Do you have enough influence?
Below are some questions you can consider and some of the things you can do if you want more influence on your day-to-day work or on decisions at a higher level.
Your employer and manager can also do something to give you more influence. Moreover, your health and safety organisation can help launch initiatives.
Think about the following
Here are some questions you can consider regarding your options and your needs for influence:
- What is influence to you, and when would you like to be involved? Is influence important to you in relation to how your work is carried out or the tools and technical aids you use? Would you like to help decide the way your work is organised, for example the order of your tasks, and do you want variation in your tasks?
- Do you sometimes make suggestions about how to perform tasks, and are your suggestions taken seriously?
- Do you feel that people have faith in you when you’re given responsibility to organise and execute work?
- Do you have influence on the skills and competences you use? Are you given tasks that enable you to use skills and competences you’re good at or want to develop?
Here is what you can do
- Talk to your manager. Do you think there are better ways to do things at the shop or that something should be different? If you have ideas for improvements or suggestions for more appropriate workflows, talk to your manager. Perhaps you could contribute with experience, new input and knowledge. This will show your commitment and will give you more influence.
- Contribute at meetings. Internal meetings, briefings and staff meetings are also an opportunity to gain influence, especially if you contribute more actively. Meetings keep you up to date on what’s going on at the shop and in the organisation, and you’ll be able to give your input. If you contribute actively, you’ll be able to express your opinions and views, and thereby gain influence.
- Take responsibility and build confidence. You can also gain influence by taking responsibility for tasks and completing them successfully. This will increase your manager’s confidence in your abilities. For example, you could be proactive and inform your manager about progress in your work and point out any inefficiencies that your manager should know about. Often you’ll be the one who knows what works best. By contributing your knowledge and suggesting changes, you can gain influence.
- Contact your employee representative. You can gain influence through your health and safety representative or your works council representative. You can also choose to become a health and safety representative yourself or stand for election to the works council.