How to Identify and Leverage Employee Strengths

When a team works together effectively, your business can reach new heights. In fact, business leaders who nurture collaborative teams see a 30% increase in productivity. To build these cohesive teams, you need to leverage your employees' strengths. When you understand where your employees perform best and where they struggle, you can ensure each person is assigned jobs that help them grow and use their strengths.

Placing employees in roles that do not match their strengths can lead to frustration and reduced productivity, as they face a steeper learning curve before improving their output. To increase productivity and employee engagement, it's essential to focus on identifying and utilizing employee strengths. Let’s explore what this process looks like.

Why Identifying Employee Strengths is Crucial

Building your understanding of your employees’ strengths will help build stronger teams, as you can match employees based on talents and interests so they can complement each other and enhance productivity. Employees focused on work that capitalizes on their abilities, will also boost their performance and experience better job satisfaction, which benefits your company as a whole. In fact, among employees who feel their supervisors focus on their strengths, over 60% felt engaged, which is twice the number engaged in their workplaces nationwide.

Teams composed of people who feel valued by their organization for their strengths and have the chance to use their special abilities to help the group will also boost the dynamics within the team. Those in the group will recognize each other's strengths and the improved productivity will create a positive feedback loop for assigning roles based on strengths.

Methods for Identifying Employee Strengths

Determining employees' strengths is the first step in building a more effective workplace. However, effective evaluation requires going further than just asking employees personally. A well-balanced evaluation that takes into account a variety of different perspectives will provide far greater insight. Here are a few different forms of assessment that can inform this process.

• Employee Strengths Assessments Workplace assessments, such as CliftonStrengths, DISC, and Myers-Briggs, can help employers identify strengths and aptitudes. These tools provide valuable insights into how employees can be positioned to succeed.
  
  
• Employee Feedback Collect feedback from colleagues, managers, and the employees themselves to gain insight into the types of roles where individuals thrive.
  
  
• Performance Analysis Review past performance reports to understand how employees have succeeded in various roles and responsibilities.
  
  
• Observation Observe employees during their tasks and projects to assess how they perform in different types of roles and environments.
  
  
• One-on-One Discussions Personal conversations with employees can reveal their interests and where they believe their strengths lie. Combining this with the insights from other methods provides a well-rounded view.

How to Align Roles with Employee Strengths

Once you have built a solid profile of a particular employee’s strengths and weaknesses, you now need to determine how this person will fit into the different roles at your organization. Fortunately, you do not have to try and fit a square peg in a round hole. Tapping into some flexibility in the workplace can help you with improving team productivity with strengths-based leadership and roles.

Customizing roles

To start this process, you might consider how you can match employees with various responsibilities and tasks that align well with their personal strengths. For example, someone who is particularly detail-oriented might help tremendously with editing or administrative tasks. Creative thinkers might work well in areas like project management.

Role Flexibility

People are not static; they change over time. Therefore, as you review your team, do not be afraid to shift roles and responsibilities to acknowledge the emerging strengths and skills you see.

Team Composition

As you build your teams, remember to balance out the strengths so that people can complement each other. Analytic types should balance with creative types, for example, to keep the team effective.

The Benefits of Strength-Based Role Assignment

While you might understand some of the arguments for transitioning your team to strength-based roles, it helps to remember the major benefits you will experience once you finish all the steps involved to keep yourself motivated.

Increased productivity. Employees who feel empowered to use their strengths become more productive and efficient. Their tasks align with their interests, which reduces the learning curve and boredom, and their skills help them work faster.

Higher engagement. Employees feel more engaged and motivated when they feel strong and confident.

Improved Employee Retention. When customers know their employers appreciate and leverage their strengths, and when they feel confident in their roles, employees feel more satisfied in their jobs, reducing turnover.

Strategies for Developing and Enhancing Employee Strengths

Once you have identified the major strengths of your employees, you want to continue to nurture these areas so they can grow as professionals and continue to feel excited and interested in their work.

Start by offering ongoing training and development. Give your employees the chance to learn more that will further their natural talents and help them nurture their strengths.

You can pair this training with mentorship and coaching opportunities. Pairing employees with mentors can help them see how to use their strengths in the workplace and refine their abilities to become more effective.

Finally, encourage your employees to use opportunities for self-reflection. During these moments, encourage reflection on work habits and areas of competence so employees can see how their own skills are developing and where they can improve moving forward.

Conclusion: Building a Strength-Based Workplace

Strong business environments focus on employee capabilities and use role alignment to maximize both personal and organizational success. By helping employees find their niches, you create a more engaged, productive, and motivated workforce.

If you want to take your HR practices to the next level and better identify employee strengths to optimize the work environment, contact Exact Payroll. We will help you implement the HR tools and practices that will help you see results and reach your goals.