Did you know there are only 3 times to address employee performance issues?
In Jim Collins bestselling book Good to Great he gave us the analogy of getting the right people in the right seat on the bus regarding employees and jobs.?Using his bus analogy, the 3 times to address employee performance issues are:
- Before you get them on the bus?
- Least expensive
- Accomplished by doing a better job of vetting job candidates by screening them for ethical attitudes and job specific aptitudes in addition to job skills and knowledge
- By doing a better job of vetting candidates and hiring the “right” person for the job we avoid all kinds of performance issues down the road
2. After you have them on the bus
- More expensive
- As soon as we hire someone, our costs start adding up…salary, benefits, onboarding, training, managing, etc.
- If we hired the wrong person for the job and we have performance issues, now it is much more complicated as we deal with performance improvement plans, trying to adjust their seat on the bus to fit them or trying to find them another seat on the bus that they would better fit in
- All of which take up a lot of time, money and energy
3. When you realize you have to get them off the bus
- Most expensive
- This is obviously the worst case scenario because in addition to all the costs associated with recruiting, onboarding and training the wrong person for the job, we have to start all over and incur all those expenses again, not to mention the opportunity cost of the lost time
- Plus no one enjoys the emotional pain created for the manager or the employee when someone needs to be fired
Bottom line…the best way to address employee performance issues is to avoid them in the first place by improving your pre-hire screening process to increase your odds of “getting the right person in the right seat on the bus” the first time.
