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Personal Attributes and Professionalism
3 Employer Expectations
Your employer pays you to do a job. The job involves performing the work you have been hired to do, whether it is cleaning, serving food, baking bread, or cooking on the line for a customer. Your employer expects you to act professionally and exhibit certain behaviours. Your job depends on your ability to assist your employer to make money. If the business loses money, your job may disappear. At the top of their list of expectations, most employers would include commitment, enthusiasm, dependability, honesty, and a willingness to learn and accept feedback. Table 1 details what is meant by these characteristics, which together would be considered professionalism.
Table 1. Employer expectations
Expectation
Do’s
Don’ts
Commitment
Try to make the business look good
Work hard for the organization
Do your best
Dress appropriately
Criticize the organization to outsiders
Be mostly concerned about what the organization can do for you
Enthusiasm
Be interested in your work
Share your ideas
Be cheerful
Give others help
Do only enough to get by
Do not care about the quality of the work
Be uncooperative
Complain about your job
Dependability
Arrive at work on time
Finish assigned work on schedule
Call when you miss work due to illness
Fulfill commitments
Use sick days only for legitimate illness or injury
Arrive at work late
Do not finish assigned work
Miss work without notifying the employer
Be absent from work often
Make excuses
Do not follow through on commitments
Honesty
Admit your mistakes
Express your opinions
Take tools or materials for your own use
Try to get away with as much as you can
Willingness to Learn
Listen carefully to instructions
Ask questions when you do not understand
Try new things
Learn from your own mistakes
Ignore instructions
Dislike taking advice
Accept Feedback
Be open to suggestions made by others
Use constructive criticism to improve the quality of work
Learn from suggestions
Get angry or sulk when criticized
Reject suggestions
Be unreceptive to learning new things
Tend to repeat mistakes
definition
A) A person who has or had control or direction of an employee.
B) A person who is or was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the employment of an employee.
To act in a professional manner according to set standards.