It is the dream of every HR manager or employer to know exactly what the professional strengths and professional weaknesses of his/her team members are. In terms of productivity, identifying your employee strengths can be very beneficial because according to data from GALLUP, employees who use their strengths are more engaged, perform better, and are six times more likely to be engaged in any activity that they perform.

‍

So, the question is, how do you find your employee strength, and what’s the best advice on how to develop employee strengths?

‍

Continue reading to find out how to identify employee strengths and weaknesses, develop workplace strengths, and how to use your employee strength to your company’s advantage while helping them work on their critical weaknesses.

How to Identify Employee Strengths Popular Ways to Build the Strengths of Your Team Members Benefits of Focusing on Employee Strengths How to Turn Professional Weaknesses into Employee Strengths Take Your Team’s Performance to the Next Level

How to Identify Employee Strengths

Do you know that according to research carried out by GALLUP on a random sample of 1,003 U.S employees, it was found that 25% of American workers fell into the “ignored” category, and about 40% of those employees were actively disengaged from their jobs? It was also found that managers who only focused on the weaknesses of their employees affected about 11% of the total sample size, and about 22% of them were actively disengaged. These statistics are important because it shows that paying no attention to your employees is detrimental to your team’s overall performance!

‍

In contrast, about 37% of the sampled workforce agreed that their supervisor focused on their strengths, and this caused active disengagement to fall to 1%! Theoretically, if every company in the United States trained its managers to focus on its employees’ strengths, the number of engaged employees in the workplace could double.

‍

It is, therefore, important for managers, employers, and HR departments as a whole, to find effective and efficient ways of identifying their employees’ key strengths at work.

Ways of identifying professional employee strengths and weaknesses:

Periodic interviews with employees asking about their strengths
Using a dedication evaluation software
The development of internal review systems in a company

Note: periodic interviews with employees should be given the highest priority as this is the easiest way for any company to communicate directly with employees, predict burnout, and understand employee expectations.

Periodic interviews with employees asking about their strengths

Any manager that takes the performance of its employees seriously will never hesitate to ask what the strength of an employee is. Here is why this is important, while performance reviews and organised monitoring will provide HR managers and employers with information about how well an employee is performing, a lot more can be unearthed by asking the right questions.

‍

As a leader, it is highly beneficial to have the kind of relationship with members of your team that allows you to ask them outright what their abilities, passions, and strengths are. This is an effective way of getting to know the professional and non-professional strengths of your employees. This means you can work together on how to develop employee strengths effectively. The best way to start is to strike a natural conversation with your employees and ask them what they to highlight their key strengths at work. You can go on to make a list of key strengths of an employee and weaknesses too.

‍

Examples of most common strengths in the workplace to watch out for in your employees:

Positive attitude – the ability to stay calm and positive when things don’t go the way they should.
Discipline and corporate culture adaptation
Team player – an employee that has the “one team, one dream” mindset.
Communication Skills
Professionalism – professionalism goes hand in hand with communication. An employee should be able to communicate with team members at every level and always act in a professional manner.
Confidence – the ideal employee should have confidence in their skill and themselves.
Ambitious – ambition is a major driving force in the workplace. You need employees that are always willing and looking to learn & grow, ideally, within the company.
Honesty and Integrity
Resilience and Patience
Problem-Solving and Decision-Making
Self-management- your employees should be able to take charge in certain professional situations and know how to manage themselves so that others can rely on them.
Inspire Motivation – everyone needs a little motivation once in a while, it is advantageous to have employees that can inspire motivation in others.
Leadership Skills

Once you have determined the strengths and weaknesses of members of your team, the next thing to do is to talk about employee strengths with other employees and provide employee strength examples. You should open a dialogue with your team members to let them that you see their strengths. It is important to note that acknowledgment is a huge part of instilling confidence in your employees. For instance, if you recently highlighted a new strength in an employee, chances are such an employee might seek new ways to get the job done effectively using the skills you highlighted.

