# Employees' Skills: The 7 Employers Value Most and How to Build Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/employees-skills/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/employees-skills.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving time management at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer Employees' skills go beyond technical know-how. See the seven workplace skills employers value most, the gaps they report, and how to find and close your own. ## Key facts - Title: Employees' Skills: The 7 Employers Value Most and How to Build Them - Category: Skills Standards and Frameworks - Primary skill: Time Management - Related skills: Communication, Teamwork - Primary keyword: employees skills - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/skills-standards/employees-skills/ ## What this page covers - Employees' skills go beyond technical know-how. See the seven workplace skills employers value most, the gaps they report, and how to find and close your own. - Practical guidance for employees skills - How this topic connects to Time Management ## Detailed explanation Employees' skills are the abilities that let you do your job and work well with the people around you. They come in two kinds: the technical skills your particular role requires, and the workplace skills that carry into every job, such as managing your time and priorities, communicating clearly and working as part of a team. The second kind is where employers most often find gaps. If you suspect your job asks for things nobody ever taught you, you are probably right. That is less worrying than it sounds, because a skill that was never taught is simply one you have not learned yet. The more useful questions are which of these skills employers actually notice, and how you can tell where your own gaps are. ## Two kinds of employee skills, and why the second kind weighs more Technical skills are what a specific job demands: the software, the methods, the subject knowledge. They are usually spelled out in the job ad, taught in your education or in training, and fairly easy to check. The other kind is harder to see. It splits into interpersonal skills, such as communicating, working in a team and working with your manager, and self-regulatory skills, such as managing your own time, your confidence and your reactions. Because these apply in every role and every industry, they move with you from one job to the next. They are also where employers see the biggest shortfall. The UK Employer Skills Survey 2018, which drew responses from more than 87,000 employers, found that the main people-related gaps in existing staff were self-management, management and leadership, and sales and customer handling. The technical gaps were digital, operational and complex analytical skills. The two kinds of gap surface differently. A technical gap is visible in the work itself. A self-management gap shows up as missed priorities and a workload that gets away from you. So what an employer most often finds missing is about how you organize and handle the work, not only about what you know. None of these skills is a personality trait. They are behaviors, and behaviors can be learned. The catch is that schools and employers rarely teach them, so most people pick them up by trial and error, often without noticing they are learning anything at all: > I would feel a week had gone by without working on anything relevant to my degree — but I was learning other things. How to behave at a workplace, how to write a professional email, how to greet someone far more important than yourself, how to book a meeting. Not much academically; it's everything around it I learned. That was one of the young people we interviewed about starting work, describing what her student job gave her alongside her studies. Her list is a fair picture of what employee skills look like from the inside: small, daily, and rarely written down anywhere. ## The employee skills employers look for most The seven skills below are the ones employer surveys name most often, either as what they want or as what they find missing. Each one is learnable, and each shows up in ordinary working days rather than in rare, dramatic moments. ### 1. Managing your own time and priorities This is the gap employers report most. According to the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, nearly three in five employers who said their staff lacked skills in the 2015 Employer Skills Survey named the ability to manage one's own time and [prioritize tasks](/knowledge/time-management/time-management-urgent-important/) as missing, more than any other skill. A survey reported by Malta's digital skills portal points the same way: self-organization and working to priorities were among the skills employers found most lacking in their staff. In daily work, this skill looks unglamorous. You know which of today's tasks matters most, you deliver what you promised by the time you promised it, and you say so early when something is going to slip. Because it is the gap managers notice first, it is also the most practical one to work on first. ### 2. Teamwork Team working was the second most frequently reported gap in the same UK survey. It also ranks near the top of what employers want from new hires: in NACE's Job Outlook 2026, 81.0% of employers said they look for evidence of teamwork on a graduate's resume, and it has stayed in the survey's top tier for years. Teamwork in a job is less about enjoying group projects than about being someone others can rely on. You do your part well, share what you know instead of keeping it to yourself, and coordinate with colleagues rather than working around them. ### 3. Communication, written and spoken Employers value both halves. In the NACE survey, 77.1% of employers look for written communication, and the employers in the Malta survey ranked verbal communication among the most important skills of all. The UK 2018 survey adds a third angle by naming customer handling as one of the main people-related gaps. Together they cover most of a working day: emails that get to the point, updates your manager can act on, conversations with colleagues that clear things up rather than muddy them, and calm, clear exchanges with customers. ### 4. Work ethic and professional conduct Work ethic appears in the NACE results at 73.2%, level with technical skills, and like teamwork it has stayed among the most sought-after attributes year after