Are You Pushing Talent Out The Door?

 digg it |   delicious |   StumbleUpon |  reddit 

One of my clients recently told a story about her first day on the job as the head of HR. Before she had poured her first cup of coffee, a senior level director asked for help putting together an exit plan for a chronic under-performer.

She pulled the employee's file and found that the last 5 ratings were all Excellent. After questioning the director about the discrepancy, this senior level manager sheepishly admitted that he had never addressed the performance issue, but regardless the employee needed to go.

Having a good sense of humor but also wanting to make a point she said to the director, Well, given what I've just learned I'm wondering who we should be talking about an exit plan for?

It may be hard to believe that a senior level manager could ignore a performance issue to this degree but the fact is that managers at all levels, in all industries, avoid key performance conversations -- all the time.

Corporate Star or Slacker?

Was this employee a top performer as the consistent Excellent ratings would suggest? Or did the employee really need to go? In this case, the employee had been a strong contributor whose performance dropped after an organizational restructuring. Had the performance issues been addressed earlier, it is likely that this employee would have gotten back on track instead of being the target of an exit strategy.

It is important to recognize that effective employee performance discussions are critical to differentiating between chronic underperformers and employees who have potential to be more effective or even star performers. When managers avoid performance discussions with their teams, they risk pushing potential top talent out the door or creating a safe haven for underperformance.

Retaining Talent It's Not the Job of HR Alone

In most organizations the job of attracting, retaining and developing corporate talent falls into Human Resource's lap. They are expected to come up with the silver bullet that will have the best and brightest banging on their corporate door, and once in, never wanting to leave.

Interestingly, the most successful talent management initiatives I have witnessed have been those where HR turns the tables and gets the entire organization specifically people who manage employees - to take responsibility for attracting, retaining and developing people. Without this shift in ownership the most brilliant, well-funded, comprehensive talent management approaches will fall flat.

It's our managers who are in the unique position to separate the stars from the slackers. Every day they get a close up look at their employees' talents and areas that need development. They are the people who really know what is going on, but they often lack the skills and know-how to communicate the information that can help the employee to develop and improve.

When they lack these skills, critical but usually highly manageable performance issues get ignored, employees become disengaged and miserable and talent either walks out the door or incompetence finds a nice place to hide.

The Truth Will Set You Free

The key to effectively managing talent is getting those responsible for managing employees to tell the truth about performance issues. There seems to be no end to the excuses people will give for avoiding difficult performance conversations. But ignoring them is an enormous disservice to the employee, the organization and to the manager who is shirking his/her responsibilities.

While no one likes to hear how they may be falling short of the mark, the alternative an unexpected walk to the door is even less appealing. And what if you are actually walking strong contributors to the door because your managers don't have the skill set to address the stickier performance issues? Or, are writing people off because they haven't gotten the right feedback to get them back on track? You might even be harboring incompetence because your managers don't know how to move people up or out.

The Bad News

I have heard many creative solutions for solving performance issues:

• I won't ask her to be on a project team again.
• We'll keep our distance from Jim to minimize the amount of time we have to spend dealing with him.
• Let's just eliminate the job and the employee.
• We won't let him interact with clients anymore.
• We'll promote her into a job where she has minimal interaction with colleagues.
• I will call HR and ask them to fire her.

These classics and others like them are designed to avoid handling the root issue. In fact, the only thing these solutions accomplish is to allow the manager to bypass addressing the issue because they are afraid of handling it in the first place.

Often managers solve one problem only to create a bigger one. One vivid example of this involved an accounting manager who excelled at the technical side of the job but was a nightmare when it came to managing staff. After five long years in the job, his boss came up with what he thought was a creative solution. The accounting manager was promoted into an individual contributor role with responsibility for generating financial reports.

On the one hand this employee was removed from supervising employees but whenever an accounting operations manager position opened up this employee would apply. Each time he applied HR would cringe and have to rationalize why someone else was selected. This employee could not move past the fact that he was no longer managing people. From the employee's perspective this creative solution was a failure.

Most employees pick up on surreptitious changes to their role in the organization. As a result, these employees often disengage and under-perform to an even greater degree. There is no substitute for making the employee aware of the issue and providing the opportunity to improve.

So, the bad news is - ignoring performance issues doesn't work.

The Good News

Three truths represent the good news on why effective discussion is the key to improving employee performance.

1. For each of their employees, managers have the best perspective on the greatest opportunity for performance development. Therefore they have the best opportunity and the responsibility to communicate high value developmental feedback and provide performance coaching to their employees.
2. When performance feedback is delivered in a performance coaching manner (I want to help you out fashion) the employee can usually make significant progress on the issue.
3. Giving difficult feedback doesn't have to be so hard (see last month's article The Three Keys to Making Tough Performance Conversations Easy).

Most people, if they are motivated enough, can manage an area of weakness. It is the job of HR to give managers the skills and tools to effectively address employee performance issues and not push potentially good talent out the door.

Call us if you need help with a performance conversation or other performance management issues.