Having said that, she also believes that no organisation wants to lose its top talent and quotes a statistic from within her sector that 79 per cent of CFOs are concerned about losing the more valuable members of the team.
"You can't take anything for granted because circumstances change," says Alexander. "But, you can certainly make yourself very valuable and by doing so you create opportunities for yourself."
Moving across roles and divisions within an organisation is one way to increase your value, for example being seconded to another branch in a different city or country. When you return to your original workplace, your intimate knowledge of the company will be valued.
Working part-time or with flexible work arrangements so you can do some work from home is a hindrance to making yourself valuable to your employer, suggests Alexander.
"One of the biggest things that makes people valuable is their communication skills and there's nothing like being there in person. Face-to-face communication is really important," says Alexander.
"My advice is to use technology and work remotely if you need to, but find some ways to come in to the office."
In the accounting and finance area that Alexander works within, often job candidates have similar skillsets, so she says business experience and industry knowledge are invaluable for setting a person apart.
However, this narrow knowledge can also make a person only employable within a certain industry.
"I always talk to candidates coming up in the ranks and advise them to keep their experience quite broad at the beginning of their careers," says Alexander. "If they've stayed in the one industry, they're usually only employable in that industry. In a marketplace like New Zealand, that restricts your employability."
Overall, she thinks it's wrong for a business to have an indispensable employee and naive for an employee to believe their worth is watertight. She says she has met candidates who were employed by the same company for 30 years, then let go.
"A business needs to do what it needs to do to survive," says Alexander. "These days, long service doesn't guarantee your job and if you're too loyal and one-dimensional on your CV then you're less employable and valuable to an employer."
While she admits people do become valuable to an organisation because of years of service, she warns not to rely on that alone.
"It's either their relationship skills or their ability to understand the business and create opportunities for the business that will make them more valuable," says Alexander. "Kiwis are not that loyal any more. We've been through a lot of redundancies over the past decade and my observation is the larger the company, the more chance of being caught up in a restructure."
She says it's not just about an employee becoming more valuable to an employer, but also an employer becoming valuable to an employee in order not to be caught short by staff turnover.
"You have to run very efficiently in today's economic climate," says Alexander. "but, having good relationships means that nothing should come as a surprise."
As Theodore Roosevelt once said: "The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people."
So, instead of focusing on getting ahead by keeping your head down, it seems the way to find opportunities and become more valuable to your organisation is to keep your head up and work on relationships across the company and your industry.
Top tips on increasing your value
1. Communicate. Becoming valuable is all about the relationships you build. It's the trust and loyalty you show and the relationship with your direct manager - you want them to know they can rely on you and that you can deliver to their expectations.
2. Show initiative. I see a lot of candidates who will do their job, but not much else. The ones who fly are the ones who say, "This is the outcome you would like, but have you thought about this or that ..." It's about demonstrating advanced ideas and thought processes.
3. Relate. To increase your worth in a company, you need to be able to relate to all sorts of people and build relationships right across the business. These are the people who create opportunities for themselves.
