Essential Work-Related Strengths and How to Foster Them in Employees

Remember how good it felt when a teacher praised your work in front of the class? Being recognized for achievements feels wonderful, elating, and motivating. Being reproached for failures, on the other hand, makes you feel, well, like a failure. Yet, in workplace settings, focusing on weaknesses rather than one’s best work-related strengths is still fairly common.   

The good news is that this approach is being reconsidered as more and more decision makers realize that a company is only as strong as its people.

Brief Summary and Key Takeaways  

We strongly recommend that you read the entire article to make the most of it. But if you’re short on time, here are the key points we will cover.  

• Employee strengths matter. Recognizing your workers’ best skills and giving them opportunities to excel comes with many benefits for both employers and employees, and it ultimately improves your company’s bottom line.  
• Identifying and developing employee strengths requires effort. Fortunately, software tools can make the process faster and easier. For example, iSpring Learn offers a range of assessment features plus a powerful performance appraisal tool that provides a detailed overview of each employee’s individual strengths and weaknesses.    
• The top three work-related strengths include problem-solving, communication skills, and reliability. Some other examples of employee strengths are adaptability, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and creativity. Read the article to learn what these strengths are and how employees who possess them can benefit the company.  
• Honing strengths does not replace eliminating weaknesses. Working on both makes for a well-balanced, quality performance.

Okay, but what are the benefits of investing in the work-related strengths of an individual employee? Read on to learn why strengths are really important.

But before we move on, let’s define work-related strengths and weaknesses to make sure we’re talking about the same thing.

Work-Related Strengths vs. Work-Related Weaknesses  

All people have talents, skills, and character traits that set them apart from others. But not all of them can be useful at work.

Some can help people do their jobs better — complete tasks and projects more quickly and accurately, come up with original solutions to complex problems, support teammates, etc. Such qualities and skills are commonly known as work-related strengths. 

Work-related weaknesses, on the other hand, are personal qualities that hinder the work process and prevent people from delivering their best results. These include disorganization, impatience, lack of confidence, and poor communication skills.           

Why Employee Strengths Matter 

Talent management has always been an essential part of a business routine. While the process differs from one organization to another, it usually involves some kind of learning and development, either through mentoring, online courses, training sessions, or other similar opportunities. However, most L&D programs have historically been focused on fixing employee weaknesses and closing skill gaps. Moreover, managers tend to concentrate on weaknesses first and foremost when delivering feedback.  

This approach is reasonable because individual weaknesses slow down processes, decrease productivity, and ultimately drag down the whole team. Yet it’s also true that it overlooks one crucial aspect: employee strengths. 

In “Severance,” the performance review of Seth Milchick focused on weaknesses, not strengths, despite the promising headline that put achievements first. 

Lumon’s loyal employee was hurt and distressed. Source: Reddit

The problem is that leaders and managers sometimes take employee strengths for granted, assuming there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken. As a result, a wealth of opportunities to improve the company’s bottom line are missed. 

Here are some benefits of recognizing and amplifying employee strengths that you might be missing out on. 

• Better performance and engagement at work. Research indicates that workers flourish and deliver better results when given the opportunity to put their work-related strengths to good use.
• Increased productivity. Focusing solely on workplace weaknesses can be draining and discouraging, while leveraging strengths is stimulating, which naturally results in a boost in productivity when strengths are regularly utilized.
• Better employee retention. People love to showcase their strongest skills and traits instead of constantly being reminded of their weaknesses. Feeling recognized and appreciated for what they’re best at makes them want to stay in a company where they can shine.
• More innovation and collaboration at the workplace. Employees who know that their workplace strengths are appreciated offer more fresh ideas and innovative solutions. Also, knowing each team member’s strong sides encourages more communication and collaboration between colleagues. 
• Growing talent within the team. Many managers prefer promoting an employee to hiring an outsider because it is more cost-effective and risk-proof. Recognizing and nurturing employee strengths early on and continuously encouraging personal and professional growth is an effective way to reduce the need for external hiring by growing outstanding talent within your company.

Moreover, developing workplace strengths is beneficial for employees because all or nearly all of these qualities, traits, and skills are also useful outside their professional lives. Understanding the positive impact of improving these strengths on everyday life is the best reason for people to get on board with the idea of putting in extra work to perfect what they’re good at.   

How to Identify Employee Strengths 

So, individual strengths can be refined and amplified — but first, you need to understand who’s good at what. Here are some ways to tap into your employees’ best potential to inform their career development. 

