Becoming indispensable at work happens when you consistently bring in more money than you cost. Prove you make direct financial contributions to your employer by quantifying what you earn them versus what you cost. This greatly enhances job security even during layoffs. Making money for your firm through profitable sales deals, cost-cutting ideas that work, proposing new revenue streams, or streamlining processes to save time and money are all ways to become indispensable. If you create unexpected profits and consistently pull money out of thin air, you’ll likely get promoted too. The key is documenting your worth by showing the hard numbers on how your work impacts the bottom line with profit versus spending. As Larry Myler says, creating profit for your company is always the best approach in good times or bad.
Every company must earn more than it spends to stay in business. This extends to the personal level as well. To become indispensable as an employee, you must show that you generate more revenue than you cost as an employee. Develop a personal Profit & Loss Statement which quantifies what you’re bringing to the company and what you take away. Prove definitively you contribute positively to the company’s bottom line and then work to add even more value in the future and you’ll never be out of work. Document all your new ideas in written profit proposals so you have a written record of exactly what you’ve done and how your ideas worked out when implemented. Pure and simple you become indispensable at work if your bring in more than you cost. To show undisputably this is the case, you need to be able to show your boss your personal Profit & Loss Statement. If you work in a sales or revenue generating position, your P&L is straightforward to put together: Admittedly there are profitable sales transactions and also not-so-profitable sales from the company’s point of view but if you’re in sales, developing your P&L should be relatively easy. Don’t worry if you don’t have the exact numbers at first – estimates are fine for now. You can fine-tune and fill in the blanks later. If you are not in sales or don’t bill customers directly, you can also develop your own personal P&L. You add value to the company by suggesting ideas which cut costs, by providing essential support services to the sales team and by helping the company’s important business processes run smoothly. Your P&L will be more along these lines: To enhance your indispensability, you need to be uncovering hidden and unexpected dollars for your company on a regular basis. Companies love this because those kinds of revenues are added directly to the bottom-line profits. If you can discover hidden money, it’s a windfall for your firm. Make doing this a habit and your boss will love you. In addition to knowing what your personal P&L looks like, you also need to document your indispensability. You do this by firstly by updating and storing your accomplishments on your resume which you always keep current in order to be considered for promotions. Imagine how your resume will look if you add: Improved the company’s shipping processes resulting in a 25,000 dollar saving – which would be the equivalent of an additional 1,785,715 dollars in annual sales at current margins. Reengineered the company’s order processing systems to remove unnecessary steps. This resulted in an annual profit contribution of 100,000 dollars. This would be the equivalent of 1,428,571 dollars in annual sales revenue for the business. In order to enhance the likelihood your ideas will be implemented and to keep track of what you have accomplished, it’s helpful to document your ideas professionally and thoroughly. A good way to do this is to use a format something along the lines of this example: Profit Proposal: Consolidation of steel suppliers. Presented to ABC, Inc. by Bob Jones Feb 10, 2010. Current Situation: We presently buy steel from four suppliers. If we use just two suppliers, we will qualify for better volume discounts. Proposed Change: I suggest we negotiate the best deals we can with two suppliers. Benefits of Proposal: Based on my analysis, I believe we could get a 3 percent discount from our suppliers. If achieved, that would increase our profits by 52,500 dollars annually. Barriers to Implementation: It will take time and effort to negotiate this change. There would also be the matter of any existing long-term supply arrangements we have in place and orders already in the pipeline.
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