Learning to Say No To Your Boss Without Losing Your Job
I suspect that most of us have been in the situation where a boss or an immediate supervisor asks you to take on another assignment. Given the state of the economy and the tenuous nature of most jobs, most employees believe that they have no choice but to accept the assignment despite the fact that it will likely cut into personal time or require overtime work. After all, saying no may be tantamount to a pink slip and collecting unemployment benefits.
In reality, employees who decline or say no to their superiors when asked about taking on additional work are not fired. That said, saying no may have a negative impact on future career trajectory. However, it is important to note that there are different ways of saying no and if saying no is articulated correctly, the effect on one’s career is likely to be negligible.
Not surprisingly, learning to say no the correct way takes some practice! And, in an article entitled “So, You’re The Worker Who Can’t Say No,” Eilene Zimmerman, author of the NY Times Career Couch feature, offers some sage advice on how to say no to a boss without jeopardizing your job.
If you are one of those employees who no longer has a life because you cannot say no the mounds of additional work your boss has piled on, I highly recommend that you read this article!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting!!!!!!!!
While many of you are happy just because you have a job, there are those individuals (deserving or not) who are going to “bite the bullet” and ask for a raise. This makes sense because over the past few years the cost of health insurance has gone up along with college tuition, gasoline price and a variety of other things while salaries have all but stagnated. Interestingly, only 9 percent of companies have put pay freezes in place over the past 18 months; a rate this is consistent with historical standards. That is down from the nearly two-thirds of companies that imposed pay freezes in January 2010. In other words, now may be a good time to ask for a raise as companies are trying to retain high value employees who presumably were too vital to lay off when companies were downsizing over the past three years. Sadly, merit raises (when they are meted out) have precipitously dropped in recent years from an average of roughly 4-5 percent to a paltry 2 percent on average today.
As the old adage goes, “We are human and we all make mistakes.” Tell that to a person who believes that they have made a terrible workplace mistake and it will do little to assuage their fears and anxiety about what may happen if the error is revealed. In these troubled financial times, nobody wants to give a boss or manager a reason to let them go. That said, you may want to consider your options the next time that you make a mistake at work.