How to Fix an Unhappy Employee
My BNET colleague Penelope Trunk's recent post The Worst Career Advice: Do What You Love got me thinking about job satisfaction. Her point is that the old adage "do what you love" sounds great, but is rarely achievable and creates a lot of pressure on us to hold out for the perfect situation. Why not lower our sites and do something that caters to our strengths and round out our job happiness in other ways, she suggests.
For me, Penelope's observation raises a related issue for managers: How to handle an employee who is unhappy in their job? If you like her and her work, you'll certainly want to move that person into a new role. The key is to match up your candidate with the right job. Here's how.
In his recent Harvard Business Review article Managing Yourself: What Brain Science Tells Us About How to Excel, psychiatrist Edward M. Hallowell informs us that people should look for jobs that offer the following:
- It's what we like to do.
- It's what we do best.
- The work is valuable to the organization.
This is also a useful gauge for employers trying to find a better fit for an employee. Look for a position to offer that is something they would like to do, that allows them to do what they do the best, and that is valuable work for the organization.
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