04.THE SKILLS &CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD EMPLOYEE/HOW TO BE A GOOD EMPLOYEE

 

Why is it hard to find good employees?

Distributed hierarchies are causing a change in traditional business functions and policies. And the only way to outdo your competitors, give exceptional customer service, and stay profitable is to foster a culture of innovation, experimentation, and creativity.To enable this culture, however, you need good employees who are engaged and feel passionate about their work and employer.

But many hiring processes, including the ones deployed through online tools, do not prioritize cultivating characteristics of employees (a necessary step to end with good employees). Enterprises are guilty of ignoring their staff too, demotivating hidden talents in the process.

Employers need to decide the qualities of a good employee that complement their business growth. Then adapt their hiring system, employee experience, and organizational mindset and structures to attract and keep the right talent. Its comprised with,

Seamless work experience

Better employee engagement

Flexibility

A responsive, inclusive culture

The first step, to avoid such shortcomings, is to know which characteristics can empower your business success. Good   employees have many positive traits that have an overall positive impact on the companies they work for. Hiring good employees requires time and effort, but the overall effect it will have on your business will be worth it. strong soft skills are in high demand for many different types of jobs. What are soft skills, and why are they so important?

 Soft skills are the interpersonal attributes you need to succeed in the workplace. They are how you work with and relate to others—in other words, people skills.

Demonstrating good characteristics as an employee can help lead to advancement opportunities in his or her career. Also improve their chances of getting a job by exhibiting certain positive traits. Quality attributes include a mix of hard and soft skills, all of which you can strengthen with daily practice. In this article, we look at some of the most common qualities employers prefer.

The importance of building good employee characteristics

Developing traits that are typical of good employees may help you make a favorable impression on your employer. It can also help you develop and maintain positive relationships with your coworkers since they’ll come to recognize you as a reliable team member.

 

Common traits of a good employee

Dedication

Dedication includes a strong sense of support and loyalty to a business or career role. Committed employees are often more purpose-driven in both their personal lives and their careers.

As a dedicated employee, you might have the following traits:

A passion for your work

A positive attitude toward your job in general

Punctuality for all work-related events

Flexibility when assigned work tasks

A dedicated employee doesn’t need extensive experience in their field, but they’re willing to put in the training and work required to gain any necessary experience. They are goal-orientated and are more likely to strengthen any qualities they may need to improve.

Considering this we can assume engagement is the best solution for the dedication of the work how can we defins this,

Employee Engagement Employee engagement is critical to any organization. Deci and Ryan conducted the most influential study on employee engagement in 1985 (Berens, 2013). Deci and Ryan (1985) expanded on early work by differentiating between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Competence, autonomy, and psychological relatedness which are psychological needs, motivate the individual to initiate behavior essential for psychological health and well-being of an individual and if satisfied may lead to optimal function and growth (Deci & Ryan, 1985). The basic needs of satisfaction have been found to directly relate to dedication of employees (Vandenabeele, 2014). Dedicated and meaningful work enables employees to realize how valuable they are within the organization and makes them engaged.

2. Confidence

Confidence and productivity often work well together. Confident employees not only believe in their own abilities to manage tasks, but they are also more likely to convince managers, coworkers and customers of their abilities as well. As your confidence grows, you may exhibit some of the following characteristics: You listen more than you speak, You are always looking for ways to improve your skills ,You know when to ask for help, You can quickly adapt to a new role.

With developed confidence, you might also find it easier to embrace challenges in the workplace. This includes immediately looking for ways to overcome these challenges and succeed at your current tasks.

3. Reliability

A reliable and dependable employee is a trusted one. Reliability is an important factor in knowing that the job will get done and it will get done well. Reliable employees are valuable in the workplace because they prove that they can finish their tasks without much supervision.

Becoming a reliable employee includes:

Showing up to work-related events

Coming to work on time

Consistently meeting deadlines

Producing high-quality work

Showing eagerness to take on more significant responsibilities

Taking initiative when needed

4. Teamwork

Teamwork is a requirement in most work settings. Successful collaboration requires excellent communication skills, patience, tolerance and dedication. By demonstrating strong teamwork skills, you can also exhibit a series of other desirable skills. Being a team player is crucial when ensuring that you’ll be a positive addition to the current team.

Good team players are:

Flexible with change

Committed to their own successes and the success of their teams

Reliable and responsible

Strong problem-solvers

Supportive and respectful of their coworkers

In organizations that rely heavily on teamwork, adaptability is also important. A team member who can quickly adapt to different roles, including as leader and motivator, will usually have an easier time joining an existing team.

 5. Independence

The ability to work independently is just as important as the ability to work well with a team. Even in organizations that are heavily team-oriented, you will still do some work on your own. There is also some level of trust involved when your manager and team members expect that you’ll complete a task individually.

As an autonomous employee, you offer the following:

 Strong focus

Developed time-management skills

Resourcefulness

The ability to critique and edit your own work

When you can work independently, your employer can also more easily rely on you to complete job tasks without the need for much supervision.

 6. Leadership

Strong leadership skills can help you move your company forward. They can also help you guide your team members toward developing skills of their own. Influential leaders have a wide collection of skills, including self-confidence, reliability and honesty.

