- Challenging work
- Ability to make an impact
- Strong career path
- Good relationship with your superiors
- A place I would be proud to work
- Internal transfer opportunities
- Values employees contributions
- A company with a long-term strategic vision
- Flexible work arrangements
- Excellent compensation & benefits
- Strong employee development
- Job security
- Good work/life balance
- Good relationship with your colleagues
- Culture that fits my personality
One interesting thing to notice is that there are 15 traits. In other words, you can only pick 33 percent of those elements. I would not only go and tell which is my top 5. I will also tell which are my middle 5. I will also tell which are the bottom 5. I am going to rank all of them alright! The way I rank them will be based on the importance of our present situation with our working environment.
Top 5 in the following order (This emphasizes on making the individual to emphasize on their personal life, to be individualistic, creative, original, and be a more integral part of society)
- Good work/life balance: This is unquestionable. Yes, it says we should still have a good split of the personal and non personal. That is not the ideal solution (for things to be split). However, it is better to have a good work/life balance than one only focused with work. I have mentioned in my previous blog posts, the effects of an individual living all his life in non-personal events. Maybe you can see that blog post for more details? It basically answers why this is top 1.
- A company with a long-term strategic vision: This is the second most important one. How can you implement an engine that sucks the liquid of oil nonchalantly like a maniac hungry pig in the next 10 or 20 years in your organization? I may now be acting silly or too poetic, but I have already explained on my blog article "when things go out of haywire in companies" and on other blog posts in this site the following: Do you expect a company's chain of good work from the client to the developer's end be in good faith when there is no vision and the only focus is how to make the most money? There should be a very deep interest of what path the product or service will be in the next 5-10 years.
- Internal transfer opportunities: This is a very important thing. A person should work in a role where the specific role is best fit. If it does not exist in the working organization, it is better to create it. This supplements the good work/life balance. The employee will have more interest on a work that he feels is more personal for him. If there are too many workers that work in that specific field, you have no choice but to let him work in that field. Of course, before the company organization amends this need to make the job more rad, fulfilling the previous requirements 1 and 2 are more important. I am going to say that this is very closely related with "good work/life balance". If the worker works on a job that dislikes to do and he quits the job, can you imagine the consequences of him? Nobody will hire him for the same wage he already gets for something he likes. The thing he likes is not what he is experienced at. The thing that he does not like is the only thing he is experienced at. That will make him more prone to get the same job for the existence of his experience. Things may be better for him if he works in another company, but it will not be the most ideal for him as much as working on something he really liked. Can you imagine working with co-workers that do not like their job too much? Can you see the big picture scale effect of companies not having internal transfer opportunities. Even if it does not affect you, it will affect your environment with the co-workers you are working with. The idealistic transfer opportunity is for companies to transfer individuals to another company (this acts can even help improve public relations).
- Strong Employee Development: This probably was the most hard to understand of the 15 elements shown (not that it is unclear). Employee development means to gain skills. However, did I said in a blog post that skills are useless in this working environment as much as critical thinking? Yes, that is correct. Then why do I suggest that? Because in some sense, it is "required to get the job done faster and better" for the aspirations of management short term goals. You may be asking, "wait wait wait, you are doing circles with me, are you?". Of course I am not. I am just saying that skills should be learned on the working environment instead on your free personal time. Your free personal time is so valuable to explore your critical thinking skills. Let us say your work makes your non-personal work to be done faster and efficient with training. In return, the need amount of work will become less over time. This will bring plenty of space to explore critical thinking. Skills should be an easy task, something that you not need to be focused so much, to be like an "easy guide", such as reading a magazine. Work environment should provide that method so you do not waste your time. In addition, work environment should bring skills that only aid in making your current tasks faster. That in return will give you more time to explore your critical thinking which will guide which skills to get (only the ones you really need) for accomplishing your innovations and goals. Do not focus learning everything and whatever is new and demanding if that is not what you really want and where critical thinking did not guide you there (unless money is really critical or urgent that you have to aspire a non-personal life for the sake of it). What you need to focus more is to solve complicated problems that require critical thinking. If the work really does not leave any space for you to explore your critical thinking and does not have this trait, then yes, you are forced to find some time (your free personal time) to make the tasks more efficient. For that reason, if the work environment does not provide this trait, the work environment gets a big negative mark for it.
