People expect to achieve certain ideals from their jobs, employers, and careers. These workplace values, concepts, and ideas that you hold dear have a direct impact on your satisfaction with your job, with your career, and even with your life. When you understand the values you cherish most highly, you can make an evaluation about whether your current employer (or a prospective employer) supports those values. And if you are considering a career change, understanding your values is critical to identifying a new career path. How well do you know your workplace values? If you're like most people, you may have done some self-assessment years ago when you were first starting out in your career, but have you taken the time recently to stop and see who and where you are now? After several job changes and promotions, are you still doing the kind of work that really suits you? After several ownership changes, mergers, and acquisitions, are you really with the type of company (with upper management) that respects and rewards your values? As you begin thinking about a job or career change, have you really spent the time thinking about the right job and right employer for what you value -- and what you need in your life? Perhaps it is time for a work values check-up. Feel like you've gone down this path before? Many career experts talk about the importance of self-assessment, but you can easily get lost in the glitz (or length) of the many career, aptitude, and other self-assessment tests in print and on the Web. Perhaps you have even spent some time examining your interests, desires, and lifestyles in an attempt to find a better fit. These activities are all very useful, but the one aspect of self-assessment that often gets overlooked is an examination of what you value in your job, your careers, and your work.
Workplace Values Exercise Your first step it to rate the importance of each of the workplace values on our list. We've left a few blank lines at the end of our list in case we have missed something that you value in your work. Finally, be sure to be honest with yourself; no one is judging nor scoring your results, so lying to yourself does no good. Rate the degree of importance that you place on each of the following workplace values using this scale: 1 = Very important to me
_____ creating/building things
_____ _____________________________________ Your second step is to try and identify the 10 most important values to you. Circle each of these most important values from the list above. Your third step is to now narrow down your list of 10 to the five core values you hold most sacred -- that you can't live without in your job/workplace -- and place them below: 1. ________________________________________ Congratulations! You now have a list of core workplace value that represent who you are…it is this core group of workplace values that help determine your level of satisfaction with your job and your career -- and which should be used to judge the level of "fit" with any future job, company, or career change. Now comes the tougher part. How well do your core values fit with your current job, career path, and employer -- and what, if anything, are you going to do about these results?
Next Steps Best of luck -- and be sure to take advantage of all the career and job resources Quintessential Careers offers you!
Other Workplace Values Resources
Questions about some of the terminology used in this article? Get more information (definitions and links) on key college, career, and job-search terms by going to our Job-Seeker's Glossary of Job-Hunting Terms.
Want to take another one of our job-seeker tests and quizzes? Go to our Test and Quizzes for Job-Seekers
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