6 workplace value adds that aren’t your salary
6 workplace value adds that aren’t your salary
Money isn’t everything.
Welcome back to Nice Work. We’re still inside our Money May theme, and together we’ve explored the connection between our inherent worth and our financial value, tips for enforcing your rate as a freelancer, and some hard truths about how employers think about your salary.
Today’s edition is a little different. We’re not really talking about money at all.
The saying goes, Money can’t buy you happiness. I’ve been thinking a lot about what amount of money it would take for me to feel stable, comfortable, or absolutely abundant. Though I can definitely spit out a number, I’m wise enough to know that without walking through the park of my values, all the money in the world couldn’t save me from feeling perpetually discontent.
So, dollar signs aside, let’s get the wheels turning on what we might need to receive and have the opportunity to give in our work environment, that will lead us to a more satisfactory exchange of value.
Pause reading for a moment, and let yourself drop into what your dream work environment might be like. How do you feel about your relationship to your work? What exactly does respect from others mean and look like to you? Do you have relationships with your peers? Do you work independently or with a team to create something great together? When do you log on? When do you clock out?
Below is a distilled list of things that can make or break a sense of alignment in the workplace. They may not all be valuable to you, though I bet some of them are. As you read and consider each of them, let it be a reminder that these things have just as much power to support you as your salary does.
Time
Knees deep in the New Orleans-based new season (7) of Queer Eye, I’m fresh off episode 5, where the hero of the episode, Deli Dan, and his curmudgeon-like exterior explores how the long hours at his beloved deli and market has his loved ones one step out the door of his life. Deli Dan basically lives at work. In an inspiring moment, towards the end of his week with the Fab 5, he realizes that he uses work as a type of painkiller. At work, he knows what to do in any situation. At work, he doesn’t have to face the brand-new and scary things happening in his life, like his first long-term, committed relationship.
This got me thinking, even for those of us who have built a business around a passion and really love the work we do, is it sustainable and fulfilling to spend ALL of our time in it? And is spending too much of our time in our work a way for us to avoid other vital, valuable parts of our lives? Food for thought.
On the other hand, I can bet there’s a pretty big pool of us working in order to support the rest of our lives. In this case, ending up at a job where the expectation to work such long hours that the rest of our life disappears can be borderline devastating. You’re not alone or wrong for wanting to do your 9-5 (or even less) and skip on out of there to the more valuable parts of your life. There are workplaces and employers that know this value and help create the environment for it. But sometimes you’ve gotta set the example. If you need help with that, our post on boundary setting might do the trick.
Trust
This. Is. Key. Not being trusted in the roles we’ve been hired to fulfill can be spirit-breaking. And though this is a two-way street (we have to demonstrate that we’re trustworthy), I’ve noticed that big trouble usually spurs when someone in charge can’t quite let go of control. In my first ever salaried job, my manager used to stand over my shoulder and speak an entire email (meant to be from me) out loud as I copied her words onto the screen to send, signed by my name. It really offended me and I even questioned my skills. Like…is there something so wrong with how I communicate with people that it’s detrimental to this business?
When this became a recurrent pattern, it got clear that the habit was more about her need to control the communication and be a part of it than it was about my ability to write a fairly simple and effective email. Though I could discern this, it still felt stifling, and was a factor in my urgent need to jump ship to a new company. Trust expands us. Control restrains us. We all have wings we want to fly with, but we need to be given, or create, the space that opens the sky.
Mentorship
If we’re serious about growing as people and professionals, having humans in our work environment willing to guide us, share knowledge, and collaborate with constructive feedback can change everything. While I’m of the camp that there is always a lot to learn, even in environments where we don’t particularly feel called to be taken under the wing of anyone we work with, mentorship can be one of the biggest value boosters for keeping us inspired and happy to show up at our jobs and give it our all.
Some companies have specific programs for this. At others, it might be an off-the-books agreement between coworkers to create a relationship of growth together. If this element is really important to you, and you don’t yet have it, sometimes all you have to do is ask. I promise, sharing your admiration and respect for someone and asking to learn from them within a deliberate container will rarely be met with a brick wall.
Ps - real growth in mentorship happens when you choose each other. So if your company has set up a program that assigns you a “mentor” that you totally don’t resonate with or look up to, be mindful of how that might affect how you can show up with them. It might even be worth kindly asking for a reorganization of resources for you.
Camaraderie
What’s that phrase? One bad apple can spoil the bunch? The energy of the people who surround us is powerful. And it’s sooo easy to spiral into an environment of negativity. Sometimes we’re actually in a toxic workplace that is fundamentally built on blah vibes. In which case, get out! But, sometimes we choose to stay on the complain-train because that’s what’s accepted and nurtured by the people we work with.
Step 1 is really believing and practicing that you have the power to change this dynamic if you find yourself in it. Step 2 is seeking out work environments where there is conscious room given to celebrating wins, fostering community and peer support, and building a true “we’re a team” mentality.
Receptivity
Have you ever attended a “brainstorm” meeting that actually just turned into one person knocking every idea that came out of someone else’s mouth but theirs? Or have you ended up on a project that was originally full of your big, bright ideas but then sneakily transformed into a series of commands and demands that flush all your creativity down the drain? It can be pretty stunting to feel like our voice, ideas, and expertise aren’t heard and valued.
Being able to share our genius and create something through the lens of true collaboration can bring a lot of satisfaction to our work. Just like everywhere else, acknowledgment for our value add and encouragement to bring our unique lens to the table can be the very thing that makes us want to keep showing up.
Building true receptivity at work can also be incredibly important in work environments that are moving through a lot of change, have clunky systems that just aren’t working, or are new and still figuring it all out. Feedback from employees is often the eye-opening employers need to make the changes necessary to build the business in a sustainable way. You’ve just got to be willing to be so bold, and they’ve got to be willing to drop a bit of “I’m the boss and I know best” ego.
Understanding
This tees us up nicely to the final piece of non-monetary value that we’ll cover today. We preach this often in our editions of Nice Work: Humans make up workplaces. And humans want to be met like they are, indeed, humans. Somehow, this can be easily stripped from work environments. So a sense of ease that our person-tendencies will be met with an equally human response and understanding is kind of imperative for a workplace to be somewhere we want to be in.
Life is going to happen, and it might be so life-y that you have to put a project or a day of work on the back burner while you take care of your family, your sickness, your mental health, a fender bender, etc. The kind of people I can bet most of us want to work with are those that will hold space for you to prioritize your life in these moments without judgement or a sense of fear-mongering.
How did each of these sit with you? Is there an amount of money that would rock your world, if not a single one of these was met for you? Are there any you think you could lend a hand in bringing more of to your workplace? Stuff to ponder while you tackle your work week!
Talk soon!
Jade
PS. Next week is our first iteration of the Nice Work Advice Column. If you’ve got a specific question about money or other forms of compensation in the workplace that you want us to give our thoughts on, reply to this email or leave us a comment on Substack! Paid subscribers get access to every single question + plus our answers!