year. Employees seem to sense its importance too: in the Malta survey, staff named work ethic, along with enthusiasm and empathy, as what was most lacking. In practice, professional conduct is visible in small things that add up. You turn up on time, follow through without reminders, treat everyone with the same respect regardless of their role, and complete the administrative parts of the job without complaint. ### 5. Decision-making The Malta survey found something telling here: employers ranked decision-making among the most important employee skills and, at the same time, among the most lacking. It is valued precisely because it is scarce. As an employee, good decision-making starts with knowing what you are actually [authorized to decide](/knowledge/decision-making/decision-making-authority/). Within that space, you make sound calls without waiting for perfect information, ask for another opinion when the stakes are high, and recognize when a decision belongs with your manager instead. ### 6. Initiative and responsibility In the NACE survey, 73.7% of employers look for initiative. ManpowerGroup's 2023 talent shortage survey, covering 41 countries, found that 77% of employers worldwide struggled to find the skills they needed, with responsibility and [taking initiative](/knowledge/influence/show-initiative-at-work/) among the hardest qualities to find. Scarcity is what makes this one an opportunity. Offering to take on a task, owning a piece of work from start to finish, or asking for something instead of waiting to be handed it all stand out precisely because employers do not see them often. ### 7. Knowing where your own gaps are The last skill makes the other six usable. In the Malta survey, employers and employees gave noticeably different answers about what was missing: employers pointed to decision-making, self-organization and working to priorities, while employees pointed to work ethic, enthusiasm and empathy. The skill you believe you need to improve may not be the one your manager is watching. You can only work on a gap you can see, and the most direct way to see it is to ask your manager or a colleague for specific feedback on how your work and behavior come across. A second, quicker way is to [check your own skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) against what you would have guessed. Either way, a gap you can name is a gap you can start closing. ## What sits underneath a strong employee Read the seven entries again and a pattern appears. Most of them are less about knowing something than about doing a few things well every day: how you handle your hours, what you say and write, and how you work with the people next to you. **Time Management** is what turns "prioritizing" from a good intention into a habit. It starts before the work does: when someone hands you a task, you clarify who is asking, what exactly they want, when it is really due (a date, not "ASAP"), and how the result will be judged. From there it is a matter of separating the important from the merely urgent, tackling the most uncertain task first rather than last, and, once you have built some credibility, saying no with a clear reason instead of quietly overcommitting. **Communication** carries most of what employers mean by written and verbal skills. At work it rewards a few plain habits: put your main point first, keep it brief, and be clear and direct. Choosing the medium matters too. Sensitive or complicated issues go better in conversation, while anything that needs a record or gives the other person time to think belongs in writing. In email, that means a subject line that says what the message is about, only the recipients who need it, and a reply within a reasonable time. **Teamwork** is where reliability becomes visible to others. It rests on trust, which you build by meaning what you say and doing what you commit to. Being excellent in your own role comes first, followed by asking where the team needs you. When you disagree with a team decision, the professional move is to say so openly and then commit to the decision once it is made, instead of carrying it out half-heartedly. The Job Skills Test measures all three of these, along with nine other workplace skills. It shows you which ones are already solid and which are holding you back, so you can [find your strongest and weakest skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) and practice the right one in the job you already have. **Every one of them can be learned.** ## Where you may already see this at work Some of this may already sound familiar. Perhaps you have rewritten a to-do list mid-morning because an urgent request landed, or watched a colleague's vague email cost a team an afternoon and thought you would have phrased it differently. Moments like those are exactly the material these skills are built from. None of it calls for a different personality. You can stay as reserved, lively or thoughtful as you are now and still get noticeably better at prioritizing, explaining and collaborating. These skills also tend to count for more as your responsibilities grow and technical knowledge alone takes you less far, which is why knowing your starting point now is useful: the gaps are smaller and easier to close early on. ## See where your employee skills stand All that is left is to find out where you stand today. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your workplace skills. In 7 minutes it shows where you stand across all twelve, including time management, communication and teamwork, and points to the ones that will make the biggest difference to how your employer sees your work. ## 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? Employees' skills go beyond technical know-how. See the seven workplace skills employers value most, the gaps they report, and how to find and close your own. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Time Management. It also relates to Communication, 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/skills-standards.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/time-management.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.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/skills-standards/employees-skills/ Preferred summary: "Employees' skills go beyond technical know-how. See the seven workplace skills employers value most, the gaps they report, and how to find and close your own." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.