[Underperforming Employees?] What to do about Poor Performance

You have invested in marketing.

You have invested ‘sweat equity’ and money into developing your products and/or services.

You bought the right tech Tools.

You have explained everything to all employees and have had countless of meetings.

Still some employees simply do not perform!

What to do about employees who do not perform?

The first important point to consider as it relates to employee performance is that poor employee performance is not always the individual employees’ fault.

Introspection from top management and a balanced approach where all party’s accountability is carefully considered is also required:

• Are we really good at inspiring our employees?
• Have we put our sincere and best efforts towards creating a family culture for our employees?
• Is there room for improvement in terms of providing high quality and practical implementable training and coaching to all employees?

The responsibility to build the right culture for employees and to empower them in a constructive way lies firmly on our shoulders as leaders.

Harvard research has proven that most managers are simply poor at coaching other employees (80% of all managers across all industries)

Central to this issue of poor coaching lies the natural tendency of ‘superiors’ to tell their employees what to do.

Employees where told at school what to do by teachers and at university by lecturers. At home their parents told them what to do and at work the trend is continued by managers and ‘bosses’ telling them what to do, generally speaking of course.

On average employees are both bored of and not inspired by being told what to do. Effective Coaching follows a different approach:

• Create a positive setting for the coaching session/performance discussion (Be friendly and encouraging)
• Ask more (positive questions) than making statements. The right questions can influence the employee while the wrong statements can lead to passive aggressive behavior by the employee. For example: What can I do to help you improve your sales figures? Come to a mutual agreement on what will be done to improve performance instead of telling them what is going to happen.
• Show the employee a practical example of the behaviour that you are asking for. For example if you have an underperforming sales person send him/her into the field observing a high performing sales person.
• Then let them try out what they have learnt through observation.
• Then only give feedback. We are so quick to give unasked for advice and we think that, that in general is a productive way of coaching, however in reality it is not productive at all. Give the feedback as positive tips instead of criticism.

If after all of the above has been implemented with sincere effort and there is no willingness from the employee to improve there must be consequences such as a written warning (Always follow the law of course). If no consequence ever employees will tend to not take your performance management system seriously at all.