What makes an exemplary employee

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

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.

Related: Leadership Skills: Definitions and Examples. 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 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. 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. By hiring employees they trust, employers can focus on other areas of the businesses. Model employees understand the values of teamwork and collaborating with people who aren't like themselves.

In most work situations, your employer cares less about individualism than securing your commitment to serving the organization's interests. The best employees know when it's time to challenge the status quo, and when to put their own feelings aside for the company's benefit.

Good employees recognize the need to maintain that balance, even when it's not easy to do. You already had to research the company as a candidate, so expect to step up those efforts once you're hired.

Unity College discusses the advantages that you'll have, if you learn as much as you can about your supervisor and the organization, as a whole. Continual Learning Great employees are almost never satisfied knowing just enough to do their jobs.

They want to know everything there is to know about a product, customer, or service, and are always asking questions to further develop their skills and abilities. According to Matt Mandel, vice president of sales and marketing for Nogales, AZ-based SunFed, this thirst for knowledge means treating the workplace like a schoolroom. AppHarvest sees quality improvement, pauses lettuce expansion November 12, November 12, By Pamela Riemenschneider.

View Produce Blueprints Magazine. In addition to being aware of his roles and duties, the self-managed employee strives to improve himself, reduce his weaknesses and play up his strengths.

If the self-managed employee is self-disciplined, even better. There are two kinds of kinds of employees — reactive and proactive. The former wait till they are told to do something while the latter take initiative in discovering inventive methods of being productive so that their company gains from it in the process.

The latter thinks ahead and implements without expecting a request — he is a rock star. A proactive worker truly stands out, and any manager would favor him for advancement.

Further, hire those people who are willing to take action and chances. Of course, chances could lead to failures but then, failures are the stepping stone to success.

Failures help to build up confidence while encouraging the birth of new ideas. Action-oriented and not stagnant employees are the ones who are going to make money for your company.

Marketable means the employee should be presentable to clients. He should be someone who can represent your business in a way that conveys a good impression of it to the client. So in addition to being well-groomed, he should be professional and have a favorable personality. It is essential to pay attention to details. Even the slightest of mistakes could create major issues. Employees who take detail seriously are also ones who delight in their work.

They put in the extra effort for minor details that many others possibly take for granted. Employee autonomy means that they have freedom and discretion with respect to how to schedule their work and coming out with their way to carry it out. Being a boss, you have multiple tasks to look after.

You would prefer execution. An autonomous employee is capable of managing his time well enough to get monster tasks done quickly and productively. Businesses need people with great ideas to really grow and prosper. Your employees should be ones who are willing to experiment with new things and think out-of-the-box that in itself will help reduce the redundancy and mundaneness of the daily routine.

In addition, it will help improve employee and company productivity. Whatever and how many other qualities an employee may have, he is incomplete without authenticity and integrity. Employees who are not forthright and honest would lead to clients being out off and consequently, trouble for your company. Honesty and transparency are two sides of the same coin.

So, an honest employee will be transparent at all times. Transparency improves the office culture and environment and makes people feel happy within the walls of the workplace. Honest and humble people, especially when they are in the higher ranks of the company, are greatly appreciated.

Employers are happy to hire employees who can communicate in a lucid manner and well, whether when speaking or writing. Inappropriate or inaccurate employee-employee communication can lead to many issues within the company and with clients as well. Leadership starts with self-confidence and is strengthened by repetitive success and positive reinforcement. If you have a person with leadership qualities working for you, you can consider possibilities of giving him a key leadership role in your company.

On top of the above 20 qualities of a great employee, here are 8 other bonus strengths that employers look for when hiring. Imagine having an employee who refers your customers to a competitor because they have been promised a commission by the competitor, or simply out of spite. How long would it take you to fire such an employee after finding out what they are doing?

As an employer, you want employees who are loyal, employees that you can trust to work professionally for the best interests of your company at all times, even without close supervision. The world of business is highly dynamic, and if your business is to survive, it needs to be capable of adapting quickly in response to changing business conditions. If your employees are rigid, your company will be equally rigid, and as examples from companies like Kodak, Nokia and Blackberry show, rigid companies do not last long in the business world.

This is closely related to flexibility. For your employees to adapt to changing business conditions, they will probably need to learn new skills and new processes.

Therefore, you should look for employees who show eagerness to learn. In addition to adapting to new business conditions, employees who are eager to learn will keep improving as they gain new knowledge, thus making your company more productive and efficient.