Strengths and Weaknesses of Employees: Tips for Performance Efficiency

In this article, you’ll learn more about the most valuable strengths and the most widespread weaknesses employees have, as well as figure out how to improve the performance of your team with the help of monitoring software.

The topic of employee strengths and weaknesses is immensely important, since it is a crucial step in building cross-functional teams. Every member of a team brings something unique to the table, and it is your job as a leader to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your employees in order to build strategies around your specialists. These aforementioned strategies usually revolve around making the most of an employee’s strengths and finding ways to mitigate their weaknesses.

Last week, we talked about the most common strengths and weaknesses of managers. In today’s article we will focus on the employee part of the business, looking at the strong points and areas for improvement most employees tend to have in common and offering tips on how to improve your business operations by enhancing employee performance (once again, highlighting some essential features of our Kickidler software). 

Top 10 Strengths of an Employee

Employee strengths are a broad category that encompasses soft skills, such as teamwork and decisiveness, and hard skills, such as proficiency with a CRM system or SQL databases alike. 

Ultimately, they’re a set of traits, talents, and characteristics that help employees perform their tasks effectively.

Understanding your employees’ strengths is essential for building an effective company. It can help you organize teams by amplifying employee strengths (as well as identifying employee weaknesses that we’ll cover later in this article – and then filling those gaps with new skills).

Different job-related skills will be more or less relevant depending on the industry you’re in, your business goals, and the size of your team. Remember: different companies have different needs. The key here is to know what strengths are most important for your particular business and be able to identify them during the hiring process.

And now, let’s take a look at what some of those employee strengths might be for your business:

1. Dependability

   Whether it’s about meeting deadlines or taking responsibility for inevitable slipups, you need to be able to depend on your team members. In fact, dependability is a core characteristic every member of your business should possess.

   Dependable employees benefit the company by breeding a culture of trust and autonomy.

2. Positive Attitude

   A positive attitude can be what makes a good team great. It’s incredibly important to keep motivation high when a project faces unexpected setbacks or enhance both joy and productivity when morale is low.

   When it comes to a company as a whole, a positive attitude boosts workplace culture, which makes it crucial for healthy work environment and overall improved employee wellbeing.

3. Flexibility

   Skilled professionals are able to adapt to changing work environment or unexpected work situations with ease. Business processes are dynamic and may require employees to change their routines, work unusual hours or take on new roles.

   Employees who are flexible quickly learn on their feet so they can continue to be as productive as they possibly can be, working toward becoming well-rounded leaders. These employees are comfortable learning new technologies and methods as well.

4. Critical (& creative) thinking

   Employees skilled in critical thinking usually get to the root of problems faster, identifying nuances, questioning the status quo and not getting caught up in ego games. Thus, they rend to deliver high-quality work as a result.

   What’s more, employees who are flexible when identifying problems and finding solutions encourage creativity among the team. Creative thinking is key for innovation on every level and in any industry. It’s especially valuable if the product or service you provide is the first of its kind.

5. Communication skills

   It is very important for employees to convey ideas in a clear and effective way. Well-versed communication skills allow employees to give and receive important information when speaking with their colleagues and senior management. Knowing how to ask questions, provide feedback and raise issues professionally can help build positive relationships with the team members.

   Another important communication skill is active listening, seeing how paying attention to what others have to say shows respect for their concerns and can help employees grow in their own roles.

6. Discipline

   Discipline usually relates to the ability of employees to put job responsibilities ahead of job enjoyment when necessary (although, obviously, you shouldn’t be forcing your employees to choose one over the other on a regular basis).

   Disciplined employees have incredible time management skills and don’t miss deadlines, making them your go-to for important projects.

7. Resilience

   Resilient employees embrace challenges because they know they can handle them. With an almost stubborn approach to problem-solving, such employees don’t give up just because of a few pesky setbacks.

   These employees learn from their mistakes, see growth opportunities at every turn, and improve over time (often rather quickly and efficiently).

8. Focus on constant improvement

   The only way for businesses to succeed is to constantly evolve and improve, otherwise, there is a risk of losing relevance or being outperformed by the competition. This means that your employees should be equally committed to continuous development and growth.

   By promoting a culture of learning at your workplace, you can ensure that your employees have the skills they need.

9. Team-oriented

   Even those specialists who work independently can benefit from the ability to work well as part of a team. It allows them to collaborate with their coworkers to make decisions on important issues, solve problems together, and discover new ideas that benefit the team as a whole.

   Such a collaborative work environment where everyone works together cohesively leads to more productive teams and boosts business efficiency.

10. Emotional awareness

    Emotional awareness allows for reflection, facilitates personal growth, and improves the ability of an employee to empathize and communicate well with others – and those are all valuable employee strengths.

Top 5 Weaknesses of an Employee

There is quite a number of common weaknesses employees experience in the workplace, but there are also numerous ways to overcome them and become more efficient professionals. 

