Most of the ‘intelligent’ organizations hire on the potential of future success and heavily weigh personality when determining the best among potential employees. Despite the differences of industry, pay, age or gender, all ideal employees share some common traits. You can train an employee on new skills, but you can't teach values and attitude: integrity, resilience, self-confidence and work ethic - crucial characteristics in an ideal employee.

Today, employers must consider how their employees think, what they value, and how they live, to be able to have a more effective workforce strategy. Employees today are helping companies to rethink and evolve, and that can have a positive impact. As work continues to grow, one truth stands: The ability to adapt and learn are critical to individual success.

Regardless of an employee’s level, every employee is expected to uphold the critical values of the organization’s culture, the code of conduct as well as all legal regulations. Organizations too must define and communicate clear objectives/expectations and career maps crucial for employee engagement and performance management. Any gap in these areas leads to employee dissatisfaction.

With agile processes, workplace needs more collaboration. An employee's role in a team setting is more intricate today. The sheer volume of collaboration required in every job of every sector is increasing, as is the pace of organizational change.

Some of the key elements of an ideal employee of tomorrow are:

Learnability

Pace of change of technology and impact of these technologies on the workplace is high, and requires employee to unlearn and learn new things. The learning could be on a process, on tools or technologies.  Ability to deliver while learning at a fast pace is crucial in imminent future. There is an apprehension today that new age technologies like AI and Automation would lead to lesser job opportunities. However, like every new technology, these new technologies will take away the routine chores and provide more meaningful roles for future employees. 

Uncertainty

There is comfort in the known.  However, the future way of working needs employee to deal with ambiguity and deliver. The notion of certainty and safety is less relevant in the future. In this day and age of constant change, employers are on the lookout for employees that not only bring skills to the table but also ability to adapt. For this, employees must clearly share their goals with their managers, be aware of their weaknesses, and coach on handling work expectations in a VUCA (Volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world.  

Connection

The need to interact and stay connected to others is human. After all, man is a social animal by nature. Nothing gets accomplished as efficiently or effectively as it does through a team. Today’s employees know to connect and collaborate locally. The future employee would need to transcend functional and geographical boundaries with even more seamless collaboration. Complexities in today’s businesses are too high for any one individual to solve on their own. Hence, potential employees that clearly demonstrate the ability to connect, communicate and collaborate are preferred.

The growing millennial workforce and the technological developments are changing the way the employers view employees today. A sense of curiosity, the ability to collaborate & influence across department boundaries and adaptability are crucial characteristics of an ideal employee.