Company Blog

The Perfect Employee?

by Adam Zack — March 24, 2021

The culture of the company comes from the top.

Oh, boy. By my count this is Blog number 300. That’s a lot of rants, reflections, thoughts and stories. So here goes.

A friend and employee yesterday asked me if I knew what this week’s blog topic was yet. As a charter member of the “Fly by the Seat of Your Pants Procrastination Club”, I told him I had not decided yet (maybe making it seem like I was deciding between multiple meaningful topics, when actually there were none in the hopper.) He said he thought it should be on The Perfect Employee and what my definition of that would be. Made me think. I started thinking the obvious. A perfect employee is an example to other employees. They are punctual, very friendly, caring, quality focused, follow the rules, don’t complain, are willing to do any task assigned to them, and are balanced in their work and personal life. They value family and know you care about theirs. They have your back and know you have theirs. They are content with their compensation and know you treat them fairly. They treat your products and money like it was their own and are as honest as your most trusted friend. They ask good questions, follow directions to the letter and take great pride in their work. They are happy to work for you and tell their friends and family about how much they like their job, what a good boss you are and what a company yours is to work for. You wish you had 100 just like them. The more I thought about, though, the more I realized that there is no universal perfect employee. There’s the perfect employee for me, but that may not be the perfect employee for you. The boss that is task driven, a hard negotiator and seems not to care about his employees personal life might look at my perfect employee as one who maybe talks to his co-workers too much. His production may not be as good as other employees. He wants one who is always working at a frantic pace, who is good at being a yes man, and who, well, shares the same work values and ethic as him. The culture of the company comes from the top, and the successful business has a lot of perfect employees who emulate what the boss is and wants.