Is your job worthwhile?
Most people go out to work each day during their adult life. Most of them because they need the money that comes from doing their job. Some, can’t work, some don’t want to. Of those who do, how many enjoy going into work each day and are still happy at the end of the day. How many people look forward to going to work and doing their job?
Why do I ask? Because I like my job. I enjoy it and look forward to doing it. You don’t hear many people saying that.
I work around 36 hours each week (I say around because if something needs to be finished it can easily be a bit more), spread over four days, giving me Friday, Saturday and Sunday off work. Although I usually check my work email on a Friday afternoon (most of the people I deal with in my job split their 36 hours over five days), to see if there’s anything urgent I need to respond to or plan for come Monday. I tend to check again on a Sunday afternoon or first thing Monday morning to make sure nobody has set a meeting before my 12.30 start time. I can always go in early and finish early if they have.
But what do I actually do, what is my job and why do I enjoy it?
The official title is “Service Quality Information Analyst”. In English it means I look at lots of numbers, make them make sense to department managers right up to the CEO and colour them in for ease of reading! There’s much more to it than that mind.
I have to find those numbers - often not having any clues as to where to start - then make sense of them myself. I need to put them in a format that everybody understands. The CEO typically wants a really brief overview comparing month on month to see how the business is performing, and wants to read it in a minute, not an hour. The department managers might take more time with their reports and be able to discuss them with others so need more in depth detail as to whats going on in their teams and how they can manage it and deal with what I present to them.
Gaining buy-in is always important for me. Anybody can shove a few numbers together, call it a report and email it out. But who would read it? Actually, reading it is not important. You might have 50 out of 100 managers read that report. What you want to know is how many will USE it? How many will ACT upon it? And how many will change the business for the better BECAUSE of it?
It’s my responsibility to make the audiance USE, ACT and do things BECAUSE of the information that I provide to them.
Sometimes a chart in Excel does the trick. Colour the numbers in red, amber or green so the CEO can see if we’re doing we’re doing well or not at a glance (better still put it into a chart), but everyone else can take a detailed look and DEAL with the parts that affect them.
At other times I need to guarantee that engagement with the numbers, so rather than sitting a chart in front of somebody I’ll give them a blank screen with a couple of buttons. Make the buttons do what they want and the info they need will magicaly appear on their screen. Visual Basic is a powerful tool for programming things into Excel. It can make users really get to know what they’re dealing with, if used properly.
But for me, it is always important to know what the end users think of the work I produce. I’ll often send out a user feedback form, or just ask for opinions in an email or an online forum on the intranet. Most of all, I ask for feedback on what people want changing. That really gets them interested because they know you’re asking for their sake and not just your own. I can come up with a shiny report or dashboard, but if it’s not what people want to see they’ll soon lose interest.
It probably doesn’t sound all that exciting to you. I’m not a fighter jet pilot or a window cleaner that gets to see into the whole neighbourhood’s bedrooms! Different people enjoy different jobs for lots of reasons. I enjoy mine because it’s creative, I get to use my brain, I need to think about the numbers and words I’m reporting, I produce something that lots of people LIKE to USE and SURPASSES their expectations. I have the freedom to do it how I want, as long as the job gets done on time. I’m not sat with a boss looking over me, for 35/36 hours I’m left to my own devices to get on with the job. Infact, my boss doesn’t even work in the same building. I work with people who I enjoy working with and talking to, sometimes even sharing a drink with after work. I’m one cog in a building of over 2,000, a business unit of over 9,000 spread worldwide and an organisation of many, many more thousands of people. But that one cog, much closer to the bottom of the organisation than the top, is well know for producing great work.
While the company treats their staff like real people, respects them and their work, and while the people respect the company, I think I’ll always enjoy working here. I’ve been in my current ‘role’ for about six months, before that I did something totally different within the same building. I’ve been there going on 9 years and I wouldn’t want to work anywhere else.
I enjoy my job!
