In today’s competitive environment, work is an exercise in constantly keeping pace with your colleagues. If you’re running a business, you need to keep pace with your competitors – even if they’re run by friends. At every level, you need to have something new to offer, justifying yourself to shareholders, to customers or to your employer.
As long as you don’t let it drag you down into petty competition this can be a good impulse: it keeps your skills top notch and ensures you are valuable both your current employer, or any others in the event you are looking for work, but it does live with you the question ‘How do you get ahead at work?’. Today, we’re looking at some answers for you.
Take the Lead
One thing that really impresses is to take the lead for your team. If there’s something you can see your whole team would benefit from, speak with your manager and HR about taking responsibility for organising some training. If you looking in London, training room hire can be expensive, so an endorsement and even budget from HR can help you get what you need done.
This doesn’t just result a team of workers with newly polished technical skills, but also a newly defined reputation for you as someone who gets things done, and creates solutions.
Focus on the Benefits…
For your employer, in this case. If there’s any additional professional qualifications that are relevant to your job (like accounting qualifications), or skills that would let you contribute more (developers and programmers have an almost never ending range of strings they can profitably add to their bow), or certification (even First Aid skills can be useful), there’s a case to be made that your employer should contribute to your costs.
If adding skills and qualifications would benefit your employer as well as you, it’s worth at least discussing with them how they can support you. Even if they can’t contribute to the cost of classes, they may be pleased to allow you a little additional time off for your studies. It’s worth making a strong case: taking the time to explain how this would let you do more at work makes your argument stronger.
Annual Appraisals
These can be awkward conversations if you’re not fully engaged with your job, but if you want to excel and develop, it’s worth making the most of them. It’s a chance for you to set targets for the year ahead, and for your manager to discuss how they can support you in your aims.
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