People Advisory Forum

Since getting involved in several internal initiatives at the firm I work for, I am meeting more of my coworkers and building a reputation for myself. I am becoming busier and more interested in growing our consulting practice in addition to my everyday client work. One of the internal group I was selected for is called the People Advisory Forum. Basically, certain people within our practice were selected to represent their peers and meeting are held to discuss "people" issues. By "people" issues, I mean things that people are upset or concerned about.

I was excited, thinking this would be the perfect way for me to voice the concerns of myself and other coworkers at my level. At our first meeting on Friday, I actually learned that a lot of people throughout the company feel the same way that I do. But then I also heard about issues that had never even crossed my mind, like losing my job.

One of the most common themes was recognition. When working at any company, you will find that there are some people who are top performers and go above and beyond what is asked of them and consistently exceed expectations. On the other hand, there are some people that do their job and just get by, hoping for a free ride when it comes to review time. The thing that makes people angry, is when there isn't enough of a distinction made between these different types of people. Obviously you don't want to publish compensation increases to the entire company, but it is important to a professional to know if they are a top performer, and if so, they should be treated like one. When someone tells me I am a top performer, yet I am stuck on an awful project, it really doesn't make me feel like the firm is looking out for their top performers. Yeah, a good raise is nice, but being given priority in other aspects of your career is sometimes even better.

The second thing, which pretty much blindsided me, was the fact that people seem to be worried about losing their job. Considering the current state of the economy and market expectations over the next 12 months, there may not be a great deal of consulting work out there. People in our practice want to know how we are adjusting our skill sets and our overall strategy to adapt to these conditions. And if there is no work, are we all still going to have jobs? We see firms on Wall Street laying employees off every other week, I certainly hope that doesn't happen to me. But the truth is, it really hadn't even crossed my mind. I figured I would always have a job unless I decided to leave, maybe I should think again.

Getting involved in a forum like this that allows me to work with upper management and will hopefully give me an advantage over others at my level.