Are You An “A”-Grade Employee
A employee: These are employees who fully utilize their abilities, work experience, and act proactively to ensure they add more value to the firm and perform better than what is expected of them. Such employees want to learn and are highly motivated and incentivized in what they do. They go out of their way to get the job at hand done. They always strive to better themselves by adding to their productivity and application of their skills, which in turn, helps organizations reach higher levels of excellence year after year. Most employers dream of cultivating an army of such employees, who have the capability to take on a lot of responsibilities and who are able to test the limits of their abilities daily.
B employee: When the training wheels come off and the employee can manage to carry out their tasks effectively with minimal supervision, that is when an employee finally graduates to being a B Grade employee. Such an employee manages to add value to the firm, which is limited only to performing his or her duties at hand. Such employees become integral to the firm and become harder and harder to replace as their seniority at the firm increases. They either strive to reach a level where they do more than what is expected of them, or stagnate without adding value to the company and only work for their next paycheck.
C employee: Most new employees, who are new to the job market, start off as C employees. These employees are very raw and don’t contribute any value to the firm, as they are still ascending the learning curve and understanding how to effectively perform their duties. Generally speaking, most competent employees manage to graduate to the next level in about 6-9 months’ time (probation period) or they are weeded out from the organization accordingly. Such employees are easily dispensable in the beginning, and as a result they also have to bear a lot of bossing around/grunt work/hardship.
Organizations who really want to strive and be major players in any market, need to learn how to identify their A, B, and C employees, understand how to incentivize and motivate B-grade employees to become A-grade, and learn to weed out B- and C-grade employees who don’t graduate to A level status soon enough. The million dollar question now is: how do you make your employees A-grade in the first place?