Use online assessments 

Tests, quizzes, and other assessment tasks not only help identify knowledge gaps but also highlight people’s strong traits. Regularly analyzing assessment results will inform you about employees’ strengths and weaknesses and help you perceive patterns that indicate what they are best at. Creating such tests literally takes minutes with an intuitive tool like iSpring Suite — it offers a variety of question types so you can quickly create a well-rounded quiz in the form of a graded test or survey, and have the results analyzed automatically.  

Conduct performance reviews 

Performance reviews can be rigid and discouraging, but they don’t have to be. If they use the positive feedback approach and begin with appreciating achievements instead of highlighting failures, they can be an invaluable source of information for employees. Using the data and insights from an eLearning platform’s detailed reports will make your reviews more weighted and objective and help to pinpoint the most important aspects, including employee strengths.    

Collect feedback 

Instead of trying to figure out employees’ thoughts and opinions, ask them to share feedback directly via questionnaires or open feedback sessions. Another great option is to use the 360-degree feedback method, which involves collecting anonymous feedback from an employee’s colleagues and associates instead of from the employee per se. iSpring’s 360-Degree Performance Appraisal tool will help you optimize the process and identify each person’s strengths in the workplace based on a wealth of information from numerous sources.  

How to Develop Employee Strengths 

Once you understand each worker’s core strengths, you can start to enhance them. Here are some effective ways to do that. 

Personalized learning paths 

Personalized, or customized, learning paths are great for closing skill gaps, but you can also build them around an employee’s strengths. For example, if a sales manager excels at establishing rapport with customers, you can offer them advanced courses on consumer psychology and persuasion techniques to hone their existing skills.  

Games and simulations  

Traditional training courses can be boring, even if they focus on subject matter that people generally enjoy. Games and simulations, on the other hand, are fun and engaging, making them an effective way to help learners stay on track while also providing experiences that are similar to real-world workplace situations. Sales reps, for example, can play out their daily interactions with customers, and managers can practice communicating with their teams.  

Sales simulation is one example of such an exercise. With iSpring Suite, you can easily create and deliver similar activities to help your employees practice in a risk-free environment.      

Microlearning  

Microlearning is another effective approach that helps learners absorb information faster and internalize it more efficiently. Breaking complex topics into smaller chunks makes mastering modules, courses, and entire tracks more manageable, which leads to higher engagement and course completion rates. Also, bite-sized learning fits perfectly into busy schedules: you can learn whenever you have a few spare minutes. To achieve optimal results, try arranging microlearning modules into learning paths and complementing them with other teaching methods.

Social, peer-to-peer, and collaborative learning   

According to social learning theory, learning can happen naturally through observation, noticing, and imitation in the right social environment. Peer-to-peer learning is a similar approach that involves people sharing knowledge with each other, and collaborative learning refers to learning while collaborating on a specific task. One more effective way to hone strengths is mentoring, i.e., pairing a talented employee with a more experienced colleague who will guide their development. All these approaches can be implemented using an online platform with social learning features, such as discussion boards and forums.

Now, let’s zoom in on some notable examples of work-related strengths, starting with the three most crucial ones. 

The Top 3 Work-Related Strengths That Are Relevant in All Industries   

Whether you’re a business owner, a manager, or a regular employee, knowing the top three work-related strengths will help you recognize the potential of your team and make it stronger, more productive, and more efficient. Let’s begin with the top three work-related strengths that apply to each and every industry and business type.

#1. Problem-solving

Problem-solving is the ability to solve problems, which is something all people learn growing up. However, some solve problems better than others: more quickly, efficiently, elegantly, and often autonomously. To do so, they employ other skills like critical thinking, creativity, and “people” skills. Such employees are indispensable in any work environment and on all levels since they help move processes forward by eliminating obstacles — i.e., problems. 

Imagine a factory where a piece of equipment hasn’t arrived on time. Some would panic in this situation. But effective problem solvers would instead begin looking for ways to fix the issue, from contacting the supplier to revising production schedules to finding alternative equipment and more. In the end, they’ll be the ones that save the day. 

#2. Communication skills

Communication is what everyone does on a daily basis. Yet again, not everyone is equally good at it — and some are remarkably bad. Sometimes, it might not be a big issue — for specialists working with strictly defined technical tasks, for instance. But in most cases, communication skills are crucial since they also move processes forward by removing friction, i.e., misunderstanding, in this example. 

Think of a manager presenting a new project to their team and giving instructions. Some people can talk for hours and yet still leave listeners confused about the essence of the matter. But those who possess outstanding communication skills will put it across clearly and concisely, making sure that everyone knows what the project is about and what the team members are supposed to do.   

