The 8 Most Common Employee Personas Every Successful Company Needs
5th July 2019
Have you ever considered the types of work personas your company needs to be successful? In this article, we will be assessing some of the most popular workplace personas and how they can be an asset to your company organisation.
In an increasingly competitive business environment, companies are becoming more and more conscious of the need for an engaged, versatile workforce, that help maximise employee experience and drive employee satisfaction in the workplace. Personas can be determined by a number of factors including desires, motivations, needs, behavioural patterns and future expectations of the workplace.
What Is An Employee Persona?
Employee personas are marketing terms and descriptions of individuals that represent the ideal employee or candidate. Creating your own workplace personas can help you envision your ideal employee when it comes to the hiring process. This vision will inform your decision around how to hire them, where to position them in your company and how to interact with them in the workplace.
The core reason for developing employee personas is to improve your knowledge, as a business leader of each employee. This includes having a better understanding of their views and perspectives, the challenges they face, monitoring how they work, the most effective ways to achieve their goals and how they communicate with others. When you put emphasis on having the right employee personas in the office, you will be creating a multi-generational, diverse set of employees, with varied views, outlooks, characteristics and personas, that will provide a focused and empathetic approach to the workplace.
How To Define Employee Personas
Identifying employee personas at work requires a series of steps, including mapping each individual journey, gathering information and data in relation to employee objectives, motivations, challenges faced using questionnaires and online surveys. Then, you can translate the results from the data to design your employee personas based on common patterns such as behaviours, attitudes and perspectives. Employee personas, are cohesive representations and observations of groups of employees and are not to be based just on individual characteristic traits.
The 8 Most Common Types Of Personas In The Workplace
1. The Educator
The Educator is often someone who represents great knowledge of key subject areas in the workplace, is very reliable when it comes to fact-checking and being aware of what is going on outside of work, especially when it comes to the latest news stories. Educators love to connect with their co-workers and offer continued support, to help inspire others and watch them grow.
2. The Researcher
The Researcher thrives in a role that requires specialist knowledge and skill and are motivated in environments where personal development leads to recognition. They are easily motivated by professional training and development opportunities and enjoy sharing their expertise with others.
3. The Mentor
The Mentor employee loves empowering others and watching others succeed in their role. They are willing to share skills, knowledge and expertise with others and act as a positive role model and brand advocate for the business. They have excellent communication skills and enjoy nurturing others, especially on a one to one basis. They provide guidance and constructive feedback, often helping new employees settle into their roles, or knowing when a training opportunity fits well with their co-workers future career goals.
4. The Creator
The Creator seeks creativity, innovation and change. They are very successful when it comes to problem solving and developing new products or services and thrive in challenging environments. They are always the leaders in ideas generation and love being rewarded for their innovative skills.
5. The Networker
The Networker is someone that loves to make new connections with others. They are always the first to say yes to going on trips, or to external events that give them the opportunity to network and build on professional relationships. They are very knowledgeable of those in the local community, and a great asset to any organisation that needs to build its customer or employee base and boost awareness of their brand.
6. The Visionary
The Visionary is key to the future success of your organisation. They are motivated when it comes to envisioning the company’s future visions and goals, and love being delegated tasks they can work on autonomously. They will always be knowledgeable of how the company can progress and make changes and are very efficient at modelling the ideal scenarios.
7. The Builder
The Builder loves being assigned practical tasks, anything from making coffee in the office, to re-designed the office kitchen. They are very hands-on and have incredible insight and vision when faced with complex tasks. They can visualise how to make specific improvements and are extremely self-aware of their surroundings.
8. The Warrior
The Warrior seeks meaning and purpose, always wanting to make a difference at work. They thrive in purposeful organisations motivated by learning and never miss an opportunity to build on their experience or skill set. They are great at team building exercises and enjoy leading groups of people at one time.
Why Creating Employee Personas Is So Important
Creating your own employee personas is crucial for the future success of the way you hire new employees and how you effectively engage with your current employees. Creating employee personas can help you implement a workplace strategy and develop employee engagement programmes that appeal to each of the personas.
The further benefits of creating employee personas is that it can help with making significant improvements to your company culture when it comes to attracting new employees. You can incorporate the mindset and character of new employees, rather than just a checklist of their previous qualifications and work experience, to determine the best fit for your company or organisation and the values it represents.
