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Most managers have at some point been confronted with a member of staff whose performance falls somewhat short of expectations.  Regrettably it is all too easy to ignore the problem in the hopes that things improve.  In a team situation, someone who is not performing at their best is likely to be adversely affecting the rest of the team as they all have to cover any shortfall.  By not addressing the issue swiftly the manager or team leader is therefore jeopardising the moral of the team.

There can be many reasons why someone’s performance is affected, the person could be unwell or they may be worried about a member of their family, perhaps they are struggling with an aspect of the role and are too embarrassed to ask for assistance.

Your role as a manager is to develop a rapport with your team such that they feel comfortable telling you about things that may be affecting them. Once you know of a problem or a situation you can provide support to the individual and maintain the team’s moral and productivity.

On occasions however, poor performance is simply down to the individual’s attitude and behaviour.  In this situation your action is required to deal with the matter.  The first stage is to gather the facts and have one or two examples where performance has been below par.  During the initial conversations, if you are challenged you can give clear examples, rather than talk generally.  The next stage is to sit down and talk to the individual, in a caring supportive manner to determine the underlying cause, sometimes this is best done away from the normal place of work.

Having identified any underlying cause, and if appropriate, making any reasonable adjustments to the role, the next step would be to set some SMART objectives. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Dependent. By setting clearly defined objectives you have the ability to measure improvement.

Make notes and send the employee copies of the notes of your discussions so that there can be no doubt about what was said and agreed.  The emphasis here is on ‘agreed’ it is really important to be reasonable in setting improvement objectives and to have agreement from the individual in writing is really helpful. It may also require a staged approach, improvement in one particular area during week one and another in week two.

In the vast majority of cases taking some time to understand the cause of the problem and then developing an action plan to improve matters will be time and money well spent.  Just think about the actual and hidden costs associated with recruiting a replacement member of staff and then add on the cost of training etc. some time spent coaching and improving performance is invariably a sound investment.

There will be times when disciplinary action is both necessary and appropriate. Prior to embarking on such action you should take advice from your professional advisors to ensure that you comply with all aspects of employment legislation. Hopefully you have disciplinary procedures in place and that these have been updated following changes in legislation.  For those inexperienced in dealing with such matters it can be a quite a minefield.  Taking advice early can ensure that legislative requirements are adequately covered and your position protected.

By adopting the above approach prior to taking any disciplinary action, you can demonstrate that you have tried to support the individual and will have gathered significant evidence of your supportive approach.  This could be really valuable should any disciplinary action be challenged at a later date.

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