#3. Reliability and accountability

A reliable, accountable person is the one you can always count on to deliver consistent, high-quality results on time, to own decisions, and to answer for their mistakes. Such people are the pillars of every team because they make everyone else feel safe and secure, boost team morale, and help ensure efficiency. With dependable, trustworthy employees, leaders need to micromanage less and can focus on their responsibilities.  

Take a typical situation: the project has not been delivered on time, plus what has already been done needs lots of corrections because the team members misinterpreted the instructions. A reliable employee will step up and give you a full account of why this happened, provide a plan for error correction, and make sure the team doesn’t miss the next deadline. 

12 Work-Related Strength Examples to Keep an Eye Out For

In addition to the top three work-related strengths described above, here is a longer list of work-related strength examples that are also highly relevant in virtually any workplace.

1. Adaptability and flexibility 

The modern world is constantly in a state of flux, and being able to adapt to rapid changes is essential to navigate it successfully. At work, adaptability and flexibility help to get back on track when things don’t go as expected or according to plan, reconsider strategies quickly, and get things done no matter what. Employees who possess these qualities are usually more reliable, better at solving problems, and indispensable in times of change. 

For example, flexible employees adapt to different work environments more quickly and can be better remote workers. But even they might need some extra guidance to arrange things in the best possible way. A brief crash course on working from home like the demo course shown below can help.   

Like this course? Create your own with iSpring for free.

2. Motivation 

Motivation can be extrinsic — that is, driven by external factors — and intrinsic, or inspired from within an individual. While extrinsic motivation can be influenced through tangible incentives, such as a promotion or a pay raise, intrinsic motivation is usually something that is “just there.” Employees with this kind of motivation genuinely enjoy doing their work well, which helps them stay at the top of their game and inspire others to strive for the best results too.

3. Emotional intelligence 

Despite the proliferation of AI, the bulk of the work is done by people who have emotions that can, and usually do, seriously affect their performance. Fortunately, individuals with a high level of emotional intelligence (EQ) are able to recognize, understand, and manage these emotions in themselves as well as in others through self-awareness, emotional awareness, self-control, and empathy. Such people resolve conflicts, reconcile differences, and guarantee a healthy emotional climate within the team.     

4. Leadership skills 

While you can hire leaders from outside the company, it’s better to grow current employees who already possess relevant qualities like the ability to motivate, inspire, and make decisions. Those with a combination of these top three work-related skills are also well-prepared for formal and informal leadership roles. Great leaders are essential for every team, since their presence ensures that everyone remains focused and works collectively toward a common, clearly defined goal.          

5. Resilience 

Life is generally a series of rises and falls, as we all know from experience, as well as from movies, books, and songs. But in order to keep rising after every fall, you need a specific character trait: resilience. In a work environment, a resilient person is someone who always remembers that it is crucial to keep trying, even if the current metrics might look like you should just give up and call it a day. Resilient people just keep trying, motivating others to follow suit.

6. Perseverance 

Perseverance is somewhat similar to resilience in that it’s also about the ability to not give up. The difference is that perseverance is more task-focused, since it refers to not giving up on a specific task or activity you have started, despite any obstacles or setbacks, until you ultimately achieve success. Without persevering workers, projects both big and small would likely fail one after another just because nobody on the team possessed enough will to “go that extra mile.”   

7. Creativity

Creativity as the ability to create something new is an essential quality for professionals in certain industries, such as arts and entertainment, marketing and advertising, and more. But this quality also refers to coming up with new, non-trivial ways to do things, so it is also relevant outside these domains. Since creative employees are great at finding original solutions to difficult problems and driving innovation, their contribution can often be key to success.

8. Critical thinking 

According to the Harvard Business Review, there are four different ways of thinking that don’t come naturally to people and therefore have to be learned. Critical thinking is just one of them, but it is probably the most well-known and crucial one. Unlike “regular” thinking, which is mostly automatic, critical thinking involves looking at a subject from different perspectives without bias. Without team members who think critically, things would run on autopilot — which could prove to be dangerous.      

9. Attention to detail 

While focusing on the big picture is important, sometimes the smallest detail can make a great difference. This is especially true when working with data and numbers, but also in many other cases where a small mistake can be very costly. Unfortunately, many people, even those with a sharp mind, often lack attention to notice details. Those who can are essential to ensure that the work is performed thoroughly and accurately with regard to all standards.    

10. Teamwork 

Working as a team instead of alone is typically more efficient and yields better results because more people mean more strengths. That’s why even geniuses often can’t make it without a little help from their friends — after all, someone has to have their back at times. Employees who tend to be more team-oriented eagerly collaborate, offer help, share credit as well as responsibility, and put common goals above personal ambition, improving the overall outcomes. 

