3 ways NOT to get fired

Here are some specific strategies that employees can use to not get fired:

1. “Is there anything I can take off your plate?” is a great question to pose to your boss— you don’t have to hide in your office or cubicle and pretend you’re busy. It’s okay to acknowledge you’ve got some room on your plate to help out. You can acknowledge you’ve got excess capacity and at the same time volunteer to help out with a specific project or work on something that you know your boss doesn’t have the time for (or interest in). This goes a long way to showing you as proactive and a team player.

2. “I’ve been thinking about starting a new program…” Be an instigator—do things that add to your group’s infrastructure—offer to write case studies, compile best practices, start a mentoring program for junior employees, or implement a brown bag luncheon series to talk about business development or new client acquisition strategies. Show management that you’re thinking ahead and strategizing about making good use of down time. It’s hard to fire people who consistently come up with good ideas and who become associated with new and/or successful programs.

3. “I’d like to join the M&A team—is there anything I can help out with?” Take calculated risks—this isn’t the time to play it safe, on the contrary, you need to stretch outside your comfort zone and expand your skill set, thereby making yourself more valuable to your team or company.

One woman at GE Capital who worked in the financing group made a strategic decision to ask to work with the mergers and acquisition (M&A) team looking at distressed assets once she saw the lending cycle dry up and her core client base stop doing transactions. She didn’t know anything about M&A but figured she might as well try to get involved with a team that did have activity and she could learn the new product on the job (the downside isn’t as high in terms of failing at something new if you’ve got nothing going on in your team anyway….)

4. “Why don’t we get together for lunch?” Network, network, network—now is a critical time to re-focus on building and maintaining relationships with colleagues, clients, former classmates… and to build as many allies within your organization as possible. People will be more apt to set aside time on the calendar to talk about the current business environment given the market slowdown—everyone’s got more time on their hands. Again, its always harder to fire people whom you have direct contact with, so get your name and your face out there—get in front of management as often as you can to discuss new business ideas or to let them know you’re serious about keeping your job. Try to extend your network so that you have as many people pulling for you as possible.

This advice comes from Jodi Glickman of www.greatonthejob.com