5 Surprising Problems Managers Face with High-Performing Employees

Hiring and retaining employees is one of the toughest jobs for any manager. But once you’ve got a star employee on your team, all your troubles go away, right?

Wrong.

True, underperforming employees will suck up an inordinate amount of your time until you handle the situation—AKA, let the person go (nicely):

However, star players come with challenges of their own. If not handled correctly, they can cause some major problems down the road. Here are 5 of the most pressing ones:

1. The high performer starts making mistakes.

This is not an uncommon problem. Oftentimes, a personal issue, office politics, or some other situation takes the energy out of your usually productive and hard-working employee. In this situation, try not to point fingers. The best course of action is to remind the employee how much you appreciate their hard work, find out what has been happening lately, and ask how you can help. High performers work at a high level, so a gentle “this is really unlike you" may be enough to get them back on their a-game.

2. The high performer wants to work remotely.

They've proven themselves to be productive members of the team, which means they want more flexibility. They want to dictate their hours, so long as they keep producing the results. You have a lot of factors to consider, including how this will affect other members of the team. Once you grant one employee the privilege, It's almost guaranteed that more requests will follow. You have to weigh how happy it will make the high performer against how unhappy it will make others who don't get the perk.

3. The high performer’s work is not good enough.

As we saw in #1, nobody’s perfect. Sometimes a high performer will turn in below average work for a variety of reasons. If this is a one-time thing, chalk the underperformance up to a miscommunication. If it happens repeatedly, you'll have to get tougher and tell this person to step it up. Then, let them know you’re there to help.

4. The high performer is doing personal things at work.

High performers know that they’re valuable. Sometimes, they take advantage of that special status. You may catch them perusing Facebook or running personal errands during the day. It's a tough thing to deal with, but ask yourself: Is this affecting the person's productivity? If you're still satisfied with what they're doing, then you may have to let those things slide, even if you find them annoying. But beware: other employees will notice the personal errands too, which may cause resentment.

5. The high performer doesn’t adhere to minor policies.

We touched on this a bit in #4. Companies have all sorts of policies, and while they claim not to "bend the rules," the reality is that there's different standards for everyone. Obviously, nobody is allowed to steal. But what if your high performer doesn't take the required training course that everyone else does? Or he's charging for car trips that other employees wouldn't? Do you put them on notice? If the infractions are making it hard to achieve business goals, then you should address the issue. If they're generally unimportant things, then it might be more rewarding to let your high performer "get away with it" than to take them to task.

So next time you think all your problems will go away when you hire that star person, think again. You're just asking for a different—albeit likely more profitable—set of issues.

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