Using a dedication evaluation software

Perhaps, your organisation is a large one and it would be difficult to carefully study every employee to figure out their strengths and weaknesses, then choosing software that is fun, fast, and simple to use is the way to go. Luckily for you, there is no need to develop new software to help you evaluate your employees as many of them already exist!

Note: While the use of software for finding employee strengths in the workplace is fast and in most cases quite effective, it is still left to the HR manager or employer to decide what to do with the information found.

The development of internal review systems in a company

If your company can be considered an enterprise or perhaps it has a complex process that requires the use of sophisticated employee performance software to accurately review employee strengths, then it might be beneficial to create an internal review system designed specifically for your company.

‍

This also ensures that you are not simply using the performance factors designed to work for any generic organisation to evaluate your employees whose duties may be complex and highly delicate.

Popular Ways to Build the Strengths of Your Team Members

Now that you know the strengths and weaknesses of your employees, the next step is mapping out the best route to achieving ultimate strengths in the workplace by respective employees or members of your team.

‍

Building the strengths of your employees is an activity that needs to be carried out intentionally and purposefully. You can’t simply go about your day-to-day activities and hope that these strengths would develop passively.

Here are some of the best ways to build strengths in the workplace:

Figure out the strengths of your employees and ensure that you point them out to your employees. This ensures that everyone can name the strengths possessed by particular employees.
Apply the strengths of individual employees in ways that help to achieve company goals.
Assign projects in ways that complement the strengths of each employee
Have open conversations about team strengths
Find active ways to engage and assign responsibilities to employees based on their strengths and passion
Employ Organisational “strength training” in your company
Include employee strengths as part of the task to grow in their roadmap.
Ensure that accurate feedback is collected from your managers, HR department, and colleagues as a part of your 360 analysis.
Create career-growth opportunities for your team members based on their strengths and weaknesses.
Implement group masterclasses in the team to foster peer-to-peer development.
Offer training opportunities based on employee strength
Use cross-training to foster skill transfer from employees of strength

Name the strengths of your employees

It is common for humans to ignore their most powerful gifts or talents, and this is also true in the workplace setting. Do not simply assume that every employee can tell what their strengths and weaknesses are, a more personal approach would do both you and your employees a solid. If possible, you should meet with your employees and discuss what you think their strengths and weaknesses are, then ask them what they think their strengths are so they can be leveraged during projects.

‍

This is important because it tells the employee that they are seen and valued as a team member. Remember that employees that feel like they are seen have better involvement in projects and less active disengagement.

Apply the strengths of individual employees in ways that help to achieve company goals

This should naturally be the next step in your quest to improve the workplace strengths of your employees; applying the strengths of your employees to the overall team goals. Find a way to unite your team by helping them understand the unique strengths of every team member and figuring out the best ways to apply these strengths to various aspects of your project. The goal is to let everyone know that they matter and together, they can contribute to the project in ways that would improve the team’s efficiency and effectiveness.

Have reviews and open conversations about team strengths

The good thing about having an open conversation is that everyone gets to respect each other strengths, and reviews are no longer just about the general performance of an employee based on the metric used for evaluating everyone. There can be general reviews and personal reviews (based on strengths), making it easier for your employees to know what areas to improve.

Find active ways to engage and assign responsibilities to employees based on their strengths and passion

Simply identifying the job strengths of your employees is not enough to ensure that they are always operating at their maximum performance. Sometimes, the strengths of team members may not align with the goals and expectations of your company, and that’s fine. As the manager, you need to find ways of nurturing and guiding team members to focus on their core strengths and assign them goals that will make use of their core strengths and talents.

Employ Organisational “strength training” in your company

Even when you and the team have figured out the strengths and weaknesses of every team member, it doesn’t stop there. You need to figure out how to develop employee strengths actively. One of the most reliable ways is by inventing a course to help develop and hone the strength of every team member. This course can either be developed by the in-house HR team or be outsourced to another organisation that specialises in corporate employee training.

