attributes discovered through reaserch

P1. Attributes discovered through research

In my research I asked 3 candidates to describe or state some of the attributes required in their job. While the question asked them to choose from a list of attributes, it was still an open question as there was an ‘other’ option. However only the attributes listed were selected, and surprisingly, two of the three ticked all listed attributes. The attributes listed were Confident, Good Teammate, Leader, Planning/organising Skills, Independent and Responsible, and seeing as they were all selected by at least two of the three candidates, I will analyse the attributes, why they are important, and why an employer looks for them.

 The only attribute that was ticked by only two, but not all three was Leader. This suggests that it is looked for slightly less than the other 5 attributes by employers, which makes sense as leadership is usually only required in managing roles. Being a good leader in some ways encompasses some of the other attributes, such as being a good teammate and being organised, but basically it means being able to communicate with, organise and delegate a large number of other people. As previously stated, not all workers necessarily need this skill, but it is still looked for by employers as no matter how efficient your workers are, a business can only work effectively if the person giving orders and delegating tasks knows what they are doing.

As stated, the other 5 attributes were ticked by all 3 candidates, so it’s safe to assume that the following attributes are looked for in all workers of any business. One of which is Confidence, which simply means having enough self-assurance to know what tasks you can carry out and focus on them effectively. All workers need confidence in their workplace or in what they do or else they will not work as efficiently as possible. A business looks for confident workers as they need bold people who aren’t afraid to be pro-active in their work, or plan ahead which is what distinguishes an average employee from a great employee.

Being a good teammate is simple; it means being co-operative, a good communicator, and over all working well with other employees. Businesses, especially big ones, often have a very large staff, divided into various departments, because so many people can work at the same place, employees will inevitably need to work together on certain tasks, which is why employers are always looking for someone who can work well with not only people in their department, but anyone in the business.

Independence is in some ways the opposite skill to being a good teammate, not to say that the skills are mutually exclusive. While businesses do want good team workers, they don’t want someone who is going to constantly need help from other people in the business. Being independent means being able to work efficiently by yourself, as workers will often get both tasks that require teamwork, and ones that don’t. Workers who can focus on these small, singular tasks are needed in a business so that each individual can be efficient without constant supervision, something employers value highly.

Responsibility goes often times goes hand-in-hand with independence, as being responsible means having the courtesy to take on tasks, know that you can finish them on time, but also know your limits so that you don’t overwork yourself. In any business there will be tasks that are time restricted and jobs that need to be done by a certain time, so employers always value employees who are responsible and complete tasks by the time they need to be completed.

Finally there is Planning/Organising skills, which in some ways is similar to responsibility. It means a lot of things, like always having your paperwork and equipment, always being punctual and having a structured routine way of going about tasks. It is essential for a diligent worker as it means you will be able to tackle many and complex jobs, which employers are always looking for.

 

attributes valued by employers

P1.Attributes valued by employers

Introduction

I have been tasked with writing an investigative report inquiring about attributes that are valued by employers in today’s workplace. In preparation for this task I have created a questionnaire to inquire into the attributes valued by employers in the workplace as well as any health and safety regulations employers expect employees to follow. I handed out three copies to different employees. My questionnaires use exclusively open-questions as I find closed questions (yes/no questions) give fairly simple answers and do not give insightful answers. I have also tried to give my questionnaires to three employees in fairly different industries in order to get a better range of answers. The three employees in question are an NHS Medical Directorate, BT Private Service’s Operative, and a Deyes High School Teacher. As well as analyse, I will compare and contrast the different responses to investigate if there are any correlations in the findings I receive.

Findings

The questions concerning attributes are questions 3, 4 and 5, which basically asks the employee to outline the attributes they require for their job and how often they require these attributes in daily tasks. Question 3, (asking what specific attributes the employee’s employer was looking for) had a tick list of answers with an ‘other’ option in order to remain open. The tick list included: Confident, Good Teammate, Leader, Planning/Organising Skills, Independent and Responsible. What was interesting about the result was that the NHS Medical Director and the teacher both ticked every attribute, whereas the BT Operative ticked all but leader. This implies that similar skills are valued by employers, even across a wide range of different workplaces, even skills that you would expect to be restricted to jobs like teacher or manager, are applicable even in manual jobs such as a private services engineer.

Questions 6, 7 and 8 deal with legislations that come into effect in the workplace. Questions 6 and 7 in particular focused on health and safety legislations. Before looking at the responses you would assume that the NHS Medical Directorate would have by far the most health and safety legislations to follow, this assumption turned out to be true, as everything from wearing protective gloves, to wiping surfaces with anti-septic, to infection control was included in her response. The BT Private Service Operative also had many health and safety legislations to follow, which again could be presumed in a job that involves many workplace hazards. As for the teacher, her response was “Health and safety procedures in the classroom” leading me to believe that there were considerably less legislations and precautions in this line of work, because of the details lacked in the answer. So while the range of attributes required between various jobs is quite similar, it would seem that health and safety regulations differ quite a lot. I also asked the different employees to give the legislation decreeing their various health and safety precautions; however none of them could, so I researched the possible legislations decreeing so. While there have been many legislations concerning employee well-being in the workplace, the most likely legislation responsible for the precautions in my responses, is the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). While the employees did not know the individual legislations decreeing each precaution, they gave different answers in response to how they know about their respective precautions.  The NHS medical directorate answered standard procedure, as well as daily checklists, the Teacher answered inset days and the BT Operative answered training. These three different answers could be a result of the difference in jobs or the different legislations required in each workplace.

 Question 8 asks whether the employees job tasks them with withholding any confidential information and, if possible, to name the legislation decreeing so. All three employees answered that they are required to hold confidential information in their line of work. However, unlike health and safety legislations, two of the three (the Teacher and BT Operative) could name the act decreeing so, the Data Protection Act (1998). The NHS directorate could only identify that the confidential information she withholds is prohibited by the NMC (Nursing and Midwifery Council). This suggests that employees are more informed, about legislations involving information systems, which may be because more jobs nowadays require employees to withhold confidential information.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it would seem that even across a large range of jobs, near identical attributes are valued by different employers. I have come to this deduction based on the fact that all 3 employees required a near identical set of skills, coupled with the fact that they all had to know an equal amount about different legislation information, that being not quite as much on health and safety legislation as data protection legislation.

 

http://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37/contents