Performance-challenged employees-I

No hiring can be a 100 percent perfect hiring.  In spite of our best efforts and time spent, we do end up having poor performers. Don’t feel guilty if you have few bad performers because you are not alone.  Every organizations do have performance-challenged employees.   Rather we should see how to manage this challenge and how to enable them to perform better.

Who is a performance challenged-employee?

It can be defined as any employees who is not able to perform to the expected level.  However, if we have to break down, the important criteria that we should look at are.

# The goals given are appropriate and realistic for the role.  It’s only the person who is occupying the role is not able to perform. Example- A runner selected for marathon not being able to run long distance OR a sprinter selected for 100 meters of sprinting is not able to sprint fast.

# The person occupying the role is inconsistent or poor in results resulting in gap between what is expected and what he delivers.  A sprinter sprints fast only one out of 10 times and fails or takes more time to complete in all the 9 races OR a marathon runner is not able to complete the distance most of the times.

# The person occupying the role was hired only for that particular role.  He was not hired for some other role and then moved to the current role resulting in skill gap.  A person was selected only for long-running and is expected to run long distance.

My thoughts on what our approach should be:

While it’s easy to terminate someone, as a Manager it’s important to try enabling the performance challenged employee in a genuine manner. 

# First, ascertain the facts: First, do ascertain if the person is really a poor performer or somebody has built that perception for some reasons. Do look at his performance data, take feedback from his immediate supervisors and peers.  If he has worked in some other team, you can take feedback from them.  Do check the track record of the manager / supervisor who is giving feedback about someone that he/she is a poor performer. Has he given such feedback about many employees in the past ? How is he rated by his team members on his people skills?

# Pygmalion effect:  We are smart enough to understand what others perceive of us and that’s how we will also respond in terms of behavior, performance etc.  Perception has got an impact on us, probably a big impact. That’s what is called Pygmalion effect.  So let us ensure that, our perception is positive so the impact is also positive in the performance enabling process.

It's worth mentioning an interesting study conducted in the US on Pygmalion effect. They formed two groups of students, one consisting of all average performers and the other one consisting of all good performer.  They purposely communicated to the teachers differently that the average students are good students and good students are average. Any guess on the final results?  The Good students' performance has started coming down and the average students have started performing well. We don't need any other better proof than this. let us take care of our perceptions. 

# Diagnosis – skill gap / attitude:

Do ascertain the possible reason for the poor performance, ie,  is it due to attitude ( the person is capable of doing it and he has done it well many times in the past but he is not performing well) OR skill gap (the person is not competent enough to do the job. )

If it’s attitude, find out the reason for demotivation. Try counselling / one-on-one open discussions.  If the reasons are genuine for demotivation, do try to address. Otherwise, it’s not worth the try.

# If the Performance gap due to skill gap

If it’s a skill gap and the person is committed and motivated, it’s really worth trying. 

Set realistic goals that are appropriate to the current skill level (not the role). set incremental goals so the person feel confident and improve his skill in a step-by-step manner.

# Regular feedback with data:  Goal setting without regular feedback is as bad as not setting any goal at all. Do provide feedback on a regular basis – Key points in feedback giving process 1) provide sufficient data and help the employee reflect where he stands 2) highlight the achievements and improvements 3) take his commitment to improve further.

# Don’t tell the whole world: If someone is not performing and you are trying to enable them to perform better, it’s fine. But don’t tell the whole world.  No one except you and the employee concerned need to know. If everyone in the team were to know it, it will build more pressure and the chances of failure is higher the success.

# Change the supervisor:  If working with the same supervisor is not helping, do put him in some other team with some other supervisors.  I’ve seen it working in many cases and it’s worth trying.  When you try him in some other team / supervisor, let them not know the employees performance background so it does not color one’s mindset so it does not defeat the whole purpose.

# Alternate roles: This is not a bad option provided the employee concerned is interested and he can work keeping his motivation intact.

# Timeline: Like any intervention, this one too needs a specific and reasonable timeframe and it cannot be carried out throughout the year.

# Don’t treat them like Employee no / Employee count. And finally, every employee, whether they are good performers or bad performer, is a human being. Do treat them well till their last day.  

Remember, even a poor performer can be a good brand ambassador.

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