Most
workers want to do well. With the exception of mismatched skills,
personality difficulties or low skill levels most employees will
succeed in their job. However, there are always good reasons why
employees perform at a less-than-optimal level. For example;
•
Is the job role clear and are the expectations also understood
and communicated? Studies have shown that nearly 60 per cent
of conflict in a job is a fundamental lack of agreement between
the supervisor and the worker over the job and the specific
skills needed to perform it.
• Is training part of the time on the
job? Unfortunately many new hires are left on their own to figure
out what is supposed to be done and how. It’s a “sink
or swim” mentality on the part of the company.
• Unrealistic expectations are another
cause of poor performance. The business owner may get annoyed
when the employees don’t work as well as they do. |
The first
step therefore is to sit down with the employee and have an informal
talk about their work. You’ll get farther if you talk about
what needs to be done rather than dwelling on the shortcomings.
There are some key questions you might want to ask the employee:
•
What value does the employee think that he brings to your company?
•
Asking how the employee thinks he is doing often gets the dialogue
on performance started in a positive manner.
•
Does the employee understand the company’s values system,
particularly as it pertains to individual and team contributions?
•
To what extent does the employee understand that there are rewards
for doing a better-than-average-job? (Here you have to be clear
in your own mind that better performers rate better pay.)
•
Does the employee have any personal goals about where he or
she would like to go in the company? Perhaps another job at
a higher level is a goal. It may be that the employee would
be happier in a different department or doing a different job?
•
Finally, you might see if the employee knows where to go when
he needs help with his job? Sometimes people are too proud or
too concerned about their job to ask for help and that prevents
them from improving their performance. |
In the interview,
the behaviour that will work best for you is to listen carefully
to the answers to these questions and then to reply with your own
answers. This process will build a foundation for describing your
job expectations with the employee. You have to remember to be very
specific about what you expect from the employee and what the employee
can expect from you. Then, working together, you can develop a written,
and the emphasis is on written, plan for improvement, including
when the two of you will get together to review progress and action
items that had deadlines for implementation. As with any action
directed at employees, the plan must be fair and reasonable and
agreed to by both parties.
It is always best to keep a written record of the plan, thus the
emphasis on the work ‘written’! Ask the employee to
c-sign the plan with you and make sure the employee has her own
copy.
After the agreement has been written, follow-up becomes very important.
A written agreement that is never revisited is not worth the paper
it is written on. You have a platform upon which to build better
performance.
The natural question at this point is, “What if all of this
effort doesn’t pay off?”
In future columns, we will deal with how you, as the manager or
leader, can influence the performance situation through taking stock
of your own behaviour. We will also discuss what we call the “if
all else fails” process.
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