In my experience, there are 4 main reasons that staff perform badly. To learn how to handle poor performers and to be a lot more successful in managing teams, the actions you take should address each of these reasons.

Remove poor performance from your team fairly, quickly and cheaply.
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Most workplaces are so busy with so many initiatives happening at any given time, it is really easy for team members to be unsure of what exactly they should be focusing on. An equal number of employees receive very confusing or contradictory messages from bosses about what is expected of them. 

Too few managers spend enough time communicating to their teams exactly what they expect of their employees and reinforcing those expectations with their own decisions, actions and behaviours. Spend more time that you think you need communicating goals and expectations to both the team and individuals.

Another of the reasons staff perform poorly is they don’t know or accept they are under performing. 43% of managers find giving corrective feedback to employees stressful and an unpleasant experience (2700+ leaders surveyed). I also know from personal experience that really good managers provide feedback all the time – every single day. 

Providing useful specific feedback means that every staff member knows exactly what their boss thinks of their performance and why. This reduces the reasons why employees perform poorly. Staff are grateful for their bosses feedback, even when they are below expectations. A key part of performance management is to make sure your team know exactly what they are doing well and not so well, week in week out. 

Another of the reasons why employees perform badly is that employees don’t know how to improve what they do. Ideally staff would be good at self-learning and good at motivating themselves to improve and you would have good employee performance. A key action when managing poor performing employees is to teach them exactly what they need to do to improve. If staff don’t really know exactly how to improve, this could be why you have poor performing employees.

Finally, on of the reasons why you have poor performing employees might be they don’t want to perform better. There are so many reasons that drive anger and frustration that lead to lack of will to do better as well as a multitude of character flaws that can also stop an individual improving. An important action when managing poor performance at work is to find out why a person doesn’t want to improve. When you know what the problem is, you have a much better chance of improving the situation. 

If you have any questions on “Reasons Staff Perform Badly – How To Handle Poor Performers”, please email me at [email protected] and I will get back to you. 

Jess Coles
Enhance.training