When to Address Employee Performance Problems

Mandated Issues  Policy violations, harassment and safety violations always need to be addressed, even though they may be single incidents.  For example, a company that provides healthcare coaching has a policy prohibiting the sharing of employee names.  If an employee shared their name, even inadvertently, he/she would be appropriately written up because the policy violation could jeopardize the safety of the employee and/or colleagues.

Single Incidents  An employee makes a mistake or misstep either in terms of a work responsibility or an interaction with a colleague, customer or stakeholder within or outside of the organization.  The appropriate response is to have an informal early intervention conversation to bring awareness to the employee about what happened and what is expected for future.  This is considered a casual "cup of coffee " conversation with the assumption being that the incident will not be repeated when the employee is informally made aware of the situation.  Single incidents represent our best opportunity to get the employee onto the right path.

Merit:  consider the merit of the incident.  Oftentimes we see an employee make a misstep only to self-correct.  For example, if an employee misquotes a price over the phone and says, "I've got to call the client back because I quoted the wrong price," it is appropriate to consider this issue as self-corrected. Don't come down like a ton of bricks on the employee.  It's unnecessary. 

Apparent Pattern  When single incidents are not addressed they commonly evolve into apparent patterns, where the negative behavior or performance is repeated on a regular basis.  There could be two reasons for this: 

• The employee is completely unaware of the issue (it is in his/her Blind Spot).
• The employee is aware of his/her actions, but because the issue hasn't been addressed he/she assumes it isn't serious enough to warrant any intervention (the issue is Known but Unspoken).

• The employee repeats the incident because he/she cannot do what is being asked.
• There is a motivational issue preventing him/her from sustaining the expected performance or behavior.   

We see this manifesting itself when the employee is "good" for a few weeks after the initial conversation but then veers off track again.  A common example is the employee who exhibits a pattern of being late for work but starts coming in on time after a discussion, only to begin reporting to work 10, 15, 20 minutes late again. This demonstrates that he/she can be on time but for whatever reason (typically motivational in nature) continues with the old undesired pattern.

Persistent Pattern  When single incidents and apparent patterns go unaddressed they tend to morph into persistent patterns where the adverse behavior or exhibited performance problem becomes the norm.  These can be particularly difficult for managers to address, due to the somewhat subjective nature of behavioral issues.
To be fair to the employee, if the issue(s) had been addressed earlier on they would have had the opportunity to gain awareness of required expectations and therefore might have been able to demonstrate their ability to meet the performance standards.  Unfortunately, those in a position to do something about it have failed to act.

Simply look around your own organization to see employees (including managers and those in leadership positions) who exhibit persistent patterns of unproductive behaviors and performance.  These people are known to us, and the implications can be vast. These chronic underperformers and repeat offenders impact colleagues and customers, often making their manager's life miserable. 

Oftentimes these are the employees who have all of the skills and talent you want, but whose attitudes and issues drain your energy, contribute to creating a toxic environment and suck the life out of your high and mid-level performers; sometimes driving them into the arms of your competitors or having them stay onboard while becoming disengaged from their work and divesting from the organization.   At this stage a formal intervention is called for. Typically, the employee (who is now hearing the information for the first time) will react with shock, indignation, anger and resentment.  After all, the pattern has been going on for quite some time and was never raised as a problem in the past.  Again, to be fair to these "repeat offenders" the person(s) in a position to redirect the performance has failed to do so.  Naturally it's a lot more difficult to address a long-standing performance issue than if it had been addressed early on, but it can and should be done. 

Disciplinary Intervention  At this point the employee's performance has still not improved, so the organization is ready to discipline him/her. This might mean placing the employee on a performance improvement plan, a warning, suspension or engaging the process of removing the employee from his/her position (or the organization) altogether. 

In a recent survey of HR professionals, 30% of respondent's reported that the first time an employee learns of his/her performance deficiency is during a disciplinary intervention event.  From the eyes of the employee, there is nothing more unfair than being given zero opportunity to self correct early on, only to learn of an issue for the very first time when they are in the process of being fired.  This is much more common than we might think.

From the manager's perspective, they are so sick of dealing with the fall out from the issue that they are ready to fire the person.  We then hear things like "HR doesn't let us fire anyone around here!"  Well, how about having a conversation with the employee as a starting point. 

Summary

If your goals are to:

• Ensure that employees are provided with development opportunities
• Retain and engage your good to great employees
• Create and maintain a civilized work place
• Build a reputation of a good place to work
• Maximize the return on your human capital investments
• Minimize legal action taken by employees against the company
   

Then you must ensure that your manager have the skills and confidence to address performance issues in the early stages.