5 Cs Way to Increase Your Work Satisfaction in 2014

Yes, everybody work for a living but we need to be happy at work or we will be working like slaves.  Whether you are working for a large MNC, local SME or medium-sized company, if you too want to get ahead and get the promotion and bonus that you desire, you need to have high work satisfaction.

You'll know that you have work satisfaction when you can keep on working and never feel tired.  If not, you are having work frustration and not work satisfaction.  The following are the 5 Cs ways to have high work satisfaction:

1. Competency. Make sure that you have the capability to do your work well. If you find that you always struggle at work and have to be reprimanded frequently by customers or bosses, it means that your competency is below the passing mark. Get trained by your company or sign up for external courses.  The 3 most common courses are communication, management and sales.
2. Create Value.  You must not just work but really create value in your work.  The way to see if you create value now is to ask if you were absent from your work, how much will your company, its customers and the society lose out?  If the answer is 'a lot' then you are adding high value.  If it is not, you need to start with competency and go on to the next c, Control...
3. Control.  Work frustration is caused by things that do not go our way even when we have put in a lot of effort.  This means you have little control in your work.  I know that it is difficult to control what you produce at work, but I do know that the biggest thing we have control in this world is the other Cs: Competency, Create Value and the next C, Commitment.
4. Commitment.  This is very obvious, but most people will equate commitment to staying long in a job.  We know that a committed person will produce high quality of work. Even if you are new to the job or the job is not your ideal, you too can put in more commitment, which is simply put in more effort.  Try working 2 hours more in a day or week more without staying back late and you'll know what work commitment is. 
5. Compliments.  Yes, you need to be complimented by people when you do a job well. But since most bosses hardly compliment but mostly complain, you need to compliment yourself.  This is not being crazy but scientist say that frequent self-compliments (for a job done well) will reinforce your confidence.  This will in turn reinforce your competency and this will lead you to higher quality of work.  Your work satisfaction will just go up in vicious circle.

By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer at Asia Trainers.