First Step to Getting a Non-Performing Employee/Team Member on Track

Every so often you will come across an employee or team member who does not perform to your expectations. The question is how to get them to perform. The reasons for a performance failure could be many: lack of skills, unmotivated, distracted, etc.

There are many strategies that could be used to deal with these situations; however, for the sake of simplicity we will assume that the person is the right person for the job; it’s just that he/she is not doing the job you want them to do. Let’s start with some principles about human behavior:

1. Human beings are pretty smart creatures and with a little bit of time they will identify organizational and management weaknesses and might begin to exploit these. So, if a manager is not attentive to an employee’s work duties, the employee may take advantage of this and do other things e.g., browse the web, do work for themselves, etc.
2. Human beings are generally going to rank personal priorities ahead of project or organizational priorities. This is normal, it’s a matter of survival; however, under normal circumstances (e.g., not some kind of health situation), a person can focus and is hired to do a job for pay and should be focused on the job while at work rather than on personal priorities.
3. Human beings generally look for simplicity in their lives, you can even say, that in general, we tend to be “Lazy”. If the work is hard, most people will tend to avoid it, postpone it or shift it to someone else. In doing so, the work doesn’t get done or in a timely manner.

The first, and sometimes the only necessary, step to getting a non-performing employee on track is to (a) set clear expectations and (b) ensure he/she understands how he/she is being held accountable. If an employee is faltering and he/she does not get back on track through simple directional or process changes, then a candid, objective, non-threatening or non-accusatory conversation needs to occur between the manager and the employee about: (a) what is his/her role, (b) what he/she is expected to produce and by when, (c) what “Done” looks like and (d) what metrics and deliverables he/she is being evaluated against to define success. I would also ask the employee to document in a simple plan what he/she thinks the next steps are. In most circumstances, employees will reengage and respond positively and get back on track and you don’t need to go any further. For those that do not respond, the next step is to go deeper into issues and causes that have to be tackled. For instance, skill limitations could be dealt with training, reassignment of qualified staff, etc. As a last step, termination may have to be considered.