Harnessing Employee Work Strengths for Success

Personal development and training begins with self-awareness, which will help employees tune in to their areas of greatest strength. By understanding these abilities, each person can more fully leverage them, enhancing their performance. 

In turn, tapping into workplace strengths builds new levels of self-awareness. So, the process of unveiling an employee’s strengths can lead to personal growth. They’ll emerge more sure of their abilities, as well as who they are as a person. All of this will help them show up with more confidence at work.

In this article, we’ll delve into how to identify employee competencies. Then, we’ll discuss how to further enhance and draw upon them to further your mission.

Table of Contents

1. What Are Employee Strengths?

2. Benefits of Knowing Employee Strengths

3. Identifying Employee Strengths

4. Leveraging Employee Strengths in the Workplace

5. Role of Performance Management Tools in Growing Employee Strengths

What Are Employee Strengths?

Employee strengths are characteristics that support one’s ability to succeed at work. They can comprise a variety of both human and technical skills. 

Types of Strengths

Human skills relate to personality and interpersonal abilities. Meanwhile, technical work skills pertain to aptitude in specific types of tasks. (In contrast, weaknesses are areas that lack development or undermine one’s performance.)

For example, creativity, efficiency, and smart risk-taking are examples of human skills. Gallup places these types of workplace skills into four main categories: influencing, executing, relationship-building, and strategic-thinking:

• People with influencing strengths are persuasive and thrive in competitive situations. 
• People with executing abilities are disciplined, focused, and organized. 
• Relationship-builders are empathetic and prioritize harmony; they help find connections between others that boost collaboration.
• Strategic thinkers are highly reflective, using creative thinking and analysis to envision the future. 

People can have emotional strengths, too, as Berkeley Greater Good points out. Optimism, ability to remain calm under pressure, and courage will build resilience and effectiveness, for instance.

Analytical abilities, coding skills, and artistic talent are examples of technical skills. These are the workplace skills that people can build through many hours of study and practice, although they may stem from their interests and aptitudes. 

The Top 12 Employee Strengths

Here’s a short list of the most crucial skills that top performers possess. Do your employees possess these abilities?

• Focus
• Optimism
• Analytical abilities
• Empathy
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Creativity
• Technological skill
• Flexibility
• Reliability
• Curiosity
• Desire to grow

While some human skills are innate abilities, people can develop them over time as well. We’ll discuss how to shape and cultivate employee strengths in a moment.

Benefits of Knowing Employee Strengths

By knowing their work strengths, people can expand them. They can also draw upon them more effectively, increasing their productivity. As employees gain awareness of their competencies, they’ll trust themselves to use them—and they’ll know which ones to call upon in the moment.

Taking a strengths-based approach has profound benefits for organizations as well:

• Absenteeism can drop by 81%.
• Quality defects can decrease by 41%.
• Turnover can drop by 43%.

Employees who know and use their abilities feel more fulfilled at work. Hence, they’re likely to grow with their organizations for a much longer time.

Why? A strengths-based approach will bolster engagement. It’s also the number-one way to improve employee-manager relationships, according to Gallup. All of this improves the employee experience dramatically. And as employees enthusiastically prepare for advancement by cultivating their work strengths, they’ll find pathways for career progression in their organization.

Identifying Employee Strengths

Here are three key tactics for building awareness of your employees’ work strengths. Be sure to use them all, which will give you a well-rounded perspective of your team’s abilities!

Use Self-Assessment Tools and Techniques

Businesses often conduct a SWOT analysis —which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats—to create strategic plans. You can help employees conduct a SWOT analysis for their career. 

A SWOT analysis begins with questions about an employee’s competencies:

• What do they do best?
• What’s unique about them?
• What do clients, coworkers, and employers love most about them?

From the answers to these questions, employees can determine their personal strengths. After assessing their weaknesses, they can examine new opportunities to use their key skills. Managers can guide them in this process. What emerging needs could they fill? Does the company have a talent gap that they could bridge? Similarly, could they help meet any new company goals or respond to threats in the market? Encourage them to think critically about how to apply their core work skills. 

Tools like Gallup’s StrengthsFinder can also help managers and employees tune into their areas of greatest skill. This tool assesses how people rank within 34 key themes, boosting self-understanding. 

Good performance review software offers a self-assessment feature, too. Taking a self-evaluation can bring newfound awareness of work strengths. It can also compare an employee’s self-perceptions to how their manager views them, illuminating blind spots.

Ask for Feedback on Work Skills

Employees should ask the people who know their work best for feedback. Peers, managers, and mentors will all have insight on their workplace strengths. To gain a range of input, employees can have one-on-one conversations with a handful of people. They should ask for clear examples of how they’ve modeled any work skills that the other person points out, along with ways to improve.

