Tips on playing 'the game' at work

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Soldato
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By this I mean, making yourself seen to be good at what you do, reliable, pro-active etc. Generally a good employee. I'm not talking about faking it, but as most people know sometimes just doing your job well is not enough to impress the people high-up. How do you make sure that your manager's manager knows you're a good employee, for example?

Case in point. I recently had a review meeting, thought things were going swimmingly, had just come off a big project whcih went really well, had come back off of nightshifts onto days and was settling back in. Lo and behold the feedback I got was not good at all. I need to make myself 'seen' more (ironic since I've been working nights), I need to be seen as more pro-active, I need to be seen as being able to handle stuff that people throw at me. The problem is, I do :confused: Reading between the lines he was essentially telling me to play the game a bit more. Send more emails, copy him/others in, socialise a bit more (as opposed to running around doing the work, lol). The ironic thing was after the meeting he gave me a payslip showing my 28hrs overtime in the past month...

So anyway, without going off on one. What can I do to remedy this? I've now taken to being one of those annoying people that emails about everything (when a phonecall is quicker), copying others in 'just in case'.. but what else can I do? It's hard because my job is technical and I'm running around (I don't have a desk) competing with a lot of people that sit at their desk all day with nothing to do other than send email upon email.. and socialising if they're not busy :(

What do you do to play the game?
 
Most companies don't care about their IT department even though a lot of the time it can't run without IT unless they went back to the drawing board.

Remember, if you run about all the time fixing this fixing that it will make you ill eventually.

The biggest thing I remember is 'don't try to impress everyone', drop jobs that don't matter as much and make sure the jobs that do matter are done first.

Priorities, be in on time, speak professionally, show commitment. Don't always agree, let managers now you disagree but do the job anyway.

Over time they know how good you are.
 
I made a fake email account on the server and CC'ed that whenever I was sent an email from one of those proactive game players who cc everyone to look good.

Nobody ever noticed.
 
Ha I had my IPR last week, 33% up YOY, next to no customer churn, operating in one of the poorest areas of the country......

By far and away the fastest growing site in the network, operating with the least resources....


3 out of 5 "competant"

WTF!?!?
 
I HATE people who CC everyone else in just because they think they are clever.

Once the job is done, CC the person who they CC in and that soon stops ;) ! I did it and my manager of the other people who kept CC'ing others in asked why I did it and basically told them it was because they did it and it was a follow up, and if they never did it, I wouldn't do it....

That soon stopped ;)
 
atpbx said:
Ha I had my IPR last week, 33% up YOY, next to no customer churn, operating in one of the poorest areas of the country......

By far and away the fastest growing site in the network, operating with the least resources....


3 out of 5 "competant"

WTF!?!?
Click to expand...

Assuming they use a bell curve then I'd give you 3 out of 5 too if you didn't bother asking why it was 3 out of 5 and what you could do to bring it up.

You should have walked out with 5 out of 5 or a full understanding of why you didn't.
 
mrbell1984, I don't work in IT. Unfortunately I do work in film/TV where appearances are everything! In layman's terms I support our editing/grading suites so I spent most of my time in them making sure things run smoothly. It's all behind the scenes. The people I work with 90% of the time are the operators who need me on the end of the phone to deal with stuff. They're sitting in the suite with the clients so time is of the essence. I won't get emails, it'd be a phonecall. I'm not so involved with our schedulers/admin people who are always on the emails etc.

vincent1989 said:
getting on in a job is 20% knowing what you're doing and 80% making sure everyone else knows it.
Click to expand...
And this is what I learnt in that meeting!

What's ISO9001? :confused: :p
 
ISO9001 is a quality management standard, part of which requires the company to monitor , set goals and appraise staff on their performance to ensure continuous improvement.

In my experience of it, it's a paper exercise - your pay appraiser still comes down to what your supervisor and boss thinks of you.
 
Sounds quite easy - do you go to meetings? Do you say anything in these meetings? Do you question what your colleagues/managers say?

Not sure why cc'ing people in on emails has come into it. Also, don't call it socialising - it's networking and it's a good chance to talk about work in an informal setting e.g. when the boss has had a few.
 
So what have you done to improve your job in the last year? Why do you have to work so much overtime just to do your job? Can't you be more efficient and work just 9-5/5:30 and not have to put in so much overtime?

Do you have stats on call resolution/rates? How many resolutions did you get compared with your peers?

Reading between the lines, it seems they want you to do more than just your job. Doing your job is what you are there for, if you don't improve or at least show some stats that show some improvement, why should you get anything other than a middle-of-the-road rating?

The way you get noticed is to improve things for your customers/clients - if you're working overtime fixing the same problems, then the customer has the same problems too - and staying late to fix it doesn't improve anything. I'm sure both you and the customer would rather you didn't have to fix it after hours.

Keeping track of overtime is good, but you need to use it for something other than day-to-day activities. I had to work out how much overtime I do on a regular basis to implement changes and improvements that the business doesn't allow us to do, or at least won't pay us to do. And last month I clocked up over 40 hours. Unpaid.

It's not a case of playing the game. It's doing more than is asked or expected of you, and also showing initiative to make improvements where you see fit without being asked to do so. If playing the game means having a chat with the customer/client outside of the office, say in a bar or something, and finding out what problems they have that they can't or won't talk about in the office is invaluable to be able to be more pro-active. Socialising, in this context, IS working. It's just a different approach to finding out what the problems are.
 
In a recent efficiency scoring i got a C for proactive development (ie attending courses, training, CPD etc) this despite the fact that i'm not actually allowed to do any any extra hours as they wont pay it (unless i work for free i guess) and the NHS doesnt pay for any travel costs for training or courses nowadays! (cutbacks) :rolleyes:
 
I played the game a bit at my last job. Of course I performed well, but I also made suggestions to managers, put myself forwards for tasks, and made sure I was friendly with the boss and regionals (always went up and shook hands when they were in).

Hoping things go well at my new job! Going to attack my new role to try and get a good start.
 
To quote someone or other: "Life is not a popularity contest. Oh wait, it is." If you are popular, you'll get praise; if you are not, you'll get criticism. Most forms of appraisal just measure how much your boss likes you. Except 360 degree appraisal, which measures how much the rest of the team like you are well. But at the end of the day, you need to make friends. Not just with your boss (which helps), but with everyone - because they all talk to the boss as well. Your actual performance is all but irrelevant.


M
 
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