Explore the Ways to Deal Underperforming Employees
In every organization you will get two types of employee- one who perform well and second whose performance are not up to the standard. Percentage of underperforming employee can be less but it doesn't mean that we should ignore it.
An underperforming employee can have ripple effect on the rest of the workforce. Hence it is important to identify the underperforming employees and take the corrective measure before it's too late for an organization.
How to identify or judge underperforming employee by HR
Some visible trends of underperforming employees are
1. Not meeting the Goals and Objective: Nobody can be perfect but if a team member or employee is continuously failing to achieve their targets with a large margin that it can be a sign of underperformance.
2. Lack of Team Work: Poor performance can be detected by lack of ability to work with co workers. Sometimes interpersonal conflicts, politicized culture, gossip can impact the productivity of the team.
3. No adherence to the company culture and values: A careless attitude towards company culture can be a indication of underperformance. For example if the company's value is "Customer first "but if the employee fail to sympathies with customers its mean that employee is not adhering to the company values.
4. Disregard for company rules: Constant absenteeism, lateness, disengagement in work and other disciplinary issue can lead to the poor performance. If these persist then productivity level disregarded.
5. Low quality work: Employee may work but quality may not be upto mark . Else they may be over dependent on co worker or superior. In that case employee and his team both suffer due to lack of performance.
How to deal with underperforming employee / Tips for Managing Underperforming Employees
After identifying the performance issues, a plan of actions of required to address the issue and taking the right measure. Sometimes reason of poor performance could be the fact that employee is not clear about the company expectations or need some training to align them with company core values. Here are some steps to tackle the underperformance issue.
1. Feed back: Initiate a conversation and provide the feedback on their performance, helps them to improve.
2. According to the survey 58% employees who received the accurate and consistent feedback improve performance of the employee This can be used an opportunity to have an open discussion with employee that what can be done to the improve the performance of the employee.
3. Personalized Training: If underperformance pinned at the individual level , then by giving them the personalized training. We can monitor and measure the performance of an individual. In nutshell we need to know the root cause of the bottleneck in the candidate performance and then provide them with training resources to equip themselves.
4. Explain Expectation and Acknowledge their Contribution:
Clearly communicate the objectives and goals to the underperform employees so that they can work collectively for a common mission.
This will give them a better understanding that how they can fit into the project or organization and how their contribution affects the business.
When we provide them a holistic understanding of an organization, it helps them to clearly understand the expectation of an organization and boost the engagement of an employee.
4. Set performance goal together:
Set the performance goal for a underperform employee, which should be Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time bound. You can discuss with an employee to set his performance goals.
This kind of goal setting increases the involvement and commitment of an employee rather than dictating the standard performance goals.
5. Time it Right:
Always avoid emotional confrontation with the employee, instead of give him/her a time to cool off and schedule a one on one meeting with them. Listen the employee side and communicate your expectation with him.
It is important that you convey your message without any arguments or threatening behavior.
6. External Factors
Sometimes external factors like personal issues, health issue, stress or mental wellbeing of an employee also impact his/her performance.
Therefore try to understand these temporary issues and help them to resolve it.
7. Follow up:
After having the one on one discussion with employee, follow up consistently to determine whether agreed performance goals and targets are being accomplished by them or not and monitor their progress regularly. If they have accomplished the task in a given time limit then appreciate and acknowledge their efforts. This will give an understanding to the employee that you are actively engage in it, which helps them to boost their morale and performance.
8. Create challenging opportunities:
Some roles are too dull and monotonous, which impact the performance of an employee as they are no longer motivated to do their work.
Provide them new opportunities to help them to think out of the box and new initiatives to engage them in their role.
9. Effective On boarding Process:
Invest in quality induction so that employee can be engage for a long time, decrease the employee turnover time and save the cost. This will lead to the win-win situation for an organization/ employer and employee.
10. Incentive for Performance:
Recognize or acknowledge the employee accomplishment and achievement. It helps to keep your employee motivated. If we don't do that then certainly there performance level will go down and they will start searching for a more rewarding organization.
As a leader, it is important for you find out the underperform employee and fix up the issue with them otherwise they may create the ripple effect of negativity on his/her team and other employees. If your all efforts gets exhausted and failed to bring back the performance on track then its better to let him/her go.
Likewise How To Manage An Underperforming Employees or Departments Of A Business! Suggest a plan of correction to improve the department's or employee's outcomes. How can either be improved?
When managing a wholesome workforce every business come across many issues as the workers engage in performing varied task with different level of knowledge, attitudes and also capabilities .In order to make their performance of the highest level they need to be kept motivated regularly. When an employee does not delivers results at the expected levels they tend to underperform which can be because of non following work procedures, failing to execute roles or providing a negative impact on others in the company.
To develop a plan for underperforming employees' different scenarios need to be dealt with to ensure a fair treatment. The manager can approach and discuss about how things are getting along and whether they is anything specific they wish to highlight. This helps them to develop a plan for things that might be bothering them. Some of the employees may not be aware of their exact role and its impact on the business, this would be the best time to strategise a plan for them. Once they embark on a plan together, the manager can set smart targets to set goals. Ensuring all the conversation thereafter is to be kept constructive and positive.
Despite of all the planning and the support system still if there is no progress then another course of action have to be formulated. Disciplinary action needs to be taken if no improvements are seen and employment law have to be complied with. The employee review form has to be revised in regards to both descriptive and narrative scale format there by making them comprehensive and clear. Team building games can be encouraged to infuse better creativity and communication among team members. Manager defines performance management and it is a challenge for every employee to thrive and achieve in their place of work. The manager needs to empower people and set high standards and boundaries.
This Article Explains
- Dealing Underperforming Employees
- Ways To Improve Underperforming Employees
- 10 Ways To Deal Underperforming Employees
- How To Improve Bad Performer Employees
- HR Dealing With Underperforming Employees
- How to deal HRD with Underperforming Employees
- how to help an underperforming employee