Not every employee can adjust and perform remarkably well in the company culture. The bitter reality is every huge company has best employees along with the underperforming employees. It takes the management skills of business owners that decide whether to manage underperforming employees as assets or let the company experience a downfall?
Factors like behavior, poor skills etc. are not the managements concern this might be the thinking of many business owners, but will it not affect the business performance? Obviously, it will. Such situations can be managed tactically. Considering their approach, floundered employees can be brought back to work efficiently through the ways mentioned below.
Ways to Manage Underperforming Employees
1.Provide Accurate Feedback
Prior to start criticizing the employee for their poor performance, give them the accurate feedback. Speak to the employee before the situation goes out of control and it affects work quality. It is better to drive their focus to the work by refreshing approach rather than reinforcing for no cause. Planning in the correct direction might save the employees getting poor performance tag.
2.Listen to them
Communication being a 2-way process, leaders should listen to their employees before getting judgmental. Allow them to explain the reasons and their point of view. Find out why the employee has stopped working efficiently as compared to their earlier performance. Is there any other reason, which stops them to flaunt their best skills? Understanding the problem is the key to successfully boosting the performance of employees.
3.Show Care and Concern to your Employees
If the corporate business solution finds an issue affecting several employees, company owners should solve it smartly. If an individual feels, he or she is overburdened with work; this might be felt by other employees too. This situation can be resolved by calling a meeting with heads of the department to discuss the working culture. Ask them to define the areas they need to progress and the strategies that are expected to be implemented. Then you can understand the facts and problems being raised by the employees and find the solution. Make your employees feel valued by solving their issues.
4.Find the Factors that Distract
It is very hard to find what factors are responsible for the change in employees working pattern. Figure out what is causing less performance by getting to the root of the problem. But improper diagnoses can lead to certain issues. Increasing pressure, if the employee is not putting efforts, might not help if the ability is the concern. If he or she is not able to work for the given job profile than pressurizing might the worst scenario. There might be several reasons like co-workers, company rules, difficult tasks, frequent deadlines etc. which would encourage them, not to work. Find such factors to resolve them as soon as possible.
5.Find the Factors that Motivate them
Once you find the factors that distract your employees and you find ways to resolve the situation, its time to find the factors that motivates them to work. Find their long term goals like where they would like to see themselves in next three to five years.
Motivation is the only key that helps employees to retain their work efficiency. This can be done by identifying the people who need performance boost. This technique will even help business owners to find whether the employees are provided with the correct roles and responsibilities.
6.Refresh Performance Goals
Rather than implying your own working methods and strategies in your organization, taking the inputs from your employees like how would they like to achieve targets, learn new skills or how they would like to improve will surely yield mutual beneficial results. Invite and engage your customers in developing methods that would motivate them for better work performance. Also offer them rewards like bonus or increment to keep their spirit of working, high.
7.Follow Up
A good leader is expected to follow up with their employees to avoid any further issues. This can be done once the goals are decided and strategies are made and followed to achieve these goals. Leaders should show interest in their employees work and help them achieve their targets. This will boost their moral and ultimately it would help a companys culture to progress. This behavior of the business owner will make the employees feel important and helps them boost their work efficiency.
8.React if Underperformance Persists
If the employee continues to underperform, the head of the department should notify them about this. Leaders can even inform their employees about the intolerable attitude and behavior. Departmental heads can even take some actions given the company rules and regulations. Such employees may even influence other hard working employees to behave the way they are doing. This kind of employee behavior should not be tolerated and should be tackled as soon as possible.
If you own an enterprise with such employees, the above stated points might help you to manage underperforming employees in a better way.
