Hyred’s Exclusive Guide for Managers: How To Improve Poor Performance!
In today’s global workforce, building a career that matters only seems to be all about progression, results, achievements, and success. But sometimes we have to remind ourselves that that’s just the tip of the iceberg that others can visibly see, and not everything will always be smooth sailing. As humans, we also need to fail or make mistakes in order to grow into the best version of ourselves we can possibly be.
But what happens when one has too many failures or mistakes, despite the talent one may possess or the effort one has put into their work? When is the right time to lend a helping hand to pick them up and back onto their feet? That’s where the responsibilities of great managers, employers, and leaders can come in and truly shine!
With that said, we’re going to uncover the possible reasons for poor performance and how you - as a manager - can help to steer employees’ courses back on track!
Why Does Poor Performance Happen?
To understand why poor performance happens, we must first understand what high performance actually looks like.
Defined by the American Psychological Association, high performance is “..resulting from demonstrated engagement and achievement in a domain at a level acknowledged by domain experts and gatekeepers as meeting benchmarks of exceptional performance for a particular stage of the talent development trajectory.”
Some key behaviours indicating high performance in individuals include:
On a collective level, high performance can also pertain to equality in team conversations, efficiency in a workplace’s processes or strategies, and sensitivity to the psychological safety of the workplace environment or culture.
If too many of these behaviours are missing or lacking in employees - or even senior roles - not only will you be looking at poor performance, but also witness firsthand how your underperforming employees, the workplace, and team morale overall will suffer from it.?
Poor performance can also be a prime indicator of more serious underlying issues such as decreased morale, weakened mental health, low employee satisfaction, attitude changes or attitude problems, or unaddressed personal issues that need resolving - whether that be short-term or long-term.
Addressing performance issues and managing poor performance at the earliest possible opportunity through constructive feedback will be highly conducive to your overall performance improvement plan or performance review.
In other words, it is the manager’s or employer’s responsibility to observe what might be causing poor performance and find ways to amend or prevent it from bringing down your business or organisation.
How To Improve Poor Performance
While there are a multitude of methods to improving performance - especially poor employee performance - it’s important to keep in mind that finding the method that best suits your business’s or organisation’s needs and goals takes precedence. And although this can be applied to both employers and employees, we’ll be focusing on the former and how you as a manager can best tackle poor performance from a place of leadership.
How To Set Goals For Improvement
Setting goals means deciding what should be or what should be attempted to be achieved over a certain time period. Here are some common examples:
However, it’s often not enough to just identify, outline, and wait for such goals to be achieved. To ensure that goal-setting becomes an actionable checklist rather than a mere list of suggestions, there are 2 things you can do: 1) attribute specific statistics and percentages to your list of goals, and 2) execute your goals using different types of goal schemes.
The main issues when it comes to setting goals are that they are not clear enough and are unable to be maintained consistently over a long period of time. Statistics and percentages can resolve both as they not only discern a benchmark - how much results must be attained over a duration - but they can also be flexibly adjusted depending if the statistic or result is successfully achieved within that duration.
Although one of the most common goal schemes is SMART (smart, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound), there are actually many more schemes you can utilise as well. WOOP (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan) is highly used as well as goal pyramids (long-term, intermediate, short-term, immediate). Behaviorally anchored rating scales (BARS) are recently gaining in popularity due to their application of real-world approaches and reference points. OKRs (objectives and key results) are also one of the major trending goal schemes this year and are particularly effective in driving a strategic results-based culture.
Top Performance Management Trends
OKRs are only one of the top performance management trends to hit this year. Now, on top of making sure results are consistently produced by employees, employers must also make sure that the working experience of their employees has room to become priorities too. Managers who are able to successfully incorporate these trends into their work processes often report higher employee satisfaction and retainment as well as? higher rates of success in achieving goals and results. Take a look at some more of these trends:
Most Effective Employee Training Methods
As outlined in our previous article, “Answering the Poll: What Interpersonal Skills Do Employers Really Want?”, professionals are highly requesting their employers to help them upskill to better meet their needs, requirements, and business goals. Upskilling requires the presentation of opportunities for your employees to learn and become better suited for the roles they were employed for, which can be a long-term but highly worthwhile investment. Here are some of the ways you can contribute:
By implementing some of these effective strategies depending on your goals as a team, managers can foster a culture of continuous improvement, empower their teams to reach their full potential, and ultimately, drive organisational success. These are key components in transforming poor performance into opportunities for growth and achievement. And with these tools at your disposal, you can confidently lead your team to greater performance and better results.
At Hyred, we understand the value that human talent can provide. We’re always seeking a diverse range of talented, passionate people who are eager to make a difference through career opportunities. If you’re interested in onboarding with us, visit our Homepage now to set up a free 30-minute consultation for more information! Or visit our Career page for our full list of open job positions in the SEA region!
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