How To Improve Employee Performance

Understanding Why Your People Don’t Do

What They Are Supposed To Do

Are you always happy with every employee’s performance?

Of course not.  

Improving employee performance is a common aspiration for all business owners and managers.  At times even your best people can let you down.  For example, on any given day you may experience an employee missing a deadline, being late for a meeting or a work quality issue.  The difference between what you expect from an employee and what is actually delivered can range from an under-performance issue to a non-performance issue.  Bottom line, the person is not performing as you would like them to perform.

Here are a few common under-performance and nonperformance issues you may have experienced over the years - An employee doesn’t:

• Call a customer back as they were supposed to?
• Follow your documented systems and procedures?
• Enter data into one of your critical business systems like they were trained to do?
• Use the script when making a sales call?
• Fill out paperwork correctly?
• Backup critical data when they are supposed to?

Obviously these aren’t the only employee performance issues you face.  I’m sure you can easily generate your own list of issues that continually frustrate you.  

When you are faced with an under-performance or a nonperformance issue what do you do?

Do you ignore the problem and hope it doesn’t happen again?  Do you blame the employee; maybe even citing their lack of motivation or their bad attitude?  Do you sit the employee down and “talk” to them about their attitude or their motivation?  Do you punish them?  Or do you think about offering some type of reward (monetary) to “motivate” them to improve?

Carrot or Stick

First off, you’re not alone.  Managing people and performance issues has spawned thousands of books, seminars and “management gurus”.  A lot of the advice and solutions usually revolves around “carrot or stick” type of solutions.  You either punish or reward people in an effort to get them improve performance. 

I’ll bet you have tried many different things that fit into carrot or stick type of solutions - from progressive discipline on the punishment side; to going as far as revamping your compensation system on the reward side.  Either way you blame the employee and look for ways to fix them. 

Based on your experience, does either punishment or monetary reward work in improving performance?  And for how long? 

The reason “carrot or stick” solutions have not worked is because these type of solutions don’t address the actual cause of the performance issue.  Before you do anything too drastic on the punishment or the reward side, take a step back and see if you can determine why the employee is not performing as expected. 

Your People Don’t Do What They Are Supposed To Do

As we dig deeper into performance issues with business owners and managers, a common theme emerges.  Many performance problems actually can be traced back to and categorized as an employee simply not doing what they are supposed to do. 

Once aware of this truth, one business owner start tracking phe occurrences related to this cause.  The data lead her to say:  

“If my people would just do what they are supposed to do…my life would be so much easier"

Meaning she would not be sucked in to fix every problem related to not doing something; thus not interrupting her and keeping her from doing more valuable activities. 

Additionally, the chain reaction of one person not doing what they are supposed to do can hurt other team member’s productivity (keeping them from doing what they are supposed to do when they are supposed to do it) and ultimately firm profitability.

So if you could simply get your people to do what they are supposed to do, not only could you improve employee performance you would also be improving productivity and profitability. 

How do you do that?  Start by asking:  

Here is our list of the 10 most common reasons why your people don’t always do what they are supposed to do:

1. They think they are doing what they are supposed to do / they think they are performing well.
2. They don’t know what they are supposed to do.
3. They don’t know how to do what they are supposed to do.
4. They don’t know why they are supposed to do something.
5. There are obstacles preventing them from doing what they are supposed to do.
6. They think something else is more important.
7. They think their way is better.
8. They think there could be negative consequence for doing what they are supposed to do.
9. They are afraid they might make a mistake if they do what they are supposed to do.
10. They are just not capable of doing what they are supposed to do.

A simple step in improving employee performance is just getting your people to do what they are supposed to do. This list tells you the “root causes” of the issues requiring fixing. 

Cure the Cause

When looking at this list, many owners and managers first reaction is one of disbelieve.  These can’t be true; especially employees not knowing what to do and how to do their work.  Yet they are true and this list is in the order of most common occurrence. 

Also notice that none of these causes can be cured by punishment or rewards?  Now, do you see why disciplining or throwing money to motivate a person doesn’t work?  Your solutions don’t address the underlying causes of the poor performance issues. 

The actual solutions are simpler, more practical and more effective than you may have realized.  So, before you jump to disciplining a non-performer or changing your compensation structure to motivate your underperformer, use this list to eliminate the obvious causes first.  This will save you time and money.   

What this list says to me and what I work on with business owners is getting the management fundamentals right.  The way you do that is by you becoming a more effective manager.  The more effective you are as a manager the more productive your people will be.

So the first step in improving employee performance is improving you…specifically your managerial skills.  This in turn will improve business performance and actually free up more of your time to do the things you would prefer to do, rather than the things you have to do.  If you need help improving employee performance by becoming a more effective manager we can help.  Contact us to learn more about our Effective Manager Coaching program.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Kevin is the Co-Founder and President of The Renaissance Group, a coaching and consulting firm focused on helping business owners have more time, make more money and enjoy growing a business.