Integrity - More important than you think.

Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.  - wikipedia

Employers focus so much of their attention seeking people with qualifications, experience, competence, skills, humour, willingness to work overtime, willingness to work for less, but have forgotten the one fundamental value of being a good-human, which is integrity.  

I have worked for 4 companies, in different cities and different environment, but the continuous existence of a lazy colleague who did everything they're not supposed to at work seems to be present regardless where I go.  Fresh out of University at my first jobs, I just thought I worked so hard because I was enthusiastic, but 10 years later, I find myself working even harder than what I did back then.  I started observing the behaviour of people around me who I considered successful or unsuccessful, and it became quite clear that ones willingness to work and uphold their principles has nothing to do with age, but is a trait that they either have or not.

You may wonder why is integrity so important in a work place, and how does it influence you?  People with little integrity are difficult to manage, as they don't keep to the rules, and often have other people pick up their slack and exhaust company resources.  They also have a tendency to be dishonest.  People with integrity would know what they were doing is wrong, making it easy to trust them and their work ethics, where as people with little integrity tend to find a sense of entitlement therefore finding nothing wrong with their behaviour.

To maintain a successful work environment, it is essential to be able to trust your staff.  So next time you find yourself in a position of hiring new staff, rather than asking if they're hard working, which everyone always says they are, ask them if they consider themselves as someone who has integrity.  They will not expect the question, and if they aren't you will see it on their faces immediately, and if that were the case, truth is no amount of qualifications or experiences would make up for the integrity that they are lacking.