Here are a few examples of employee weaknesses that you as a leader could help your team members work on:

1. Lack of confidence

   In business, confidence signals to clients that your company is worth trusting. Employees who lack confidence are less likely to tackle challenges, voice their concerns, or seek feedback.

   And although humility is important in the workplace since it allows employees to learn and grow professionally, it’s also important to be confident in the designated role. Employees who criticize their work often or avoid speaking in meetings may have a hard time earning the respect of their team members and managers. A lack of confidence can also actually make it difficult to be productive, as those employees may experience low job satisfaction.

2. Resistance to change

   Experienced employees often develop certain habits or routines that help them stay organized, prioritize their tasks, and meet deadlines. These habits are often beneficial, but it’s also important to be open to change as the company grows or experiences certain transformations.

   Employees may actually find it challenging to adjust their approach to their work during times of change, but speaking with management and colleagues about ideas for adapting to these changes may help them become more flexible.

3. Procrastination (& lack of motivation)

   Taking breaks at work can help employees stay productive, however, blatant procrastination might prevent them from reaching their full potential. Employees might procrastinate when they don’t feel as if they have the skills to complete their tasks or when they find their jobs too daunting.

   Even more, when employees are unmotivated or full-on disengaged, they may struggle to absorb information, develop solutions to problems or be productive members of their teams.

4. Disorganization

   This doesn’t just relate to having a messy desk, in fact, disorganization can lead to major errors and oversights or cause team members to waste time on unnecessary and duplicative tasks.

5. Impatience

   Some clients may need lots of support with your product or service. In other cases, obstacles may arise that slow down business operations, e.g., supply chain issues. No matter the situation, it’s crucial for the employees to stay patient, level-headed, and strategic.

How to Help Employees Develop Their Strengths?

Employee strengths shouldn’t be confused with personality traits. Strengths are a set of skills that can be improved in the long run. For example, you might have noticed that some of your employees struggle in certain areas. With proper training and other strategies, you can help them enhance specific skills and boost their overall performance.

This is why it is essential to plan ahead your L&D strategy and start investing in improving the strengths of your employees that will make the difference in your company.

Here are 3 ways you can help your employees become stronger:

1. Conduct evaluations and provide constructive feedback

   Evaluation helps employees understand pain areas and define if there’s room for improvement regarding certain skill sets. Schedule regular feedback sessions so that your team members are aware of what they’re doing right (or wrong). HR can help senior managers track employee performance, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and offer feedback that will help employees improve their skills.

2. Offer mentorship and coaching programs

   One way to nurture employee development is by offering mentorship and coaching programs. This way, employees get the chance to view things from a different perspective and form stronger professional relationships.

3. Recognize achievements

   Acknowledging and rewarding employees is very important to boost employee morale. Celebrating achievements and accomplishments makes employees feel satisfied, proud, and confident. As a result, they are more likely to stay productive and high-performing.

How to Improve Team Performance with Kickidler?

Focusing on employees’ strengths doesn’t just benefit employees – it actually has a ripple effect that impacts the entire company in a positive way:

• Focusing on strengths increases engagement. Creating a positive employee experience limits turnover while boosting retention, motivation, and engagement. One way to help create that positive employee experience is to emphasize your team members’ strengths and provide them with tasks that will allow them to shine and contribute their expertise. 
• Focusing on strengths builds confidence. Employees who feel confident in their skills are more likely to take on challenges, as well as be better equipped to handle critical feedback regarding their weaknesses. 
• Focusing on strengths improves mental health. It’s important to show employees you value their unique talents and abilities, which is one of a plethora of steps you can take toward preventing workplace burnout.

And our Kickidler employee monitoring software can help you tremendously when it comes to improving team performance.

Here are a few of its features that help track employees’ engagement and productivity levels, identifying strengths of your team members and improving some of the weaknesses they may have:

• Real-time monitoring provides you as a leader with visual examples of how your employees are actually performing at any given moment of a workday.
• Self-monitoring interface includes automatic notifications on workplace violations and a custom interface for employees to see analytics on their own productivity. Automatic pop-up notifications on violations and statistics available for employees regarding their productivity provide an unprecedented level of autonomy in monitoring employee efficiency.
• Time tracking improves time management within the team, making work processes more transparent and helping everybody stay on track.
• Analytics on productivity help track employee performance. This way, you can define average efficiency of your team members and determine the most motivated employees as well as those who are prone to procrastination.
• Kickidler Project Tracking suite helps track progress of all your employees, foster healthy communication and collaboration in the team, as well as organize work processes in general. 

In Lieu of a Conclusion

Understanding and leveraging your employees’ strengths is a strategic approach that fuels workplace success. Recognizing individual strengths of each of your team members enhances overall productivity, job satisfaction, and success of the company as a whole.

We also advise you to keep in mind that when it comes to employee strengths and weaknesses, these weaknesses or strengths don’t wholeheartedly define who your employees are, seeing how all of them are complex individuals.

Give our Kickidler monitoring software a try and let it provide you with a real-time overview of how things are going in your team, thus helping everybody stay on track toward the same goals.