​GENERAL GUIDANCE

There’s no simple guidance for how to become an indispensable employee and protect your job income (at least for a time). It is dependent primarily on:

• Your skills, your history with your employer, and the quality of your relationship with your direct supervisor and other staff.
• Your employer’s industry and culture, and the personalities of its key employees.

Before you decide what to do, assess your own and your employer’s situation.

​GENERAL PRINCIPLES

Here are some general principles that will help you in assessing your situation:

1. It is not enough that you are an indispensable employee. It is critical that you are seen as such by senior executives, other indispensable employees, or clients/customers (such as the top salesperson or an important client).

2. The skills that you offer must relate to a critical function of your employer. If you are an IT specialist, this may be critical for a company in the IT industry but less likely for a retail organization. If they are not critical, try to make them so.

3. Your relationship with your immediate supervisor is important. You may be seen as indispensable with a poor relationship with your supervisor, but it helps a lot if your supervisor wants you to stay around.

4. Your fit with the corporate culture is also important. As with your supervisor, it helps enormously if you are popular with other employees, especially managers.

​OPTIONAL STRATEGIES

Here are some strategies for protecting your job (assuming that your job continues to have value to your employer).

If your job is not likely to be around much longer, then try to switch jobs before applying any of these strategies. It may be possible to attempt multiple strategies.

The strategies vary in their impact and in the effort required to implement them. Their effectiveness depends on your employer’s organization and culture – and your own capabilities.

STRATEGIES

The best employee

The effectiveness of a manager is a reflection of the quality of the team the manager leads. The best employee in a team is one the manager will want to keep. ‘Best’ may reflect competence, flexibility, and/or knowledge. One approach to make an employee stand out is to be trained in an essential skill currently outsourced.

The most popular employee

Having strong personal ties within a team or with its manager makes an employee integral to the cohesion of a team. This is really another dimension of ‘best’. But it is only possible if it fits the personality of the employee.

The most valuable employee

You can align yourself with one of your organization’s essential employees within or outside your department – or with a valued customer or client. This may make you indispensable because of the relationship you’ve built. For example, you will survive job cuts if you are regarded as essential to the success of the top salesperson! (This strategy is fleshed out below.)

CHOOSING  A STRATEGY

These examples may or may not be applicable to your situation. They are listed to present some possible strategies, and to get creative juices flowing.

The process of choosing a strategy is difficult to do on your own. It is challenging to be objective about your place in your organization.

​SAMPLE STRATEGY – THE MOST VALUABLE EMPLOYEE

4. Take your ideas to that person, and suggest that you can help implement the changes in your spare time.

5. Help to implement the changes successfully.

Of course, the specifics and internal politics are different in every organization.