# Best Employee Attributes: What Employers Value and How to Build Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-employee-attributes/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-employee-attributes.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving professional behaviors at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Best employee attributes: reliability, integrity, communication, teamwork, focused effort and initiative. What each looks like at work, and how to build it. ## Key facts - Title: Best Employee Attributes: What Employers Value and How to Build Them - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Professional Behaviors - Related skills: Influence, Teamwork - Primary keyword: best employee attributes - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-employee-attributes/ ## What this page covers - Best employee attributes: reliability, integrity, communication, teamwork, focused effort and initiative. What each looks like at work, and how to build it. - Practical guidance for best employee attributes - How this topic connects to Professional Behaviors ## Detailed explanation The best employee attributes are reliability, integrity, clear communication, teamwork, a respectful and coachable attitude, effort aimed at what matters, and initiative. None of them is a personality type. Each is a pattern of everyday behavior that colleagues and managers notice over time, so you can practice them rather than hope you have them. If you are about to start a job, or a few months into one, the question underneath is usually more personal: will people see you as someone they can count on, or as just average? That depends far less on talent than on which behaviors you repeat, and on whether anyone can see them. Those behaviors sort into five groups, and the order you build them in matters. ## What employers rank highest When NACE (the National Association of Colleges and Employers) asked employers for its Job Outlook 2026 Spring Update which attributes they most want in new college hires, the top answers were the ability to work in a team, problem-solving and effective communication. A strong work ethic, technical skills and analytical skills also ranked high. Technical knowledge clearly matters, but much of what employers name first is about how you work with other people and how you apply yourself. NACE's advice to candidates alongside the survey is just as useful: listing an attribute is not enough, because employers want to see [examples of it in action](/knowledge/personal-qualities/personal-attributes-examples/). "Team player" on a resume is a claim. A specific situation, what you did and what came of it is evidence. NACE builds the same idea into its definition of career readiness, which spans [eight competencies](/knowledge/employability/career-ready-competencies/), among them communication, professionalism and teamwork, and describes readiness as both having those competencies and demonstrating them. The practical consequence for you: the attributes below are worth building, and worth noticing as you build them, because every instance becomes an example you can point to later. ## The five groups of best employee attributes The attributes managers value most are not a loose list of virtues. They fall into five groups that build on one another. Trust comes first. How you work with others and how you conduct yourself sit on top of it. Well-aimed effort and initiative are what make someone stand out once that foundation is in place. ### Reliability and integrity Reliability means doing what you said you would, when you said you would. Integrity means being honest, keeping confidences and [owning your mistakes](/knowledge/confidence/making-mistakes-at-work/) rather than explaining them away. Together they are what trust rests on, and trust decides how much responsibility and freedom a manager is willing to hand you. Both are judged cumulatively. A single missed deadline is forgiven; a pattern of them becomes your reputation. That works in your favor too, because this is the most controllable route to being valued at work: it requires consistency, not experience. In practice, that means committing only to what you can deliver, flagging early when a deadline is at risk, and telling your manager about a mistake before someone else does. ### Communication and teamwork Communication covers both halves of a conversation: saying things clearly and listening properly. It shows up in your emails, in meetings and in how you hand work over to someone else. It also matters beyond itself, because it is the channel through which every other attribute becomes visible. Your manager learns how reliable you are largely from how you report progress, raise problems and share results. Teamwork is often reduced to being pleasant, but a strong team member is defined by what they do: sharing information freely, giving credit to others, helping wherever the team needs it, [disagreeing constructively](/knowledge/teamwork/disagree-and-commit/), and then committing to the decision the group makes. You show it in everyday collaboration, never by calling yourself a team player. ### A respectful, coachable attitude Words like "dependable," "respectful" and "positive" sound like character judgments, but colleagues arrive at them by watching small, repeated behaviors: whether you arrive on time, whether you follow through, how you talk about colleagues who are not in the room, and how you respond when someone corrects you. No single moment decides it; the pattern does. Coachability deserves particular attention early in a career, because you will be corrected often. Listening to the whole point, asking what to do differently and visibly applying it next time turns a correction into evidence of exactly the attitude employers hope to see. ### Effort aimed at what matters Hard work is expected of everyone, so on its own it does not set you apart. Effort that misses what the team and the organization actually need simply does not register as value, however many hours it took. The employees who stand out pair effort with clarity about priorities: they check what matters most, then put their energy there. For someone eager to prove themselves, this is a useful guardrail. Before a long push, confirm with your manager which task has the highest priority and what a good result looks like. A short conversation can save a week of impressive work on the wrong thing. ### Initiative and ownership Initiative means volunteering for a task, proposing an improvement or asking for an opportunity instead of waiting to be handed one. Ownership extends that to your own development: you treat what you learn in the role as your responsibility, not only your employer's. These are the attributes that make managers single someone out, and neither requires seniority. You can offer to prepare the next team meeting, draft the first version of a document, or ask your manager for feedback on how you are progressing. