Are you overpaid?

This week, there was a news item about Nicole Kidman being Hollywood's most overpaid actress.

If you were Nicole, how would you feel about being labelled that way?

What about your current work situation?

Do you regard yourself as overpaid or underpaid?

Before you answer, consider these questions:

1. Are you giving at least 100%?
2. Do you actively engage in creative activity to brainstorm exciting and fun new ways to do things at work?
3. Are you constantly thinking of ways to improve your organisation's products and service levels?
4. Do you help your team do its best? Are you a peacemaker or tension maker? A team player or team parasite?
5. Is your daily work about adding value to your organisation, or are you satisfied with just doing the bare minimum to keep your job?

If you've reached the point where

• you're burnt out
• you've lost the zeal and passion you once had for your job
• you feel you're going nowhere in your career and therefore you can't be bothered to do your best,

these are all danger signs that you are an overpaid worker.

Much as we would like the organisation to take more notice of us as individuals, the truth is that there are very few bosses out there who will sit down for a real heart-to-heart with us one on one.

They may be too busy.

Or maybe they aren't the people-oriented type. They don't know how to go about doing something so potentially fraught with emotion, so they avoid it.

These things are outside our control.

What we can control, though, is our attitude and our actions.

We can choose to take ownership of our careers.

We can choose to be active team members in our workplaces.

An active team member is positive and can-do; he doesn't wait to be told what to do.

An active team member has the interests of the organisation in mind at all times. His actions and decisions are geared towards helping the organisation be its best.

An active team member sees himself as having a vested interest in how well the organisation does. He wants the organisation to succeed.

He is concerned about the quality of its products and services.

He constantly thinks of better ways to do things so that the organisation fulfils the reasons for its existence.

He knows that one way to help the organisation excel is by helping his boss do a great job.

So he supports his boss by doing great work himself, by providing useful, honest feedback, and by helping his boss look and feel good.

Obviously, some savvy is required here. We're not talking about playing politics or sucking up to the boss, but of genuinely wanting a win-win-win for the boss, the organisation and for yourself.

We're talking about how you can consistently prove yourself over time to be the Most Valuable Employee your boss has ever had.

When it comes to performance bonus time and appraisal time, you will be confident rather than petrified.

You will be in control, to some extent.

This is because you would have already done such an outstanding job in the past 12 months that there is no question that you deserve to advance.

The only question is how much.

That decision, again, is outside your control.

Your boss has her own set of criteria and a limited pool of resources.

But even if you don't get the promotion or bonus you were expecting, if you're constantly working to be Most Valuable Employee, you can be assured that you're virtually recession-proof.

In a recession, the first workers to go tend to be the lowly skilled ones and those who are considered to be overpaid in relation to the value they actually provide.

If you're highly skilled in what you do and you choose to be an active team member, it's possible you will always be underpaid wherever you go.

But wouldn't you rather that - than the reverse?