogs. Or type away at my novel. Sometimes I’ll get to work super-duper early and do this too. I don’t see it as doing anything wrong – I work all my required hours, I’m just physically at my desk for a bit longer than I have to be.
Strange, isn’t it? I am a big believer in output vs hours worked.
@curiousjessica, thats great, work the system to your advantage!
I have tried this in a job I had in insurance, the only problem was the extra couple of hours a day that I was on the internet added up, I was the heaviest user in the whole company! That put me at the top of all the reports and my boss could have made life difficult! Thankfully common sense was applied and he let me know that my spike in internet usage had been identified and I needed to dramatically reduce the amount of time I spent reading blogs!