My approach to the classic question - How to manage underperforming employees?
What is underperformance?
Underperformance means there is a gap between expectations and the perceive of one's performance.
There are two major types of underperformance: Competence-related underperformance, and motivation-related underperformance. Signs will include that deadlines are being missed, work quality has declined, objectives are not being met. There could also be mood changes, low motivation, persistent lateness, or absence from work.
Common reasons for underperformance.
Why we need to handle it?
In simple way, it can have negative impact on productivity, quality, and team morale if not handled well.
How to deal with it?
My approaches to deal with this consist of 2 parts: preventative and reactive. (Same rules apply to service/product management).
Preventative.
Recruitment. Strong and clear definitions of roles and responsibilities. I believe one of the top qualities as a manager should be making the best use of employee talent: identify the talent and skillsets of an employee, and put them in the suitable position, provide with adequate tools and training, and other resources for them to conduct their jobs.
Goal alignment. Strong alignment of company, team and personal goals. Take every opportunity to reiterate the goals. Set quarterly OKRs with direct report, and review towards end of quarter.
Communication. Regular and frequent alignment meetings with your direct report, most leaders do this through weekly 1:1s. Any issues should be highlighted and action items should be agreed during the meeting. In most cases, this will prevent major issues from happening, since the meetings happen frequently. Of course this is also a coaching opportunity that a manager can provide feedbacks and suggestions for the employees to grow.
Culture. A culture your employees can discuss anything with you openly and safely, and you listen attentively and provide candid feedback. My team feel safe discuss with me about their considerations about potential move to other companies, and I will help them evaluate the options with the information they provided.
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Reactive.
In cases where despite all the prevention efforts that issues will still come out, this will require remediation efforts.
First, as aforementioned, there should be a baseline of performance requirement for each employee documented in a accessible location. This should include minimum roles and responsibilities, and expectations.
Second, have a list of concrete information as in why do you think the expectation isn't align. For example, consistent pattern of delayed delivery can be extracted from PM tools; code quality issues can be gathered from code repository or through code review process; time and attendance record can be exported; conversations or behaviours that are in the violations of rules and compliances.
Third, deal with it privately and confidentially. Invite them to a private meeting, and it is better to start with open questions like how do they think about the performance. If they feel their performance is under bar, ask for specifics why do they think so, and provide examples you have gathered as well, then work out a plan from there; if not, start by showing the examples about their recent behaviour and activities, what is the impact to the rest of the team and company.
Fifth. Make sure the problem is understood, follow up plans are created, checkpoints are defined, also consequences are listed out. Common practice is to create a performance improvement plan, this has been covered a lot, you can find a lot of resources on how to do so online. Provide as much support as possible, but do remember your role as a manager is to focus on team's overall success, and deliver value to the whole organisation. You can't over spend your time and effort on a single employee, that is not fair to others.
Sixth. Follow up regularly and make sure each checkpoint is covered. The important thing to notice here, is to keep an accurate documentation of the whole process, with the employee agreement and signature of the record.
Seventh. The result can be the employee is back on track or further actions will be conducted, like reassignment or termination of employment contract.
Last but equally important.
During such processes, it is important to check in broader scope. For example, during pandemic, if one employee shows the drop of performance due to communication overhead, or to the needs to take care of family affairs, it is worth exploring if any other employees need support, even though there haven't been a signal yet. Also, it is good time to review the current working culture and working load to see if there is any issues with the process.
There are various frameworks to tackle this, but my personal favourite is to use the PPT method - People, Process, and Tools. I believe any improvements can fall into one of the 3 categories.
Conclusion.
The approach to handle the situation of underperformance is the same as handling any improvement project.
The seemingly simple question actually covers quite a broad areas of management topics, including but not limited to: empathy, effective communication, leadership, role definitions and expectations, skills matching, adequate training, regular alignment and timely feedback.