How Understanding Employee Persona Can Help Employers

An office is a place of cultural and mental diversity. It is where people of different mindsets come to work together. This sense of individualism brings a certain uniqueness to the workforce. However, this individuality also comes with differences of opinions, beliefs, and mindsets.

It ultimately means that what works for some employees may not work for all others. This difference is a problem for the management as it may harm the level of employee experience. Here comes the necessity of understanding employees.

To do this, understanding Employee Persona is the best option.
Employee Persona helps companies understand their employees’ personalities better in a group. It helps design better plans for success and employee satisfaction. Also, it helps boost the productivity and job satisfaction of the workforce.

Knowing your employees through different personas also helps strengthen the employer-employee relationship. It serves very well in the long run as it promotes an understanding and long-lasting relationship.

Therefore, the employee persona is essential in a company. To help you learn more about it, here are a few critical points.

What is Employee Persona?

Employee persona is the collective semi-fictional representation of a group of employees with similar attributes. These traits can be of qualitative or quantitative nature. Based on this, it can be their behavior, experiences, human nature, etc.

Some of these points of differentiation are:

• Age Group
• Work Experience
• Career Progression
• Professional Goals
• Feedback from employee survey
• Frequency of job switch
• Performance
• Workplace challenges

Information on these aspects helps form a better employee narrative. Furthermore, it helps the management in making better decisions. Other than this, examining these personas is also vital for various other reasons.

Why is it essential to understand different Employee Persona?

The following are the reasons why a study on the workforce persona is so important.

1. Better Understanding

Personas help employers understand their staff. It means they can effectively design and devise strategies that are sure for success. This increases management performance and cuts the costs of trial and error. In return, it improves employee experience and employee engagement to a whole new level.

2. Alignment with Company Values

Based on the difference in liking, every employee will have a different point of view. Sometimes, your values or rules may not be beneficial or favor the majority of your workforce. Here, you must avoid the concept of one-shoe-fits-well.

Employee persona helps you look into this matter. Knowing your employee behaviour, you can plan better to suit your entire workforce without favoring any section of it. It is possible by segmenting employees into manageable groups.

3. Hiring

Understanding worker persona can also help you in hiring an ideal candidate. It is because the cultural fit of a new hire is as important as his/her competency. Examining the different personas will help you understand who will thrive in your environment.

Creating an employee persona will help you make you an excellent hire to sit well with the existing workforce. It is crucial as it helps maintain a harmonious and positive working environment.

Related Article: 6 Employment Personality Test Every Employer Must Know

4. Employee Journey Mapping

Employee Journey Mapping is essential to ascertain for all HR professionals. Gaining insight into personas can help you design a better walkthrough of a worker’s journey. This is possible by understanding what a person likes/dislikes and career goals set accordingly.

5. Better Leadership

Personas at a workplace also enlighten you about the different challenges and pain points of a workforce in the company culture. Capitalizing in these builds better leadership qualities in an office. It is because correcting these issues makes for a better experience in the workplace.

Related Article: 8 Leadership Styles With Their Pros and Cons

Once these issues are determined, it becomes relatively easy for management to act on them. By knowing the working staff well through employee personas, you can also ascertain what will work best. Here, even a face-to-face interview on understanding personas will go a long way in your employee retention.

These are just a few of the advantages of examining the different personas at work. Other than these, there is so much more you can achieve through proper employee persona building.

Now, let’s bring this towards an end by rounding up our last segment on this topic.

Common Employee Persona in an Office

1. Achiever

It is a personality every company needs to excel. An achiever is always a great performer in a team. They are great at bringing the best results to the table as an individual or as a team.

2. Educator

This persona fits a person who has in-depth knowledge of a field. He/she is best suited for fact-checking operational data and is very reliable.

Other than that, this person stays updated with the latest news in his/her field of expertise. They love to form connections with team members and supply continuing support.

3. Researcher

The researcher is a persona motivated by programs of professional training and career development. They thrive in a challenging environment that requires specialized knowledge in a field. People in these personas are highly motivated with recognition for progress in the workplace.

4. Mentor

This persona is the brand of positivity in the workplace. A mentor likes to motivate others, see them succeed, and maintain optimism in the workplace. They love sharing knowledge, nurturing others, and have excellent workplace communication skills, making them a big hit in focus groups.

A mentor is useful for constructive feedback and guidance to help employees settle in. They also help in determining where an employee training and development program will fit well for better future performance.

5. Creator

People of this persona don’t like routine work and seek new ways for better office results. In today’s business world, they make great leaders and are highly motivated with rewards for their innovations.

This persona is better suited to problem-solving and product/service creation and modification. A creator exerts a maximum impact on such a challenging work environment.

6. Networker

As the name suggests, this group loves to network. They are useful in building a brand image and customer base. A networker would always say yes to a business trip or any opportunity to connect with new people.

They possess a great deal of insight into the people involved in specific fields.

7. Visionary

A visionary is a principal figure in a company’s progress. They can look forward and form the basis of the goals for the betterment of a company. This individual is a very knowledgeable person with immense business sense in most cases. People in this category also love to work on projects autonomously.

8. Builder

A builder is someone who loves practical work. They are a hands-on bunch of knowledge and vision when it comes to complex tasks. Individuals of this persona are very aware of their surroundings and know how to visualize and improve things.

9. Warrior

A warrior persona always makes a difference at work and seeks out purpose and meaning. They are very motivated by learning a new skill and mastering the existing ones. A warrior is always a great choice to lead a team and is excellent at team-building activities.

10. Influencer

A person with an influencer persona is a great help in persuading others. They have great communication skills with an ability for sweet-talking at times. An influencer is an asset for a company in top-level management.

These personalities are best at closing deals and promoting a brand.

These were some of the typical employee personas at work.
Understanding these will help you utilize and treat them well for the success of your company.

Conclusion

Every one of us is different. This sense of individualism is what brings life to a workplace. To be a great leader, you must understand this and act accordingly. Knowing different employee personas will help your HR teams in ways unimaginable.

Be it employee engagement, employee retention, reduced employee absenteeism, job satisfaction, you name it. The opportunities are unlimited.

For achieving this feat, a proper study into employee persona will help you a ton.

This article is written by Jyoti Prakash Barman. He is an in-house Content Marketer at Vantage Circle with interests in music and automobiles. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com