The place to start when describing the ideal employee, is with the basic things that influence every persons' behavior, individual characteristic. The ideal employee would need to have the right personality, values, work-related attitudes, abilities, and skills. From there, it is best to expand into the role of groups and leadership, and how these aspects of business affect the ideal employee. Beyond the basic things that an employee would possess, vision, and creativity also need to be looked at.

The ideal employee should have a good value and moral system. She would need to value hard work, and her cultural values would need to fit well with the company's values. A Relativist View of ethics would be more flexible, and would allow the ideal employee to function well with her co-workers. She would also need to understand what her co-workers did. Often a problem that occurs in the workplace is when on employee has no concept of their co-workers jobs. Without the understanding of what others in the company are doing, the company may not be able to move forward. A breakdown in communication can cause harmful side effects in all parts of the business (Layne, 2000).

Case Three: Socializing The New Employee

The next logical step that the ideal employee would need to make would be the ability to transition from being a team member, to a good leader. Leadership is a set of qualities that causes people to follow (Loeb & Kindel 1999). Leaders are people who have the ability to influence teams, and groups of people to work together it achieve a common goal. Leadership skills in a person are made up of many different qualities that the ideal employee must have.

James Clemmons was not too hard to motivate, once I had taken into account the fact that this company doesn't seem to mind losing employees at a rapid rate. Bringing his wife into the workplace sounds like it should work out well though. Wilson Thomas was very childish, and I personally had more trouble handling his 'personality' than I did any of the other employees I had to help. I felt almost like was being forced to baby-sit him in order to get him to do his job.

I found it near impossible to get an answer out of Frank on my own, and eventually simply went with the advice the book gave. I found his true problem to be depressing, and honestly wished that something could be done for him, however I could not help but feel like he need to deal with his personal problems on his own time, and not on company time.

I felt that this case was interesting, although I wanted to tell the Record Analyst that they needed to be more independent, and learn to think for themselves from the very start of the case. Which, of course, meant that my first choice was to get them together for a big group discussion that went absolutely no where. Next choice was also wrong, as I wanted to let the person who brought the problem to me handle it themselves.

The aspect that truly creates the ideal employee is experience. Experience in this case, refers to the fact that knowledge that can not be obtained through standard training. This is the bucket that collects all of the little things that make a good employee truly great. These things can not always be put down in great detail because there are so many and varied depending on who is asked. This also encompasses the term "gut feeling," or instinct. It is the ability to rely on past outcomes of situations so that future changes and events may be known before they happen, and then may be accounted for. An example of this would be the launching of a new product or toy. Research has shown that trends such as the Furby and the PlayStation 2 can not always be predicted by traditional market research and data collection. However, in these cases, leadership and faith in the products have allowed for great market success. Experience is also not limited to big corporate product launches, it also relates to interactions of employees. A good employee can alter the mood of individuals based on what has worked or not worked for motivation in the past. By learning for prior mistakes and success this explains why this trait is so sought after and valued in the work place. Each of the above traits in its self will not make the ideal. It takes a balance of each trait to truly become the ideal employee.

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Approximate Word count = 5202
Approximate Pages = 21 (250 words per page double spaced)