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.
| 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
|
Table 1 Employer expectations
