My employee is not performing! What can I do?

Having employees who are not performing can be particularly frustrating for employers, particularly trade related businesses. You’ve quoted a job on the basis that the job will get done in a certain timeframe. So if you have an employee who is consistently late to work, slow back from lunch, on their phone during the day and generally not working at an acceptable pace then this going to have a significant impact on your ability to get the job done right in the quoted time frame. Wages are a painter’s largest operating expense. So, if you have an employee who is underperforming and only operating at 60% then effectively you are losing 40% of their wages every year. This is going to have a significant impact on your business’s bottom line.

Underperformance. What is it and how should you handle it?

Firstly, what is underperformance? Underperformance is basically when an employee is not performing to an acceptable or expected level. They may be failing to complete required tasks, taking longer than necessary to complete the tasks, frequent absences or poor time keeping. It can also include having a poor attitude.

What causes underperformance? There can be several reasons why an employee is performing poorly but the most common we find are:

Poor engagement. The employee isn’t engaged in their role or their tasks. This might be borne out of boredom, complacency, lack of interest, poor relationships with manager or colleagues or not understanding the importance of the task.

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Personal issues. Employee might be experiencing some challenges in their personal life that is impacting on their concentration and focus at work.

Not feeling comfortable or confident in their tasks. They don’t feel confident so they put it off hoping it’ll either go away or someone else will do it.

Lack of accountability. When employees don’t feel they are being held accountable for their tasks/ performance then their performance levels can start to slide. Once this starts to happen, it can become a slippery slope where their lowest performance level becomes the new standard.

Now that we know the causes, what can we do about it?

Tackle the issue early

In all cases where you have an underperforming employee, you should address the issue early. Initially this can be a simple informal conversation such as:

“Hey, John. I notice that you weren’t able to get that job finished yesterday. Was there something holding you up on it?”

Or “Hi, John. I notice you’ve been late a few times this week. Is there something going on I should be aware of? Could you please make sure you’re here at 8am going forward as when you’re not here on time it pushes our whole schedule out.”

We mentioned above that there were four main causes of underperformance – engagement, personal issues, confidence and lack of accountability. If you are aware of poor performance, then it’s also time to tune into what may be causing the poor performance. If you notice that an employee takes a long time to complete a particular task, then some training might be in order. If your employee is always scrolling through Facebook, then it might be time to bring in a Mobile Phone and Devices policy and / or an Employee Engagement program. Or for an employee struggling with personal issues, then asking “are you ok” may help. For employee’s that aren’t performing due to a lack of accountability then its time to bring in some performance management measures such as a performance review.

Depending on the severity of the underperformance, its cause and how long it’s been going on then a formal Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) may need to be implemented. A PIP should clearly outline your expectations, detail achievable goals and a reasonable timeframe for the employee to turn their performance around. Your mindset when implementing a PIP should always be to set your employee up to succeed. You want to be working with your employee to assist them in correcting their poor performance and turning a low performing employee into a high performing employee.

• The longer poor performance is allowed to continue, the more difficult a satisfactory resolution becomes as well as having a negative impact on other well performing employees. No one likes to feel that they are carrying the burden of an underperforming employee.

Be consistent. Consistently deal with each transgression. Don’t let them slide or it will become the new standard.

Set your employee up to succeed.

HR Maximised can assist with developing a performance management meeting plan to help turn a poor performing employee into a high performing employee.

Vanessa Petch HR Maximised 0418 190 106