August 24th, 2022
Dealing With Underperforming Employees in the Modern Workplace
Truth is; as a manager, you can’t shelve confronting an underachieving employee for far too long. A human resource department must take steps to identify and deal with the underperformance issues.
Whether it’s due to poor morale or stressful work life. Underperforming employees can destabilize any business and put managers under immense pressure.
Here’s why:
-
For one, companies can lose up to 10 hours weekly in dealing with underperforming employees.
-
Morale and creativity are key facets if you desire sustainability in the current marketplace. A single staff member who isn’t pulling their weight in a team can suppress the productivity of the whole group and smother innovation.
While replacing underperforming employees might seem to be the easier option, there are many disadvantages. The Society for Human Resource Management report indicates that filling a particular position in an organization takes about 42 days, with a cost-per-hire average of $4,129.
Instead of always seeking to replace demoralized employees, managers should aim to understand struggling team members and help them achieve optimal performance.
Here are 4 strategies to help you reverse performance issues as a manager.
1. Identify and Communicate the Problem
For a fact, many attributes of a member’s underperformance might be obvious in any team. That said, some employees might never realize there’s a decline in a certain aspect of their performance. In most cases, managers tend to talk about general performance issues without pinpointing what’s not working and how it needs to be fixed.
Set clear expectations and communicate the same. As a manager, you need to identify the specific performance changes and communicate them to the employees. If you notice that a team member fails to deliver assignments on time, it’s best to address the particular problem and inquire about the possible cause.
Sometimes, the issue might arise due to a lack of the necessary skills to complete a certain task. Here, focus on helping such an employee get the required training and thereby boost their productivity.
2. Be Honest and Empathetic
Are you under immense pressure to deliver as a manager? In such a setting, dealing with underperformance within your team can be quite frustrating. Plus, the workplace environment might tend to be strained. Here, it would be more rewarding to be empathetic and honest with your team members. You can then try to uncover the root cause of the performance issues.
The manner of your communication is more important. In other words, honesty without empathy makes individuals defensive.
Tip: Understand your limits when dealing with particular cases. Do you need to improve employee morale? Take advantage of the advisory services of a staffing agency to help pick up the slack employees and boost performance.
3. Give Feedback Pronto
After you identify an employee who is underperforming, refine the feedback gap to ensure the staff member gets back on the right path. Rather than keeping records for a month before offering feedback, you can shorten the duration to weekly or daily. An interactive one-on-one meeting is the most effective strategy for evaluating the employee’s action plan. Such a plan also helps identify work practices that need modification or to be discarded.
4. Manage Underperformance at Recruitment
A sizeable proportion of performance issues stem from poor employee engagement. Case in point; where the employee’s skills and abilities do not match the position they have been hired to fill. Such anomalies occur whenever the roles and responsibilities aren’t well outlined during recruitment.
Another concern is when an employee feels they’re not fit for particular roles. They may not understand the structure of the organization. This concern results in inevitable disengagement and associated performance problems.
For most recently employed individuals, the inability to deliver can be traced to the hiring process. Be sure to review the onboarding process and requalify your staff’s skills and abilities in such instances. Need to enhance the performance of recruits? As a manager, cultivate a team culture that helps new members to enter the system and also allows them to work with confidence.
The hiring process is an intensive undertaking that requires the input of experienced personnel. Partner with an employment agency when filling any position to avoid issues of underperformance.
Reach Out to an Employment Agency in Fort Lauderdale
Businesses in Fort Lauderdale can now avoid the disruptions of dealing with underperforming employees thanks to Pridestaff.
We pride ourselves in having a competitive hiring process that focuses on absolute satisfaction for both the employer and employee. Contact us today for all your organization’s staffing needs, including administrative staffing and call center staffing needs.