Maintaining employee morale and performance is one of organizational managers’ biggest, if not the biggest, challenges. Business performance can be directly linked to how well your employees perform their jobs—when they do well, so does the business, and vice versa.
Because of this, management must place great importance on properly managing employees: rewarding those who do their jobs well and guiding those who underperform back on track.
In this article, we will discuss underperforming employees and ways you can help them succeed in their careers and for the organization.
How do you tell if your employee is underperforming?
Managers often don’t realize the impact of underperforming employees until and unless they have managed to impact business operations significantly. The reality is that an effective manager does not and must not wait for significant business impact to recognize underperforming employees.
Some signs that should alert you when an employee is underperforming include:
- Failure to execute assigned tasks
- Declining quality of work
- Declining attention to instructions
- Increased absences and tardiness
- Noncompliance with company rules and regulations
- Lack of communication with peers and superiors
- Initiating unpleasant and negative work environment
- Lack of engagement with company activities and initiatives
According to Jeffrey Zhou, CEO and Founder of Fig Loans, “The signs when an employee is underperforming can greatly differ from person to person, which is why managers and supervisors need to make communication an important aspect in every team.” He adds, “Employees will not tell you that they’re underperforming. In fact, they may not know it yet—but they are.”
Common reasons for underperforming employees
When you have recognized which employees are underperforming, the next question is—why? This question has no definite answer because, similarly, each employee has their own circumstances and motivations for underperforming.
However, some of the most common reasons why your employees underperform include:
- Health issues
- Compensation not commensurate to experience or job specifications
- Unfair and unequal employee treatment, compensation, and benefits
- Job mismatch
- Disagreement or bad blood between colleagues
- Abuse from superiors
- Lack of training or onboarding
- Personal issues
- Culture mismatch
- Lack of plans for professional growth from management
- Stagnancy and repetitiveness in work
- Overall management dissatisfaction
Ways to help underperforming employees succeed
The most important job for managers when it comes to employee management is to ensure that all employees contribute to business goals and achieve their own personal goals. When an employee is underperforming, it affects not only the business but also their own individual careers.
Here are ways managers can take to help underperforming employees succeed:
Recognize the problem and its impact
The first step in tackling any problem is recognizing that it exists and not just brushing it off as a one-time thing or something that will disappear.
In fact, the cost of underperforming employees is not only seen by the loss in income or opportunities because of their actions. A piece from ResearchGate also emphasizes that as much as labor costs are the second-highest in many companies’ expense categories, the cost of paying underperforming employees not proportional to their job performance is also similarly high.
Sergey Taver, Marketing Manager at Precision Watches, says, “To fix a problem, one must first recognize the problem and the direct and indirect impact it is making within an organization. When you know that ‘what’ and the ‘why,’ you will then figure out the ‘how.’”
Talk your employees through their problems
There are many motivations and reasons for underperforming, and managers need to initiate conversations with identified employees to tackle the problem.
You can preface the conversation by getting feedback from these employees on how they are doing in the company and within the team and give your feedback on their recent underperformance.
Try to talk to them in a calm and approachable manner, and assure them that you are someone they can talk to and that you can guide them back on track when you find out the reason for their poor job performance.
Some questions you can ask to navigate around these conversations are:
- Do you feel comfortable about your current role?
- Do you and your teammates get along well?
- What frustrates you about your current role? What do you need for your professional growth?
- Do you see which areas you could improve? What about the company?
- Do you see yourself staying with the company for the next few years?
Guide your employees through the SMART framework
One way to help underperforming employees get back on track is by ensuring that the SMART management framework is applied throughout the organization. This not only applies to the management as a whole but also every individual employee to make sure that their jobs are:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Relevant
T – Time-bound
According to John Baek, Founder of JSB Digital Works, “Implementing the SMART management framework makes sure that both employees and management are clear about the tasks and assignments, allowing employees to work towards concise and achievable goals that contribute to overall business goals.” He adds, “With this, management can eliminate several causes of poor performance, giving employees a chance to perform well with clear and concise job metrics.”
Develop employee support plans
One of the primary reasons employees underperform is when they feel demotivated about their jobs because they don’t see or hear plans from management that support their professional growth, either through further studies or upskilling.
“When employees stagnate or engage in highly repetitive work, they start to underperform,” says Roman Zrazhevskiy, Founder & CEO at MIRA Safety. “You need to set your employees’ career path within the organization as clear as possible so they know they’re getting somewhere, instead of stagnating in a single position for a very long time.”
Support plans are programs that will help your employees advance in their own career paths and skills, including:
- Seminars and trainings
- Upskilling programs
- Further studies, like Masters or Doctorate degrees
- Refresher courses
- Promotions or lateral transfers
Create or emphasize performance incentives
Whether we like it or not, incentives and compensation plans are a great way to help motivate underperforming employees.
As an example, a piece from the Harvard Business Review discussed how Amazon’s increased minimum hourly wage rate, despite the apparent increase in costs, can:
- Attract and retain top talents
- Encourages employees to work harder in fear of losing a high-paying job vs. its competitors
- Providing pay raises motivates employees to give back by working hard and well.
Management can create new performance-based incentives or emphasize and improve currently existing work packages that may include medical and dental insurance, work cover claim, higher annual performance bonuses, and retirement savings plans.
Reinforce a positive organizational atmosphere
To help underperforming employees thrive, managers must reinforce a positive organizational atmosphere where all employees are comfortable working in and working together. This means a clean and orderly physical office and a positive working relationship between colleagues and managers where communication and mutual understanding are essential.
When an underperforming employee is surrounded by a motivated, goal-oriented, and driven team, this reinforces the same attitude in members who are otherwise not performing well.
Seek alternative solutions
When you’ve exhausted all your options, and some of your employees remain underperforming, try to offer alternative solutions that may help them succeed—even outside your team or department.
Try asking them what they’re good at and what they feel they do best, and if available, ask if they would consider a lateral transfer to another team or department that best aligns with their goals and interests.
Takeaway
Helping underperforming employees thrive again may be a tough battle, but with the right coaching, guidance, motivation, incentives, and solutions, employee success means success for the organization as well.
When managers take the necessary steps to help underperforming employees succeed within (or even outside) the team, they help the employees regain their productivity and motivation, and the company achieves its goals efficiently with the right people.
Guest writer.