11. Time management 

We all perceive time more or less differently and do things at our own pace. However, at work, it’s crucial to meet deadlines and deliver quality results when expected and not when you feel like it. That’s why employees with poor time management skills can be difficult to deal with, no matter how many other valuable workplace strengths they possess. The good news is that having at least one person with strong time management skills on a project can ensure that everyone else stays on track. 

12. Optimism 

When things go wrong, it is easy to start complaining and questioning the successful completion of a project or task. However, this behavior is counterproductive because it’s contagious and promotes defeatism, demoralizes, and destabilizes the entire team. Optimism, on the other hand, encourages a positive attitude and helps everyone deal with problems more effectively. Optimists are important since they, along with resilient and persevering workers, ensure that the team doesn’t give up.   

These were some of the top examples of work-related strengths. Of course, there are more of them, and each one can be more or less relevant in a particular industry or situation. At any rate, the approaches to identifying and improving these strengths that are listed in this article are universal and can be applied to each and every workplace strength you find to be significant.   

But what about work-related weaknesses?

As mentioned earlier, addressing employee weaknesses and closing skill gaps is a common practice in corporate training, and there is no need to abandon it since it can — and should —coexist organically with nurturing strengths. Moreover, you can reframe weaknesses as areas for growth and ultimately turn them into strengths. 

Here are some helpful strategies: 

• As in the case of strengths, start with identifying each individual’s weaker traits using the same methods, e.g., assessment tasks, performance reviews, feedback, and 360-degree surveys. 
• Gently remind employees about the importance of addressing these areas to improve overall performance — their own as well as their team’s. For example, developing organizational skills will ensure that you and your colleagues don’t miss deadlines.
• Offer relevant training. If you have a large workforce to manage, ready-made course libraries and AI assistants will come in extremely handy for streamlining the process. Upon completion, assess and review the results.   
• Pair employees with complementary strengths and weaknesses to help them learn from each other or assign mentors whose strengths lie in the areas their mentees are lacking. 
• Leverage social learning features in your online learning platform to encourage people to learn informally from each other. 

Above all, remember the core principle of positive feedback: first, focus on strengths, then address weaknesses; also, don’t fail to acknowledge improvements whenever you notice them. This approach will ensure that employee motivation and engagement stay strong, and your training programs yield the best possible results.  

Conclusion 

Identifying, recognizing, and appreciating employee strengths is crucial for maintaining employee motivation, engagement, and loyalty. People who have regular opportunities to showcase their best qualities at work perform better, feel happier, and stay with their employers longer. Thus, relying on your team members’ best work-related strengths is a great strategy to improve your bottom line. But you can also do more by offering tailored training that focuses on perfecting strengths, not just eliminating weaknesses. 

To maximize the effectiveness of this training, an individual approach and a clear strategy are essential. Fortunately, the best modern eLearning platforms have all the features needed to conduct assessments, provide quality feedback, pinpoint employee strengths as well as weaknesses, and create and deliver effective courses to build superior teams. Plus, you can get all this for a fraction of the price that traditional on-site training would cost. 

Ready to see how it works? Start a 30-day free trial of iSpring Learn and discover just how much you can do with a single platform.   

Want to build your own courses with original content? A 30-day free trial of iSpring Suite, our AI-powered authoring tool, will help you decide whether this is the right fit for your needs.  

FAQ

What are work-related strengths?

Work-related strengths are individual qualities, traits, and skills that help people work more effectively. First and foremost, the term refers to innate personal qualities such as confidence, creativity, and perseverance, as well as soft skills like problem solving, critical thinking, interpersonal skills, and organizational skills. Sometimes, hard or technical skills that employees excel at are also considered workplace strengths because they improve employees’ performance significantly.         

How can you identify work-related strengths in an individual? 

Sometimes workplace strengths are so obvious that you recognize them instantly. But more often than not, they take time and effort to uncover. Some effective methods to identify work-related strengths include tests and assessments, performance reviews, and feedback collection. As an employee, you can use most of these methods as well to understand what you’re best at.     

Why is it important to develop individual strengths in employees? 

Eliminating weaknesses and closing skill gaps makes sense because it helps employees do their jobs better. But it is more rewarding for an individual, as well as being beneficial for the company, to build upon what is already better than average, i.e., strengths. Recognizing and developing workplace strengths can be a huge driver for growth for both the company and the worker, allowing businesses to improve metrics, minimize external hiring, and promote healthy company culture.