Your employees aren’t underperforming by choice!

Underperforming Employees?

It is very frustrating as a business owner when an employee isn’t performing.

We feel the financial strain of paying wages for work that is subpar, we see the cultural strain of other team members becoming disgruntled picking up the slack and we have to deal with the strain of unhappy customers, one’s that we worked so hard to win.

We feel like they have everything they need to do the job and we can’t understand why they just can’t do it!

They mustn’t care or maybe they just aren’t any good!

However, I have never met an employee who chooses to do a bad job. Yes, it may look that way, but no one really wants to go home each day knowing they are failing.

In almost all cases, including in my personal experience as a leader, it isn’t the employee’s choice to be under performing it is the leaders.

Now I know you are thinking why would anyone choose for their employees, who they are paying, to underperform? That’s ridiculous!

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But we do when we:

choose not to undertake a thorough recruitment process including reference checking;
choose not to provide a thorough on-boarding process including 4, 8 and 12 week check ins;
choose not to define and provide a clear outcome profile stating exactly what the expectations of the role are;
choose not to have weekly or monthly accountability and feedback sessions to assist them learn and grow;
choose not to provide regular one on one and team training;
choose not to be upfront and honest when performance is not meeting expectations;
choose not to gather feedback and input from the employee on their experience in the role and the business;
choose not to have the difficult conversation; and
choose not to share the vision, mission and values with the employee so they can connect to the company goals and purpose.
The next time you feel the strain of an underperforming employee and think to blame them for their negative performance perhaps think about why they may be under performing.

Is it them underperforming in their role or is it you underperforming in yours?!

Photo by Hutomo Abrianto