From the course: Managing Employee Performance Problems

Assess employee performance problems

From the course: Managing Employee Performance Problems

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Assess employee performance problems

- Whenever you're challenged with employee performance problems, it can get a bit confusing. To boost your confidence in handling them, here's a three-point framework in the form of questions to quickly assess what's happening. First, ask yourself, what's actually the issue? Second, who is it impacting? Is it beyond you, the team, department, company, or even a client or customer? And third, how big is the impact and to what extent? How frequently? Is it just a one-off or ongoing? How much does it cost? Now that we have that framework, let's take a look at how it's applied. I was recently talking to a client about the dysfunctional performance of one of his middle managers. He has a team of 10 and they were not meeting quarterly goals. I first went in to ask what the actual issue was. The manager replied, "It was bullying behavior." Then I asked who it was impacting beyond his immediate team. I learned it was also impacting client satisfaction and deliverables. I asked how long this had been going on and how much it was costing the company. He replied, "For at least a couple of quarters," and at the time, they'd lost two clients. Walking my client through this simple framework helped him clearly determine what the issue was and equally as important, the significance of the impact. This was critically important in helping him confidently determine his next step. The primary reason performance problems are not quickly addressed is few leaders have a practical, reliable framework to assess them, but now you do.

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