As a leader, you may exhibit the following traits:

Strong organizational skills

The ability to identify a team’s strengths and weaknesses

Confidence in your abilities to lead teams

The ability to inspire others

Empathy toward team members

You can give feedback in a constructive way

If you have strong leadership skills, one of your biggest advantages to a company is that they can eventually promote you. Promoting from within cuts recruitment and training costs. Leadership is also a crucial employee quality. Hiring an individual who expresses leadership traits gives others someone to look up to, which can increase motivation and productivity levels within an organization.

7. Interpersonal/communication skills

Strong communication skills can benefit you in almost every type of job. During your career, you will likely spend a significant amount of time communicating with customers, coworkers, vendors or managers. Strong interpersonal skills ensure that these interactions are positive and effective.

A good communicator often demonstrates the following traits:

A high level of professionalism

An open-minded approach to new ideas

The ability to interpret nonverbal communication patterns

A strong communicator is also a good listener. Excellent communication involves active listening, which requires fully comprehending what the other person is saying and responding to them appropriately.

8. Self-awareness

Self-awareness allows you to understand your strengths and weaknesses. It can also help you recognize when to ask for help or feedback on your work, allowing you to improve your skills continuously. The greater you develop your self-awareness skills, the easier you will be able to reflect on the skills you’ve gained since beginning in your position.

Self-awareness often includes the following:

Strong emotional intelligence

Understanding your role on your team

Asking for and learning from feedback

9. Integrity

By hiring employees they trust, employers can focus on other areas of the businesses. Integrity includes traits like accountability and honesty. Integrity also means being honest about your capabilities and preferences. For example, with high levels of integrity, your coworkers can come to trust you to be honest with your ability to complete a project.

Transparency in the workplace is important because it shapes a company’s culture and success. When your team members know what to expect from you, you can more easily develop team strategies that lead to success within your department. This can ultimately lead to your company’s success as a whole.

 If you’ve developed your integrity as an employee, you might display the following traits:

You are honest about your work progress.

You are ethical in all business practices.

You are aware of core values and demonstrate them regularly.

You make all decisions based on integrity and honesty.

Integrity is one of the most important characteristics of a good team member because honesty creates an environment of open communication. When employers and employees feel free to share their concerns, questions and feedback, everyone in the organization can benefit.

10.Perseverance

This trait highlights an employee’s drive and willingness to resolve challenges regardless of the time and effort. Strong perseverance leads to better learning ability and agility, especially while working in fast-paced work environments. To engender a culture where perseverance thrives, you can start by celebrating big and small wins, acknowledging proactive thinking, and promoting problem-solving and collaboration.

How To Mobilize Hidden Gems(Good Employees ) In  Organization

There are many reasons you may neglect hidden talent present in non-leadership roles, such as:

The notion that the best performing employees will naturally make their way to the top

The prevalent culture that only the top leadership and management knows what a good employee looks and behaves like

Managers’ subconscious bias against employees who, although exceptional workers, do not match his or her thinking or behavior

A narrow top-down perspective on employee empowerment

There are other possibilities as well. For example, an employee with potential may not follow the typical promotion path, she or he may feel reluctant amongst forceful team members, get overshadowed working in a large organization, or her obligations may obstruct her passion to excel at the job.

You see, inspired employees are good employees. And it is never too late to start nurturing their characteristics and help them realize their potential and goals.

Below are some tactics you can use to kick start this process sooner.

Conduct intentional scans to find promising individuals who are not on your list of “future superstars”

Turn a “good job!” into an in-depth interview to praise the employee and understand how they  succeeded. Analyze their thought-process. This way, you get a detailed look at what drove the employee's actions to achieve the results

Discuss the employee’s dreams and goals to find which projects may complement her strengths

Build a comprehensive talent identification process to spot good employees early on.

Give awards for unorthodox performance (inspired collaboration, problem-solving feats, creative thinking, etc.)

 Conclusion: Shape Mindsets & Systems-In Employers  & Employees Both

Hiring and retaining processes are now becoming employee-driven. If any organisation is not agile enough to acknowledge and optimize the qualities of good workers, then they will find it difficult to ascertain what success looks like. So, start reshaping   mindsets in management   and systems to celebrate employee characteristics and their place in the organization.

Knowing what skills and characteristics to look out for, in existing employees as well as when recruiting new employees, will ensure that these desired qualities are nurtured and developed throughout the business, regardless of the job title or function. The skills of a good employee reach beyond technical acumen and business experience. While these are important to get the job done, how these tasks are carried out, and the interactions with other team members, are indicative of the attitude, approach, mindset, and adaptability of a good employee.

References:

Careeraddict.com.20key qualities that make a good employee[online] Available at:https://www.careeraddict.com/good-employee-qualities >[Accessed 20 December 2021].

 Zambas,J.(Aug, 2018). ‘20 key qualities that make a good employee.[online] Available at: https://www.careeraddict.com/good-employee-qualities >[Accessed 20 December 2021].

 Bean-Mellinger, B. (Mar, 2019). ‘Most important employee skills in the workplace’. [online] Available at: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/talent-pool-organization-59467.html>>[Accessed 19 December 2021].

 Gassam, J. (Jul, 2018). ‘How to develop more emotionally intelligent employees’[online] Available at: >[Accessed 20 December 2021].