- Challenging work: This is probably so important, yet I put it as last. Why? Because like I said, the system we live in, is not the best. We have to have a balance with our life, so all of the other 4 previous traits will facilitate to that goal. But besides facilitating the goal of a better system for our life (especially for our current time that is critical), the next important thing is how to get the most out inside our "current working environment". What is better than challenging work? Too challenging work will make the employee performance to not be the best as it is his first or second try (hence, the term challenging). However, for the employee perspective, it may be the best moments the employee learned something even if that project in the end failed and debunked to smithereens. In that popular article that talks about mastering your profession within 10 years, that is true only if you try do the most challenging tasks every day. However, this has been explained and is known very well. It has been discussed so much in books, and I cannot argue, that it is an opening door to critical thinking, because challenging problems cannot be solved the same way as your average project does with your current assets of skills in the same method. You will need to combine your skills in a different way or incorporate new skills along the way. However, this aspect of challenging work, it is not the best road, if that is all you will drive for. First, the achievements of mastering your work will make society to progress at a slower pace than a faster pace. Improving stuff to better is one goal. But being original and bringing new innovations goes to another dimension. Beyond that being original incorporates within challenging work, it is much best for being personal and have the correct motivation to explore things in a way you can face and surpass the opposition of others with no fear (because you really know that is the only way to leap big changes that will transform society for a better place). This is not possible or easy at this moment. If you want to face challenging work, you will have to devote too much time, to even sacrifice your personal life. Workforce only looks at performance, so if you aim to do challenging work, you will not be able to implement them with the allocated time. One reason usually is because it does not contain the 4th top trait I set. Another reason is that some people can only achieve challenging work by sacrificing their personal free time to build up their skills. With that in effect, they will not have time to have too much space to spend critical thinking (maybe enough originality, but not enough originality to bring big leaps to our future). Because of the lack of critical thinking which is required to build understanding, they will not oppose the system and follow the system normal current flow.
Here goes the medium top 5 (relevant, but not critical). This emphasizes on helping the working environment to be a better place, especially for the employer, and for the employee being happy working there.
- Flexible working arrangements: That means to work at any point of time (remote, relocate, only night, work 14 days non-stop including weekends with X days break, etc.). This is really good. But notice, it is an effect, not a cause. Unlike the good work/life balance, it does not mean here people will balance your life for flexible working environment (though it can be a method to balance your life, not always). Maybe for the extra flexibility they give you, such as working at night or remotely, they will expect you to work more than you would inside an office. You may think it is a trust issue, but it is a compromise you are willing to give for the flexibility they allow you. In other words, if this was the top 1 trait, most employers would use it in a way to make the employee work/life balance to be shattered in pieces. With only this, the perception of the employer will not be in the goal of making the employee have a balanced good work/life balance which I think it is more important. For that reason, no commutes and able to spend your day with your family or in foreign nations anyways may be nice, but if it does not mix with trait "good work/life balance", that you are in risk of losing your job or your reputation for not following a task your employer details you to do, then this trait is not promising as it expects to be. If the company does not have any of the top 5 traits or does not have them, this is the best mediocre trait a company can have to mix or help the employee in some but not critical way. How would it be if employee had good work life balance with no flexible working arrangement? He could take days off as unpaid as mentioned on previous blog posts. In addition, employer could integrate the personal and non-personal in the working environment (though this is too idealistic to happen all alone by itself).
- A place I would be proud to work: There are two ways to be proud: In a cynical and in a non-cynical way. You can be proud and be cynical if you are attained your life all in non-personal objectives. Or it can be the other way around. You can be non-cynical about it if you really know you are making a difference. This trait is more a supporting role. Being proud reinforces that image of yourself (it either reinforces successful or idealistic critical thinking). It boosts confidence. Compared to flexible working arrangements allows you an opportunity to be personal to yourself both physically and intuitively, being proud reinforces (and much more than any other task) to your intuition having a sense of being correct. It is committing a duty, and whether it is correct or wrong, there is no better good sense of feeling than being proud. This is the gift we give to soldiers: give them the much pride they can have as that is the only joy they can have. What do I mean as the only joy they can have? Well, soldiers, most of them, will have physical injuries or lose their life. What other gift can we give them that will impact more better for them than to give pride for their work and for the families that have lost their sons? Most can be handicapped or have physical disabilities. It is a fact that is more hard to achieve your imagination where reality denies you the opposite with your limitations. For those cases, more meditating and more support on the intuition is required to balance our psychology. But besides soldiers, we all become stitched like soldiers in one way or another. We can get a serious chronic illness or a physical injury from an accident. In some sense, this trait is very important on periods where you will never know if those physical limitations will ever be lifted out or not.
- Values employees contributions: If the employer values the contributions of others, then it opens the door for employees to take the pieces they placed so far in a better structure for their future projects. Regardless if it was praised or constructive criticism provided, as long as it is seen that their efforts are valued for what they did and have a deep understanding of what the employee did, the employee will be more encouraged to step up the ladder of where he left off instead of being lost by management vision looking only on performance.
- Good relationship with superiors: Like the previous trait mentioned, this is a good thing, but not so good as 3. It opens doors of course. And that is the main reason it is here. Good relationship provides patience to understand each other. It can help the ability for the employer to value employees better. This trait is expected to come more from the employer, not the employee.
