Blog Week 39: What value do you add?
Monday 21 August 23.31
What value do you add? Simple enough question. Not so easy to answer. After all, how exactly is value measured in the office?
We have staff evaluations coming up in a few weeks and I am working on some of the related admin.
That is one of the questions everyone has to answer. I have no idea what to say.
Tuesday 22 August 23.01
What I did not mention yesterday is that this particular value-added question will be asked firm-wide. In addition to the challenges of merging the 2 Brussels' offices, the new partnership is starting to impose various management rules everywhere. All with the aim of creating one firm. Apparently our office should become like ones in the US and Asia.
No one knows for sure why the question must be asked in the first place. Mockney, the office grapevine, told me one inter-office rumour: some business guru said it is the key question to ask your staff and so a US partner recommended everyone everywhere answer it. The suggestion was immediately accepted as a great idea.
I wonder how some people will answer it? Take the Weirdo-type. It does not matter who you are, she'll have been at the firm many years before you arrived and still there long after you have gone. What will she have done during that whole period? Kept some partner some where at some point happy (which is not the same as being efficient, organised or a team-player). In Brussels value like that is an accepted part of the office landscape. Anywhere else, it just isn't recognised (let alone accepted).
Thursday 24 August 23.23
My boss is coming back next week. We have been in contact most days during his holiday, so it feels as if he was never really away. In my humble opinion he is really undervalued. No idea how much he gets paid, but I am sure it is not enough.
Something else arising from next month's staff evaluations is the issue of pay. Pay is supposed to be related to value. Well at least after the staff evaluations ...
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