Holiday

I am about to do what any good employee should do on a regular basis. Go on holiday with my family. Since I'm a consultant, it means unpaid leave, but believe me, it is worth a lot more than any money can buy.

What is more, I'll come back supercharged, ready to take on the challenges of this world. I'm going to fix all the cracks and just re-enforce a very important foundation of my life, i.e. my relationships with my beautifull wife, my lovely children and my Source / Saviour / Creator / King.

Remember, don't make the wrong investments. Work hard, live happy, play a lot, but make sure the most important relationships in your live gets stronger.

The perfect employee?

I think the perfect employee is one that does his (of course I also include the female employees, but I don't want to add /her or /she every time) work to his best ability with dedication and confidence. This person will first do the work that needs to be done and then come up with new ideas of new things to do. I am not saying this person should not find better ways to do the work, but get the work done, then go look for new projects to take on.

Furthermore, this person should give his absolute best during the hours expected from him. Not unnecessarily be on the phone, Web, email or whatever is not really necessary. This person should be focused on what needs to be done and the quality of the work.

In times of emergencies or stressful times, this champion employee will still continue to work mostly unaffected. He will not waste his time and energy with unnecessary office politics. Yes he should be part of the team, he should be friendly and interested in colleagues lives, but not spend too much time with idle chit-chat.

Should this person be someone that regularly works overtime, without compensation? Will a person like this be more productive? I believe not. I think the perfect employee will understand clearly the boundaries of work and personal live. The perfect employee will work hard and dedicated, but he will plan carefully and not spend unnecessary time at work.

The main reason I believe this, is because I firmly believe that the employee with a healthy personal live / family live, is the one that will be able to work dedicated, untouched under any circumstance. Because his family live is healthy, he will not care that much / will be less affected if some colleague mistreats him. He will get into less office politics. And because this person is not sacrificing any personal live to for work, he will also not use work time for personal matters unnecessarily.

When he goes on leave, he'll make sure that the office will not need to phone him while on leave, and then he might even switch off his mobile phone / redirect all calls back to the office. This might sound very unproductive and very disloyal, but I believe that the perfect employee will make sure that his holiday is used very effectively to rest and forget all about work. He'll build relationships that will make his personal live even more healthy and he'll come back, ready to take on the world again.

What do you think?