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work described the moment that sense of ownership arrived for him: > Before this, I mostly had more practical jobs — working as a waiter, a lifeguard, and things like that. In those jobs, the task was usually quite straightforward: you had a job to do, you did it, and you got paid. > > But when I got what I saw as a 'real' student job related to my studies, it felt different. I suddenly felt much more responsible for making the most of the opportunities I was given and for doing the best I could within the role. > > It no longer felt like it was just about getting the task done. The assignments I was given could also influence what I learned, how I developed professionally, and ultimately what direction my career might take. > > That made the responsibility feel heavier. I really wanted to prove that I could live up to what was expected of me — not just because of the job itself, but because it felt as though it could have consequences for where I went next. What changed for him was not only the work but his sense of whose job it was to make it count. That shift is where initiative starts. One condition applies, though: initiative is credible only when the basics are already reliable. Volunteering for new work while existing commitments slip reads as overreach rather than commitment, which is why the trust group comes first. ## Which attributes matter most in your job No single list of best employee attributes fits every role. The weighting shifts with the job, the company and its culture: a client-facing role leans harder on communication, while a role that handles sensitive information puts a premium on discretion. What travels across nearly every job is the core of reliability, integrity, communication and teamwork. So build the core first, then find out what your own workplace weights most. The most direct way is to ask your manager, early on, what good performance looks like in your role. You also do not have to wait for a first review to learn where your core stands: a free assessment lets you [see where your work skills stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) today, and anything that comes out weaker is something to practice, not a verdict. ## Can you learn the best employee attributes? Yes. Because these attributes are read from behavior, they change when behavior changes. Nobody is born punctual, forthcoming about mistakes or quick to share credit; people do those things repeatedly until colleagues start describing them that way. That turns an intimidating list of virtues into a short set of habits. Start with one group rather than all five. The trust group is the natural place, since it asks for consistency rather than experience. Pick one behavior, such as confirming deadlines in writing or reporting progress before you are asked, and repeat it until it is automatic. As you go, note the specific moments when it made a difference. That is the practice and the proof at once: the same notes become the examples employers want to hear in your next interview or review. ## What makes these attributes easier to build Look back at the five groups and notice how much of each one comes down to things you can rehearse: how you behave on an ordinary day, how reliable work turns into a reputation, and how you act inside a team. **Professional Behaviors** is what turns words like "respectful" and "positive" into things you actually do on an ordinary workday: treating everyone impartially, being on time, expressing appreciation, staying open to change. It also names the behaviors that quietly count against someone, such as being passive, arrogant or relentlessly negative. None of it asks you to change who you are; it asks you to make good conduct visible. **Influence** is how dependable work becomes a reputation. It rests on delivering results consistently, acting with integrity and being straight-talking rather than political, then adds initiative: being willing to ask, volunteering to prepare or organize, and taking responsibility for the bigger picture beyond your own tasks. It is the difference between being good at your job and being the person managers think of first. **Teamwork** defines the trustworthy colleague in concrete terms: be sincere, do what you commit to, share knowledge freely and give credit to the team. It also expects you to disagree when something matters, keep it about the work rather than the person, and then commit to what the group decides. Being a good team member is never the same as always agreeing. The **free Job Skills Test** is built to [rate the skills behind them](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/), with these three sitting among **the dozen work skills it measures**, and a lower score simply shows where practice will pay off first. Look at your last few weeks and you may find some of these groups already at work. If you are the one who sends round the notes after a meeting, or who quietly double-checks the shared file before a deadline, one of these attributes is already in practice, whether or not anyone has named it. The groups that feel thinner today grow the same way, one repeated behavior at a time, and you can strengthen the ones that matter most for your next step without becoming someone else. They also carry more weight as the work you are trusted with grows, since larger responsibilities go to the people others already rely on. The useful thing to know now is which ones to strengthen first. ## Find out which attributes to build first All that is left is to see your own starting point. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: it shows where you stand across all twelve and points to the ones that would do the most for how colleagues and managers experience your work. It takes 7 minutes. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, and you see your results instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? Best employee attributes: reliability, integrity, communication, teamwork, focused effort and initiative. What each looks like at work, and how to build it. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Professional Behaviors. It also relates to Influence, Teamwork. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-employee-attributes/ Preferred summary: "Best employee attributes: reliability, integrity, communication, teamwork, focused effort and initiative. What each looks like at work, and how to build it." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.