Bismillah
Praise be to Allah, and prayer and peace be upon His Messenger Mohamed and all Messengers and Prophets.
I felt I wanted to elaborate on this issue some more. Islam actually calls, stresses, and focuses on perfecting our work. We should observe rules, deadlines, we should not treat our work in a reckless manner, we should not try to evade responsibilities, have others do our work while we talk on the phone, or email, we should not use the employer’s facilities for our own personal affairs, we should not try to stage working while in fact we are letting others do that, we should not try hard to cheat the boss just to get an A evaluation.
At the same time, we must work hard to excel and perfect our performance whether or not the boss is looking at us, whether or not we hear others applaud and praise our performance, whether or not we receive an extra bonus. Why? Because we earn our income through this source, because Allah Allowed us a source of benefit that we must be dutiful for, that we must observe Allah and not the boss while we are working, because if the boss is not looking Allah certainly Is. There is a thin line between the desire and inner satisfaction we get from praises and compliments from human beings, large working space that goes with promotion, and the major concern to just exactly exert the same level of effort and performance in absence of all this. Our criteria should be the satisfaction of Allah, yes we still have to abide by the internal standards of each given employer, certainly we must, this is part of the package of satisfying Allah as well, we must do this – adhering to the employer’s standards, in other words requests and tasks – in order to satisfy Allah. In some cases u see employee’s work hard only when the boss is around, but this should not be the case, because Allah Is around all the time. Other cases, they come and complain this promotion was my right not hers/his, who can decide whose rights are?? We must look to promotions through a totally different perspective, if one is seeking to secure a right he/she is entitled to because of the hadeeth that one should not accept unjust nor cause unjust unto others fine, but questioning a right, may be Allah Knows that this person is better off without this kind of responsibility and trust coupled with the promotions, may be Allah Spared the person must amanah.. The most serious situation when someone who is a hard worker is by passed in a promotion, a reaction of me who works hard, I don’t deserve this, we work hard whether or not we get promoted, we do fulfill our duty the way we should because we earn money for it. Promotion is part of a fitnah, temptation and in some cases Allah Knows this devotee is not up to it.
Assuming high or middle level management position might negatively affect your faith, thus, Allah The All Knowing, Merciful spares you this threat and jeopardy. In other cases, it might put you in a confrontational position towards some levels of corruption that you might be incapable of handling, or be subject to hypocrisy of subordinates that might go into your head. In all cases, the situation might be unfair on the superficial level, but in the inner part of it, it bears all the good for your faith. Still even under such conditions, we still must perform as required and fulfill our duties as per standards.
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To bring it closer to our minds, Allah Say:
57:23
لِكَيْلَا تَأْسَوْا عَلَى مَا فَاتَكُمْ وَلَا تَفْرَحُوا بِمَا آتَاكُمْ وَاللَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ كُلَّ مُخْتَالٍ فَخُورٍ
In order that you may not be sad over matters that you fail to get, nor rejoice because of that which has been given to you. And Allah likes not prideful boasters.
Nothing could be clearer.