What happens when one of your stars begins to underperform? What do you do?
Have you ever considered it could be a bit of the old “chicken and the egg” conundrum – what comes first bad management or bad employee behaviour? In the long run it may not actually matter, but there is a mutual culpability that must be addressed.
For employees, under-performing behaviour can manifest in lots of different ways – increased absenteeism, just doing enough to get by, low energy levels, decreased interaction with co-workers, reduced contribution to projects, negativity slipping into conversations – and the list goes on!
For employers, a visible lack of “good management” can have a significant impact on the workplace. Research shows us that money isn’t the primary motivator for leaving a job. In fact it’s about 10th on the list. The biggest single reason good employees leave is because of the behaviour of their direct supervisor. So what contributes to ineffective management?
- Lack of direct communication and information
- Lack of clarity and the provision of standards/expectations
- Lack of positive reinforcement or acknowledgement of successes
- Lack of face-to-face communication – these days there appears to an over-reliance on passive communication techniques such as electronic media to convey critical information rather than sitting down face-to-face.
Direct face-to-face communication might also enable you to find out if there are other or external factors which could be affecting their performance. If a good employee starts to perform poorly we need to examine why. Typically stars don’t get up one morning and make a decision to under-perform. Consider the following when diagnosing what might be affecting your star employee:
Does the employee have the capability to do the task – if they did it before, then they can do it again.
Has the employee been trained on the correct way of doing the job – how long ago was the training? If they’ve carried out the tasks correctly in the past, then it’s likely they can do it again properly.
Does the employee use the skill often enough to remember how to do the job next time?
Does the employee know he/she is doing it correctly/incorrectly?
What quality checks are in place to give the employee feedback on their performance – who is responsible for giving that feedback?
Are you punishing exceptional performance? By this I mean – do you swamp your star with lots of extra projects because they are always capable of taking on more?
Are you rewarding poor performance? Has your superstar been switched off because they regularly stand by and watch you rescue poor performing employees by handing their work over to good employees – rather than dealing with the problem employee?
There are always genuine reasons why performance slips away – our role as business owners and managers is to find out why.
That might also include looking in the mirror and asking questions about our own management
techniques.
