How to Identify and Manage Underperforming Employee

To have only motivated, talented employees is wonderful but rare. Most managers have at least one underperformer on their hands. The ability to deal successfully with such a person requires major management skills. Sour, demotivated people can poison others, and often resist anyone who tries to improve their performance.

Where performance is measured, the problem can be solved. Call centres, for example, monitor their employees electronically. Telephone calls are recorded, as is the amount earned per call. Sometimes, sensors even check the chairs for heat or weight (people can’t be selling unless they are at their desks). Having this kind of proof makes it easier to force poor performers to leave or improve. Unfortunately, not all managers take this step.

The mistake most managers make is that they look for solutions before they understand the cause. They offer training courses, sabbaticals, even personal counselling. Some send underperformers to another part of the company. One CEO had the brilliant idea of putting them all together in a subsidiary and then selling it off.

The classic signs of underperformance are poor time management, moodiness and lack of focus. Underperformers think that being present is doing work. They have almost nothing good to say about other workers and spend their time sniping at the productive ones. Somehow, they remove their hearts and brains before starting work.

To diagnose the problem, managers need to ask the questions doctors ask patients. What are the symptoms? When did they first start? How long did they last? By doing so, managers may find the cause, which could be anything from stress to illness. Once the cause is understood, the right solution can be found: training, counselling or, in some cases, firing.

There are many reasons why employees underperform. People have to be clever enough for a job. If they are too clever, they get bored. If they are not clever enough, they become stressed out, fearful of change and uncooperative. People have to work in jobs that match their abilities.

Workers may also be demotivated because they have not been properly trained. Their training may have been bad, it may have taken place too long ago, or it may not be supported in the workplace. The training should be giving employees new knowledge and skills that will be both beneficial to company and their long-term career.

Sometimes employees have other things going on in their lives, an affair, sickness in the family or, more worrying, some form of addiction. They need support, but they also need a date by which things must have improved.

Another problem may simply be personality. People selected for a particular quality may in fact have too much of it. The agreeable person may turn out to be totally dependent, and the creative person may be unreliable and impractical.

However, management style can and does have a huge effect on motivation and performance. Even healthy, well-chosen and enthusiastic employees can become underperformers when badly managed. As a manager you have a responsibility to create an environment of learning and growth not one of fear. The fault therefore, dear manager, may lie not in your employees but in yourself.