Seek Out a Variety of Experiences

Individuals should welcome a variety of experiences in their daily work, until they find what suits them best. Prompt employees to reflect on past successes and what they enjoy most. Then, urge them to continue pushing themselves to try new things at times, stepping outside of their comfort zone. As elements of the workplace change, they’ll tailor their abilities to the demands of the moment.

Leveraging Employee Strengths in the Workplace

Equipped with this understanding of employee strengths, you can guide people to use them more fully. Through these strategies, they’ll take their performance to the next level. 

Align Work Strengths with Job Responsibilities

Managers should talk with direct reports about how to employ their competencies more fully. Name their abilities, and share any ideas for how to put them to use. Could they take on specific projects or responsibilities that would benefit from this skill set? 

Match Employees to Roles That Enhance Their Skills

If employees are interested in a new position, determine which role would best utilize their abilities. Consider lateral moves as well as vertical ones. Encourage them to talk with any other mentors about roles that would suit their unique set of strengths. Then, you can help them fine-tune their skill set so they’ll be the perfect fit when a position opens up.

Helping Employees Communicate Their Strengths

Employees’ strengths make them a valuable resource to their coworkers and organization. So, urge employees to share what they can offer, which will benefit team performance. Brainstorm a handful of ways they can offer support.

For example:

• During a one-on-one, expressing readiness to lead a project in an area of specialty.
• In a meeting, sharing eagerness to do a mini workshop on a topic of expertise.
• During a collaborative session, volunteering skills to fill a crucial project role.
• Coaching someone on how to handle a difficult task or interpersonal situation.
• Talking one-on-one with a trusted colleague about their desire to use particular abilities more. 

Sharing one’s strengths helps keep them at the front of other people’s minds. As you plan new projects, reflect on employees’ competencies to assign roles. Each person will then get to do more of what they love—and what they excel at. In turn, getting to consistently use their skills will further develop them. 

Next, we’ll talk about some additional strategies for cultivating employee strengths.

Developing and Enhancing Employee Strengths

Through a three-pronged strategy that incorporates goal-setting, continuous learning, and interpersonal relationships, employees can expand their personal strengths. 

Strong Goal-Setting

Guide employees in crafting professional goals aligned with their work strengths. After looking over their list of core abilities together, review their current goals. Look for gaps between their competencies and objectives. Then, generate ideas for new goals based on these abilities. Make sure each goal is important to the organization, and clearly connect it to the abilities that will help them achieve it.

Do the same for learning goals, setting 3–5 personal goals in this area. Learning goals should prepare people for success in the position they aspire to.

Continuous Learning

Professional development is an ongoing process. Identify specific types of opportunities that target their key strengths. Attending conferences, workshops, online trainings, or other events can enhance their core abilities. After each training, prompt them to reflect on what they’ve learned. Discuss key takeaways and steps to take, so they can translate lessons learned into their work.

Mentorship and Networking

Connect employees with opportunities for mentorship and sponsorship. Encourage them to get to know superiors whenever possible. Make introductions, especially to those with expertise in their areas of strength. Make employees’ workplace skills known to higher-level colleagues when appropriate, which could lead to new opportunities for them.

Advise employees to surround themselves with peers who can benefit their growth as well. They might meet colleagues at conferences who share insights with them, for example. Afterward, they can stay connected, sharing ideas and learning resources. They can do the same with peers in their workplace who have similar interests. By doing so, they’ll build a learning network that enhances their growth.

Role of Performance Management Tools in Growing Employee Strengths

Building a strengths-based culture will enhance morale and help your team achieve peak effectiveness. Performance management solutions provide the tools to do that. Let’s look at how a few critical ones will support your efforts.

360 Feedback Software

360 feedback tools can help identify work strengths. By using such tools, you’ll give each employee a full spectrum of insights from colleagues on their work skills. Discuss this information with employees to gauge their awareness of these abilities. Then, discuss how to further develop them through stretch assignments and learning experiences. 

Performance Review Solutions

Performance review software helps you plan for skills-based development. By holding detailed and accurate evaluations, you’ll zero in on emerging work skills and address performance issues. At a higher level, you can take a strengths-based approach to succession planning.

Before a performance review or one-on-one, managers should reflect on employees’ abilities. When raising an issue, they should consider how the employee’s strengths can help overcome it. This will focus the conversation in a positive direction, building confidence.

Goal-Tracking Tools

Looking at progress toward goals can reveal hidden strengths. Through software that tracks goals and OKRs, you’ll gain insights on which tasks and assignments employees most excel at. You can then consider increasing their responsibility in those areas.

By knowing and leveraging their work strengths, each employee will maximize their career success. Encourage each person to pursue higher self-awareness and continuous development, nurturing their distinct set of strengths. Helping employees grow their competencies will expand your organization’s potential. You’ll enhance each individual’s confidence, as well as their collective ability to achieve high-level goals.

Learn more about how software can enhance your team’s abilities—demo our product.