Managing Poor Performers

People often take time to adjust to new situations, and some cope with change better than others. Talk to your assistant and explore exactly what differences the restructuring has made to his or her job. It's possible that poor communications have left your assistant feeling confused about new responsibilities, unable to prioritize, and lacking support. These are all areas where you should be able to help.

Some theories about managing salespeople suggest constantly churning the least productive individuals. Managing poor performance is extremely time-consuming, and your time may be better spent supporting your stronger performers. You do need, however, to understand why the bottom group is failing to meet targets, set clear goals, and manage by objectives. If this fails, be prepared to deal with the consequences.

The fact that your performance is suffering makes it important to discuss your feelings with your manager. We can often outgrow roles or discover that we need a new challenge to feel rewarded. Enlist your manager to help you understand what's happened. Have your work circumstances changed? If so, your expectations of yourself are likely to have changed, too. Have job pressures intensified, or have you developed different personal goals? What type of recognition or appreciation would be meaningful to you? Remember that it's more cost-effective for organizations to remotivate and align an existing employee than recruit and train a new one, so your boss will have every incentive to help you.

When you set out to "correct" poor performance, make sure that you have two key elements of performance management:

1. a standard of how the job is to be performed that you can point to and your associate can aspire to, and
2. objective and fair means by which everyone can assess how well your employee is doing the work.

Without either of these essential components, you can't really expect your associate to adjust their performance in a reliable and consistent way because you lack the means to evaluate it fairly. ("I'll know it when I see it," isn't an objective or fair standard; neither is, "Just do it like Antonio does it.")

An effective performance management system also assures that each individual has clear objectives, understands how these affect others, knows what's needed to meet the objectives, and has the necessary skills and experience to deliver.

Putting such a system in place before problems arise saves considerable management time and worry.

Poor performance is defined by a variety of factors; some are organization-specific, and some role-specific. As a manager, you need to decipher which are personal conduct issues—attitudinal choices your employee makes about doing work, and which are capability/competence issues—which relate to the level of quality at which your employee works. Each requires a tailored course of action.

It's always preferable to prevent poor performance instead of treating it (see below). Where prevention fails, you need to:

• Conduct yourself as fair and unbiased at all times; your objective is to give your associate an opportunity to do well in a job that you or another manager thought they could do—that's why they were hired.
• Determine whether the lagging performance reflects a conduct or capability issue.
• Get personally involved in the case of your under-performing associate; how one of your direct reports performs reflects upon you. It's in your interest to resolve this situation satisfactorily.
• Work within organizational guidelines and procedures in the event of disciplinary action. These are sometimes detailed and very specific so as to assure fairness to everyone.
• Recognize the importance of training and guidance in turning around your associate's performance, and your personal role in supporting those functions.

The organization must act with consistency and fairness, and assure that it has provided the employee with the guidelines and coaching necessary to achieve the desired behavior and outcomes.

If the performance problem cannot be resolved, it may be necessary to initiate a disciplinary procedure. Here are some guidelines.

• Conduct a full investigation. When did the "poor performance" start? What's happened since the issue was first raised? How much time has elapsed? What's transpired? What's documented? Are there special circumstances? What's the employee's perspective? What else might be going on?
• Hold a formal hearing. Make sure the employee is given written notice of it in advance; they are entitled to representation.
• Review all the evidence and formally outline any disciplinary action to be taken.
• Consider differentiating between conduct and capability issues in formulating any disciplinary action. In many organizations, an employee with capability issues is given two chances to improve before being terminated, while terms are stricter if the problem involves conduct. Either way, be sure to allow time for improvement as part of the disciplinary process.

If you feel that you don't have the skills, experience, or knowledge to achieve the objectives set for you, ask for help before it becomes a performance management issue.

Try to understand why you haven't met your objectives. What support would help you to improve your performance? If your goals are unclear, seek help in redefining them so you can agree on expectations and better focus your efforts.

If your poor performance is attitudinal, try to understand how others react to your behavior. Remember that what works well in one culture doesn't always translate to others. How you say something is as important as what you say. Try to identify friction points before they become serious performance issues.

The best way to deal with poor performance is actually to take steps to avoid it. For example:

• Maintain a sense of purpose and clear channels of communication throughout the organization. Each person should understand how their own activities support organizational goals, and how their own performance contributes to the organization's success.
• Promote people appropriately. The fact that someone does a great job at one level doesn't necessarily mean that person is capable of succeeding at the next level. A superb technician may be a lousy supervisor unless aptitude, training and support align to help the promotion succeed.
• Encourage managers to spend time with individuals to identify and address risk areas before they become performance issues. No one fails overnight. Early intervention and coaching can prevent significantly unacceptable levels of performance in the first place.
• Establish clear, attainable goals. Encourage employees to pursue and exceed their objectives in their own way so long as their methods align with the organizational culture.

No matter how frustrated you feel by poor performance, you need to be completely unbiased, fair, and consistent in dealing with it. Always seek out the underlying factors—which may go well beyond the accountability of the individual employee. To what extent is "the system" a contributing factor (e.g. the clarity of expectations, training, tools, information, cooperation from others, and so on). Sometimes, what appears to be an employee performance problem turns out to be more a reflection of management policies that need addressing than anything else. A fact-based approach is best: jumping to conclusions or overreacting won't help you, the employee, or the organization.

Goals should always be achievable and clearly and explicitly defined. Make sure your expectations are consistent with (and will be supported by) the culture of the organization. To the degree that it's reasonable, tailor goals to individual employees' capacities. Establish short-term milestones that enable you to monitor progress regularly and intervene before slippage becomes critical. Most important, communicate, communicate, communicate—regularly, frequently, personally.

Performance needs to be measurable. The easier it is to measure, the easier it is to manage. Check individuals' performance against their targets. Schedule regular reviews and encourage employees to monitor their own performance. Ask them for feedback on their progress. Good performance managers constantly assess risk and identify and address potential failures early. That way, little problems never have the opportunity to balloon into potential big ones.

Personality clashes can be difficult to deal with and, if coupled with poor performance, often become highly charged. When you are addressing issues that are personality-driven, bring in an impartial third party to mediate. Be flexible and open to different approaches to deal with different aspects of the problem. In some cases poor performance may be a perceived rather than a real problem. Again, let facts and data—not impressions, anecdotes, or a general sense—guide your assessments of an individual's accomplishments. Many of us use very different approaches and methods that can produce equally effective results. Focus on achievement, not inconsequential means.

Becker, Brian E., Mark A. Huselid, and Dave Ulrich. The HR Scorecard: Linking People, Strategy, and Performance. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2001.

Falcone, Paul. 101 Sample Write-Ups for Documenting Employee Performance Problems: A Guide to Progressive Discipline and Termination. New York: AMACOM, 1999.

Grote, Richard, C. The Performance Appraisal Question and Answer Book: A Survival Guide for Managers. New York: AMACOM, 2002.

Kirkpatrick, Donald. Improving Employee Performance Through Appraisal And Coaching. 2nd edition. New York: AMACOM, 2005.

"Are You Strong Enough To Face Facts: Poor Employee Performance Could Be Your Fault," Business Know-how.com: www.businessknowhow.com/manage/poorperf1.htm

"Employee Performance Problems? Ask 'Why' To Find The Heart Of The Matter," Business Know-how.com: www.businessknowhow.com/manage/perfprob.htm

"How Do I Deal with an Employee's Unacceptable Performance?", U.S. Department of Commerce, Office of Human Resource Management: http://ohrm.os.doc.gov/Managers/prod01_000955