Moving forward, no company likes to hire cultural misfits who put the organisation in dicey situations. While the rehiring costs are high, having employees on board who do not endorse the right work ethics impacts the overall performance. Hence, it is important to hire a competent workforce through a refined and sought-after hiring strategy. In addition to qualifications and talents, the focus should also be on some crucial work ethics. You need to recognise the fact that work ethics lay the foundation of productivity and high employee engagement.

When you hire employees that behold strong work ethics, you add more value to your business. You can feel this amplification in the culture of the organisation as well as its success. In fact, as per Career Builder, work ethics are what more than 70 percent of businesses seek the most in candidates. Even the most successful businesses have a hiring criterion centered around work ethics. They do acknowledge how work ethics create a high-performing workplace culture.

Is your growth strategy coherent to workplace ethics as well? Employees with staunch work ethics will prove to be assets for the company in the longer run. This blog sheds light on the most imperative work ethics that you ought to inculcate in your hiring process. As we delve deeper into these work ethics, you will realise how significant these ethics are for your business. So, without much ado, let us get started!

Imperative work ethics in the workplace

1. Reliability

As your business grows bigger, you will need to delegate responsibilities and authority. Delegation of authority is a characteristic trait of the most eminent business leaders. Besides, the importance of delegation further increases for small business owners. But can you delegate authority to employees who are not reliable? Moreover, can you trust those employees with additional responsibilities who do not endorse the ethic of reliability? Any business leader will want to delegate authority to the most reliable employees.

Having said that, reliability is among the most crucial work ethics desired in the workplace. Furthermore, the reliability of employees is what will affect teamwork, cooperation, and trust-building in the workplace. It is a workplace value that you should include in the process of screening and shortlisting candidates. Even for your existing employees, you should look to model and promote this virtue as a part of the workplace culture.

2. Cooperation

Not everyone has what it takes to work in a team or collaborate with others to achieve common goals. While collaboration is a skill, cooperation is an ethic that fuels collaboration. As cited by SalesForce, ineffective collaboration is the reason that 86 percent of employees and executives cite for failures in the workplace. It is an undeniable fact that collaboration in today’s era is among the top professional skills. Do you think a candidate lacking cooperation will be able to collaborate in an effective way?

So, cooperation is a work ethic that you should look for in an ideal candidate. Great teams can achieve great outcomes for your organisation and the prospects will depend on cooperation. Hiring people who embrace the virtue of cooperation and are good communicators will hence be a competitive advantage for your business. One good way to identify cooperation in candidates is to evaluate their critical thinking skills. Because critical thinkers are open to different perspectives, they show greater cooperation. Also, cooperation is a virtue that you should look to reinforce in the workplace every day.

3. Diligence

You need a workforce that is sincere when it comes to working and contributing to the company. You do not need people who procrastinate, do not take their jobs in a serious way, or do not understand their responsibilities. Diligence is also important so that employees learn well and capitalise on their potential with every learning and development opportunity. Sincere learners will always make the best learners in a social setup. In a similar way, sincere employees willing to go the extra mile will outperform others in the workplace

Moving forward, it is vital to acknowledge that remote working is the way forward. In the near future, most organisations will mull the idea of going remote or hybrid. In such a scenario, when there will be a lack of supervision of remote workers, employees’ sincerity will be tested. Insincere employees will leverage undue freedom and their productivity will decrease. On the other hand, sincere employees will continue to work in a consistent way irrespective of supervision. To take your business to new heights in this evolving era of swift changes, you need employees who can keep their sincerity intact at all times.

4. Integrity

The integrity of candidates’ speaks for their moral characters and their honesty. Honesty may be an old school principal in contemporary times but it is still indispensable in the workplace. In the workplace, employees need to be honest with themselves, their colleagues, and employers. They have to be honest about their shortcomings, honest to their responsibilities and hold on to their moral characters. They may face various temptations to compromise their integrity and put their interests over the organisation.

A candidate who is pretending in the interview is not the employee you want. You want people who are true to themselves and believe in their integrity and individualities. Unless they are not true to themselves, how do you expect them to be truthful to others? Honest employees will acknowledge their areas of improvement and seek constant feedback. They will also ensure that when they work in a team, the moral virtues will remain high. Of course, any organisation will prefer genuine employees to employees who fake it all the time. Above all, integrity and honesty are always rewarding and worth paying heed to.

5. Discipline

Discipline has and always will supersede all other virtues in the workplace. There is no substitute for discipline while discipline may still compensate for a few other shortcomings. Your business needs sincere and disciplined employees who are punctual for the office, manage their distractions well, and finish their tasks within stipulated deadlines. A candidate’s discipline can be easily adjudged during an interview depending on various indicators of it. A disciplined candidate will have excellent time management skills and will know how to find motivation.

An employee’s discipline will have a direct impact on productivity, management, and the overall culture of the company. Hiring discipline is one of the best ways to ensure that you do not hire cultural misfits for your business. Besides, disciplined employees will become the most promising candidates for taking leadership roles within the company in near future. It is up to you how you define the overall idea of discipline relevant to your organisation.

6. Commitment

Commitment is what differentiates between quitters and achievers. For obvious reasons, you need achievers in your company and not people who have commitment issues. At times, even the most talented candidates are not committed enough and that can be a bane for a company. You need people who are committed to their visions, their individual career goals and can show promising signs of commitment to their job roles.

One good way to judge a candidate’s commitment is to get an insight into their passion. People who are passionate about their work carry intrinsic motivation which they can translate into commitment. Also, the best part about commitment is that it is inspiring for others. When an employee shows great commitment, it will inspire others in the workplace as well to raise the bar. Needless to say, commitment drives great outcomes and can overhaul the fortune of a business for the better. Greater commitment is what you need from your employees for bouncing back your business from the effects of the pandemic. So, why not hire new employees based on their commitment?

7. Accountability

Accountability is one of the most significant work ethics that make a company successful. In any business venture, accountability should be set at all levels. It should start from you and radiate to the junior-most level of employees. You do not need a culture where everyone passes the buck of failures on each other. You rather need a culture where people are open to being answerable for their actions. Sometimes failures become inevitable in the workplace. They are a part and parcel of life but at least the responsible person should own up to it. When accountability is fixed, the overall productivity of an organisation goes higher. Ideal workplace accountability can hence be the greatest driving force behind a company’s growth.

To explain, as per Forbes, more than 90% of employees have no idea about what their company is looking to accomplish. To add, 85 percent of leaders do not define in a clear and concise way what they expect of their employees. As a consequence, there is no accountability in the workplace or employees choose to dodge it with great convenience. In the absence of accountability, there is a lack of alignment between individual goals and company objectives. Also, no one is ready to take responsibility for their actions or failures and shortcomings go unchecked. For all good reasons that drive business success, accountability is desirable.