‍

Create career-growth opportunities for your team members based on their strengths and weaknesses

Once the employee's strengths are known, you can begin to create career opportunities that work well with their strengths. This is one of the best ways to ensure that your employees feel motivated to work, and also discover new ways to help the company grow. Perhaps, if the strength of certain employees in your company cannot be utilised in their current departments, then, if possible, create a new department where all of their strengths can be fully utilized.

Use cross-training to foster skill transfer from employees of strength

While this article has been all about figuring out the workplace strengths of your employees, it is dangerous to overlook the professional weakness of your employees. Your company will achieve incredible results by putting employees with similar strengths together to work on projects that need their professional strengths.

‍

However, your company is only as strong as the weakest link. It is best to cross-train your employees by letting the strong employees work with employees with professional weaknesses in certain areas that the strong employees have strengths in.

Assign Employee Duties Based on Strengths

While this may seem like a no-brainer now that you are reading this article, it still needs to be said; NEVER ASSIGN TASKS TO EMPLOYEES BASED ON THEIR WEAKNESSES. The only way to ensure you do not assign jobs that your employees are mediocre at is by carefully observing and evaluating the job strengths of your employees. This is important for efficiency. While your team might get the job done in the long run, they might spend a long time doing what another team might have completed in two days.

‍

Benefits of Focusing on Employee Strengths

Reports like the State of the American Workplace show that improving the performance of your team by building on the strengths of team members is more effective than trying to work on their weaknesses. Also, by ensuring that your team focuses on the strengths of individual members and the strength of the team as a whole, productivity is likely to increase by 12.5%.

Some of the major benefits of focusing on employee strengths include:

Employee engagement increases when managers focus on employees’ strengths
Studies by Gallup show that focusing on employee strengths has a positive impact on the well-being of employees
The lives of employees and the bottom line of the company are bound to improve with an increased focus on employee strengths.

How to Turn Professional Weaknesses into Employee Strengths

While it is incredibly beneficial to focus on the strengths of your employees, it is not wise to completely ignore them. We are a sum of our strengths and weaknesses. It is, therefore, critical for any manager that is serious about getting the best out of his employees to examine their weaknesses and turn them into job strengths. Or at the very least, find ways to improve upon them in ways that do not hinder their abilities to optimize their strengths. This is especially true when you find out that your employee has professional weaknesses that can’t be ignored.

‍

In a concise, step by step manner, here are a few steps that can help you turn professional weaknesses into professional strengths, or at the very least, eliminate those weaknesses:

You need to have a clear understanding of your employees’ weaknesses and what they will mean for your company if those weaknesses are turned around. This may involve assessing your employees for weaknesses in their day-to-day activities and using skill tests.
The next step is getting the employees on board with cultivating their weaknesses and turning them into strengths. Perhaps, the subject of their weaknesses can be brought up during evaluation or team development sessions. It can also be done in-person to ensure privacy.
Of course, the next step is to develop a step-by-step plan for your employees that would help them eliminate their weaknesses or turn them into strengths. It is at this stage that you set an executable goal. Also, make sure that you keep it simple.
It would make no sense to have all these plans to eliminate or convert your employees’ weaknesses to strengths and not provide them with the infrastructure needed to support this transformation. Ensure that the support structure required for growth is made available to your employees.

With the proper mentoring and direction, your team will be on its way to taking advantage of its strengths and improving/eliminating its weaknesses.

Take Your Team’s Performance to the Next Level

On paper, developing employee strengths might seem like an easy task, but it is not. However, it is a very achievable one. By putting the right infrastructure, developing the right mindset, and giving your employees the kind of attention that they need using the points discussed in this article, your company is on its way to becoming a very productive organisation.

‍

Go on now, make the best of the information in this article and see how much impact it would have on your employees!

KEY TAKEAWAYS

How do you find your employee strength, and what’s the best advice on how to develop employee strengths? Continue reading to find the answers.

What’s a Rich Text element?What’s a Rich Text element?What’s a Rich Text element?What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Static and dynamic content editing

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!