Many employer / employee conflicts come from each not understanding the difference between the job requirements and expectations. So let’s take a minute to understand the difference and make a platform for reducing this conflict in the future.

In a nutshell: Requirements are what you will do. Expectations are how you should do them.

Why Communication Is Key

At Prime Power, we lay out the job requirements before the employee is hired: work hours, tool requirements, benefits, etc.

These will be communicated to the employee and we have them explain
them back to make sure they understand and agree to it before they are hired.

Expectations are reviewed next. Take work hours for example. We typically work 7:00 – 3:30. That is a requirement. But we would expect you to arrive a few minutes early so as to be able to start working at 7:00. Arriving at 7:00 to then get coffee and talk, wasting company time, is unacceptable.

Production expectations are also explained. A Journeyman Electrician is required to know how to wire a receptacle. But it is expected that they can to so in a certain amount of time with a certain amount of units per day.

Making The Grade

Finally, we’ll use a simple illustration: We ask the employee to think back to school. While a C and technically a D are passing grades, as one of the top electrical contractors in NWA, those are below our expectations.

We expect each employee to give a solid effort every day.

At Prime Power, we want each employee to look forward to coming to work, be proud of the work they did, and go home with energy left for their lives and families. We’ve found clearly explaining requirements and expectations help do that.