Why Your Best Employees Should Have the Following 6 Habits

The growth of your company depends on the quality of your employees. For your company to grow, your employees have to grow as well. They will need to have multifunctional skills that make them indispensable in the workforce today.

And the following 6 habits are what will make all the difference in the world.

Why your best employees should have the following 6 habits

The market today demands different skills from employees than were required 50 years ago. Today, employees need to have a variety of personal and professional skills and habits if they want success.

They will need to have technical skills and knowledge. However, those skills alone aren’t going to cut it. They will need to have the following 6 habits that will make them the best employees for your organization:

Clarity

Clarity is a valuable skill for any employee to have. This is about purpose and focus, and we have seen how both of those are valuable during the pandemic.

With purpose, you have an individual who has a reason for doing things. They have a personal and professional “why” that they’re following and it’s providing them with a direction in both their lives and in their career. This makes the employee much more determined to getting things done.

Focus is about getting to that purpose. This is how the individual gets from where they are now (point A) to the desired outcome (point B).

They’re not wandering around, hoping to stumble on a solution to the problem. They’re actively pursuing their purpose with a determined focus. An employee with clarity will immensely contribute to the success of your products and services.

Energy

If you type “How to have more energy” into Google, you will get more than 4 billion search results for it. Energy management seems to be a cornerstone of getting things done today.

With so much talk about burned out employees, stress management, and health and well-being, employees need to take care of themselves to take care of work.

That means that employees need to take care of themselves with a holistic approach — caring for the mind, body, and spirit.

You want employees who can take care of their bodies with a proper and high-functioning diet. Also, they need to feed their mind with new information and insights. And you need them to take care of their spiritual well-being.

The employee can’t do everything by themselves and they will need the support of their environment. That’s why you, as the employer, will need to make sure that you support the efforts of the employees to take care of themselves in these 3 categories.

Urgency

Urgency as a habit is about 2 elements: a sense of duty and a sense of excellence.

A sense of duty is an external feeling the employee has regarding their tasks and promises. They know that they need to perform and deliver because of their obligations toward others. An employee has to deliver in their household, their careers, and for their employers.

A sense of excellence is an internal feeling, a standard set upon themselves by employees. It’s a way of doing things no matter how big or small they are. Every employee has standards. However, you’re looking for those that have high standards, those that are willing to go the extra mile to deliver excellence.

A sense of excellence is an internal feeling, a standard set upon themselves by employees.

You can find this in your employees even in the small things that they do. They always seem to deliver their work before the deadline and it’s always checked, rechecked, and triple-checked for any mistakes.

A sense of excellence is a personal habit. You should look to develop this in your employees as well, enabling them to learn new skills and improve.

Productivity

Productivity is a habit that enables employees to put their thoughts and ideas into action. A productive employee is someone who can make things happen with the resources that they have at their disposal.

A productive employee will look at the project goals and objectives and figure out a way to achieve them. They will do so with the personnel and resources at their disposal.

They won’t complain about how they don’t have the best people, the highest budget, or the best technology. Productive employees will simply do what they can with what they have at their disposal.

Employers should provide opportunities to employees that show high productivity levels since they’re the ones that can make things happen.

Influence

Influence is an underrated skill in the workplace, especially when it comes to employees. Managers need to learn how to influence others, but team members also need to know how to influence others.

Influence always starts with the idea. And managers need to communicate and negotiate the terms on how to accomplish that idea.

That’s why employees need to have both clarity (purpose and focus) and urgency (duty, standards) to influence others. Clarity and urgency will earn them the trust of others. So they will be able to turn ideas into reality.

However, they will also need to have communication and negotiation skills to be able to influence others. They will need to practice oral and written communication skills. Also, they will need to practice negotiation on a daily basis so that they know how to use it when the time is right.

Courage

Courage is the last, but not least habit that the employees working in your organization should have. This is the prerequisite for all other virtues. All of them require courage when tested through trials, challenges, and setbacks.

A courageous employee is someone who knows when to speak their mind and stand up for something (like an idea). They will have to “fight for something,” which can mean an idea that everyone discarded at first. If they fight long enough for it, it can become a gold mine once the right employee stands behind it.

With courage, you’re looking for employees who know when (and how) to take calculated risks that provide massive ROI. This doesn’t apply just to projects, products, and services, but also to interpersonal relationships in the organization. Courageous employees can provide you with information that you might not be aware of and need to act upon.

Remember to reward people for courageous behavior because that will encourage others to try to develop the same habits.

Help your employees develop these habits

Personal habits don’t stay at home when the employee goes to work; they follow them to work. You should invest in your employees and ensure that they develop great personal habits since your organization can only profit from that.

And developing clarity, energy, urgency, productivity, influence, and courage in your employees will do wonders for your business. The improvement of every employee is the improvement of the entire business. The more you invest in your employees, the more you will get back.

If you’d like to read more about developing helpful habits for your employees, check out this blog post: Improve Work Interactions With These Two Simple, Daily Habits.