- Ability to make an impact: So far, all the top 7 we mentioned so far allowed you to do a better personal life and integrate yourself to a better person. In addition, you can do an impact in your free personal time (a lot of impacts with big leaps can be done out of work). However, won't it be nice if you can do big leaps within your working environment? Again, this is a supportive role, and it can be more contributing to the person when the company attains the top 5 traits. However, this would mix much and much better if the 8th and 9th goal already exist. Not only can you do impacts in your work, but they will be aligned with the upper management (the people that do the whole vision to the rest of the company). That is why the 8th and 9th trait is more important, because it is so critical for the impact to be achieved. Because as long as the 8th and 9th trait exists, even if they don't allow you to do a specific impact, they will not feel regret for you violate their rule and still do it. Isn't that much better than allowing you only and only having the ability to do a specific impact you do not think is so important as something else?
Worst 5. These are the worst 5. This either do not make a huge difference or are the worst for an employee to aspire for in a working environment. These traits are called the "escape path".
- Good relationship with colleagues: This is probably the least worst of all. What is bad with having good relationship with colleagues? They can help you make your work life better. They can help you when you are lost. However, this thing is usually not hard to get from a colleague, as your group is all "in the same boat". However, in the aspect of doing an impact to a working environment, management and the upper people are the ones that will control the ability to make an impact. Colleagues can one day become upper management, so it is not bad to make good relationships with them. However, lets be realistic, the biggest impact will be with management. Again, doing an impact to your work is not so important as doing an impact to yourself and your life (the top 5 traits mentioned). However, for that achievement, to impact the working environment, see the middle 5 traits mentioned above. I cannot see colleagues have good relationship with each other when only this trait exists in a company. They will be unhappy with their life and working environment, so what is to be happy about living in those constraints (it may even reinforce a negative image of the working environment instead of a positive one). Don't force to make good relationship with colleagues if you don't feel like it (you don't want to be a slave of reinforcing a working environment they lived and attest to be the only pathway to be successful). This is a sensitive topic. It may be seen it can help in a lot of ways, but at the other way it will not if the company lacks a lot of the other traits mentioned above. Thus, it is neutral on average.
- Strong Career: This sounds similar to job security. However, instead of saying you will always work, it means you will be able to work on another job if you ever get fired cause the things you learned will make your career "strong" and "demanding". The only reason it is not worst is because it gives you opportunities to go to another job that may be better with the "strong career" trait the company provided. To meet your ends (to have enough money to live a life that is "satisfactory"), this trait is not so bad to hop to another career. But if this is all you've got, then you know you are on the wrong fence of the road. If you picked this trait, put a small alarm on your head.
- Job security: What is worse when you have no strong career and instead have job security? Imagine. You. Being. Locked. On. A. Job. You. Do. Not. Like. Yep, exactly. Like those words that were locked from each other. If job security is all you attain to, to give up the rest of your amenities of your personal life, for the sake of job security, what can I say? If you picked this trait, put a small alarm on your head.
- Excellent compensation & benefits: Oh god! Do I have to say anything? You want to get on the bait and switch? To work for trading your soul? Good luck, you are more fool than you think, cause you will not have time to spend that money, or if you ever do, you will not spend it wisely or on the way you want. I have explained in my previous blog post that you should not fall on that trick (especially if its the only thing the company is positive about). If you picked this trait, then put a big alarm in your head.
- Culture that fits my personality: Wait, what am I seeing!? Successful Critical Thinking? Yes, it can help somehow? What will you do with people that think alike you? Why do companies now found diversity being important? You may say, "hey, you do not want to be a culture with people that think the same way in your visions? To think critically idealistically, to integrate work and life?" No, no, you do not understand sir. Culture is one thing. Personality is a completely different thing. Have you tried to explore your individuality first? Because most people cannot complete their individualism with the working environment nowadays. For that reason, most people are in a state blank state. Second, like professions, each giving a different need to make your life integral, personalities do the same for making your work a better place. Find a work where others can compliment your weaknesses and where your strengths can compliment the weakness of an organization. If this would have said "a culture that enforces diversity", then I would have placed it in the middle 5. In any case, in any case, this is the worst to strive and I do not know why to follow that? Job descriptions try to find people that are similar to what they have already dozen in their office? And then they ask why they still have the same problems? If you picked this trait, then , wait, do not put a big alarm in your head, but an extra large alarm in your head.
Again, this rank is opinionated, but I think it would be nice if all strive this rank in a similar way or in a similar positive interpretation as I do? If you are going to see job descriptions, what they will offer you is "peanuts" (the bottom 5). So please do a research of a company you want to work, because you also have a privilege what your standards are, not the employer just because they pay you.
If I have to give points of the 15 traits to get the best job?- +5 points for rank 1-5
- +3 points for rank 6-10
- +1 points for rank 11-14
- - 2 points for rank 15