When You Are "Under-utilized" At Work

She looked back and said good-bye, “see you next week, sweetie”. “Sure, we’ll see on Monday”, her colleague replied. However, deep down inside, these two ladies knew they won’t be at work for the next couple weeks. Agor and Sandy work for a consulting firm and have been on a project at a client’s office for the past three years. The consulting firm recruited both of them as members of the Project Team for this particular client. Due to administrative bottlenecks, work at the client’s has slowed down in the past months. There has been little or no work to be done and of course this “questions the relevance of coming to the office at all”—they thought. As they individually got into their beds after an eventful Friday evening, Agor and Sandy wondered about their plan for the coming weeks. “No work, anyway—so what do I do?” The immediate reaction to keep busy [while the client and their employer sort themselves out] was to spend a lot of time at the mall, meet with friends, simply have mad fun—"until they’ve got work for us again"…“Until we are no more under-utilized at work!”

In order to get my point across, I refer to “under-utilization at work” as a situation where your  work responsibilities are not in sync with your innate areas of interests; and as such, the knowledge you possess [or desire to possess], is not directly related to the work responsibilities you are saddled with. A range of factors may lead to under-utilization at work. You may not have enough to do at all, or you may have enough to do but not have enough relevant tasks to do in relation to your innate areas of interest.

A nice gentleman wrote me an email about a week ago seeking for career advice. He believes there is a huge mismatch between his area of interest and the responsibilities he has been given at work—and that has “almost killed” him. In diagnosing his situation, I realised there is a little difference between him and someone who loves what she does but has not got enough work responsibilities due to varying reasons. And so, they wonder how this free time can be appropriately channelled to other relevant and profitable activities that would give them a greater advantage in our increasingly competitive work-world.

Having pointed out these unpleasant situations, the most pressing question is often: “what do you do when you are under-utilized at work?” The workplace is changing and so is our response to the various challenges we face at the workplace, this inclusive. 

Let me share a few views that might help you to rightly respond when you find yourself in a situation similar to this.

“Knowledge is power”: What happens to a club-house bouncer who stops to eat well and get built-up? One important thing to note is that organisations who seek talents, in actual terms, seek knowledge in talents. What makes talents who they are is based on what they know! So, if my advantage lies in what I know, the right question to ask is: “how do I ensure I keep knowing what I need to know in order to remain competitive as a top-talent?” Seeking and getting knowledge these days is no more far-fetched. There is a huge knowledge resource right on your hand. Yes, I'm talking about your internet-enabled mobile phone! You can learn from your social-network friends, connect with people around the world who do the same thing you love to do. Do you have a Twitter account? Ever seen the UberSocial Twitter App? Ever explored its "channels" and you'll find-out that it is possible to search for people based on your areas of interest and also connect with them instantly? As “texting-like” as Twitter is, people tweet many links that can be viewed on your phone (and of course, computers and laptops too)—and these are great learning resources. So, build your knowledge about what you love doing. Therein lies your competitive advantage!

    “Translate your knowledge into work experience”: You got me wrong! Yes, I'm sure you did! I am not necessarily referring to you getting the traditional work experience [getting employed by a company] because this is perhaps difficult to come-by these days [following economic recessions and down-turns in employment rates]. Let me share with you another way of translating your knowledge into experience. Start by transforming your knowledge into a virtual learning project. You can do this by getting involved in blogs, wikis and other learning community platforms, to share the knowledge you possess while contributing to other people’s posts and views. Remember, we learn more when we share what we know and open up our minds to other arches of learning. As you gain more knowledge, you can use social networks to build virtual communities around your area of interest—run a Facebook campaign around your area of interest and seek people’s views; run advertisement of products using social network platforms to build your sales skills etc. These do not only help you turn your knowledge into experience while gaining more knowledge, it also helps to promote your personal brand within global communities of practice.

     “Showcase your new experience”: Do you know that your involvement in virtual learning projects and communities of practice is not inappropriate when it appears on your résumé? Of course, yes! You need to showcase these [virtually acquired] experiences and successes on your résumé. The 21^st Century fact is this: when companies source for knowledge-workers, they only need people who can apply their knowledge and experience in a bid to give the company competitive advantage regardless of how the knowledge and experience is gained (whether through physical or virtual learning environment). And for all you know, gaining that work experience through a virtual rather than physical learning environment might be your competitive advantage in getting a new job opportunity.

In conclusion, there is a constant need to keep inquiring and responding to these two questions: Do I know the new global best practices in my area of interest? In what new ways are people doing the things I do [or wish to do]? And how much do I know about these?

Our new work-world now reveals that we are not rewarded for the time we spend at work; we are rewarded for the value we add. Time is cheap, but knowledge is power!