Category Archives: Discipline

Poor Performance – Can You Prove It?

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Sometimes as a manager you need to deliver bad news or negative feedback to a member of your staff. You might need to pick them up on an issue of performance that you’re not happy with, or where they are not meeting your standards.

This is not a comfortable thing to do. You need to be quite assertive about it, to be taken seriously – and so that your member of staff doesn’t just argue with you! To help you discuss the issue in the right way, you need evidence of the poor performance. You have to be able to show your team member what they’ve been doing wrong or below standard. Just telling them that they’re not doing what you want them to do, won’t have any impact, if you can’t prove it.

So you need to collect the evidence, so your team member can really understand what they’ve done wrong and how you want them to change. It’s not about collecting evidence just to use against someone – you really need it in order to get the message across and to make a difference.

Is one of your team repeatedly late coming into work? If so, you need a recording system that shows them when they came it late and how often it happens. If your staff clock in and out every day, you have your system. If not, you need to look for another way of recording the time.

Does a member of your staff keep making errors in their work? How many times have they made a mistake and what was the result of it? Again, you need to create a way of recording the error rate and the consequences.

When you can show the proof of poor performance, it is much easier to discuss the issue with the particular member of staff and, between you, work out what needs to be done in order to improve their performance.

We discussed the importance of collecting evidence at one of my interactive workshops. Click here to watch the short video and find out more.

How do you collect evidence of performance issues in your business?

How do You Deal with Long Term Absence of Your Staff?

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A few weeks ago in this blog we looked at how to manage short term absence and the benefits of getting it right. Click here to read that post. In this one, we’re looking at long term absence.

Long term absence is generally more than four weeks. It needs active management of the absence and your employee’s return to work, so that you can plan ahead and organise work and temporary cover. When you’re dealing with long term absence you should regularly review progress in a way your employee is comfortable with. Ask them whether they prefer contact by phone, email, or home visits.

When making contact with them you can discuss:

  • How long they’ve been away
  • How they are feeling and whether they feel ready to return
  • If there is anything you can do to help.

Keeping in touch and remaining constructive, supportive and open to addressing their concerns about returning to work makes your employees feel cared for and valued.
Long term illness requires medical involvement to assess the effects of your employee’s condition, the likely duration of their time off and whether you can take steps to help their return to work.

Long Term Sick Leave leading to Dismissal

Hopefully, if you keep speaking to your member of staff about their illness and absence, it won’t come to this. You need to consider and discuss all the options with your employee before arriving at this conclusion. If you do reach this stage, you need to show that the absence was sufficient for the employee’s recovering and that fair procedure has been followed, in order to justify dismissing them. It should be a last resort.

Whatever happens, here are three things you should do:

  • Monitor – you don’t know if you don’t ask and you won’t remember unless you record it
  • Talk, talk, talk to your employee to offer support
  • Get medical advice – you’re not expected to be the expert.

How do you deal with long term absence? What issues have you had and how have you dealt with them?

Winter Sick Leave and How Best to Manage it

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How are you and your staff coping with the winter weather and the cold and flu bugs that always do the rounds at this time of year? Most people will need a bit of time off at some point during the year, to recover from an illness, so this post looks at the benefits of managing absence in a proactive way.

Both long and short term absences can cost a huge amount – both financially and in terms of manpower. It’s never an easy conversation to have with your employees and it can be difficult to keep up with what action is lawful to take. The bottom line is this – do nothing and the problem won’t go away, but could get worse. Finding out early on what’s going on with an employee who is absent can make a significant difference to your relationship and absence levels in the future. Talking to them allows you to get to the root of the problem and provide the support that they need. By focusing in on the absence it may also deter casual absenteeism – days off here and there.

Dealing with Short Term Absence

You should have a procedure in place that requires the employee to talk to a named person rather than leaving a message when reporting their absence. A standard form should then be completed recording the date, time, reason given and predicted time of absence, to make sure the relevant facts are gathered consistently for each absence.

Discussing the problem is essential especially when an employee is taking recurrent short term absences. Maybe there is a work issue which you can help them deal with and solve. Providing the support they need results in improved working relationships, morale and reduced absence.

You should always speak to a member of staff when they return to work, irrespective of how long they’ve been away. It shows you’re taking the situation seriously and acts as a deterrent for people who shouldn’t really be taking time off. Asking how someone is feeling after they’ve been off for even one day also shows that you care about them. Keep the conversation informal but take it seriously. Ensure confidentiality, have a clear structure, record what’s said and above all remain positive and supportive. You can ask them if they visited their GP, how they are feeling now and if there anything you can do to support them. Don’t ask any intrusive medical questions!

Communicating with your employees improves productivity and decreases absence, so follow these simple guidelines when dealing with short term sick leave. We’ll cover long term absence in another post in a few weeks time.

How do you deal with short term absence in your business?

Don?t Make a Pantomime Out of HR

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Here’s a little festive tale of HR for you, called the Cinderella School of HR.

Cinderella doesn’t like having to work long hours in the run up to Christmas, and drop everything every time her step mother wants something. She prefers being able to work flexible hours, as she knows what she needs to get done. Helping her identify ways of improving her work/life balance makes her much more engaged with her work.

The Ugly Sisters spend a lot of time telling poor Cinders what to do. They find fault with everything that she does and yet they never lift a finger to help. Why do they pick on their step-sister in this way? Because they’ve both realised that they’re not reaching the objectives that were set at their last appraisals – they’re both underperforming! Making Cinderella look bad means that their mother won’t notice how useless they are. Perhaps they need the Fairy Godmother to carry out their next appraisals and see what needs to be done?

Prince Charming used to be far from charming. He was always doing his own thing, despite having been told what to do on numerous occasions. He turned up late for princely duties; he didn’t send his reports back to the office promptly, so Buttons couldn’t get the invoices out on time. The Fairy Godmother was called in to see if young Charming could be sacked. Instead she suggested a capability meeting, where she explained the concerns and set some goals for Charming to achieve in time for another meeting in two weeks. The King called back just a week later to say that Charming had suddenly become utterly charming and was in fact now the best Prince that the King had ever known. All that from one meeting!

So if Cinderella doesn’t seem pleased to be at work, ask her what you can do to improve her work/life balance.

If you’ve got Ugly Sisters not meeting their targets, or Princes not being charming, instead of trying to get rid of them, talk to them about how you can improve their performance and wave your magic wand! You could be surprised by the results. Oh yes you could!

What can you do to make sure you don’t make a pantomime out of HR in your business?

What’s the Best Way to Deal with Underperforming Staff?

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In a recent blog post I introduced you to Heather, who was receiving poor performance feedback. Click here to read about Heather . Did you have any solutions for her?

Here are our suggestions.

While Heather has a lot of experience developing training courses, she’s not getting good feedback from delivering them. The cause of this could be that she:

  • Only likes writing courses and not the delivery
  • Has been given the delivery, when it wasn’t originally part of her job
  • She doesn’t have the confidence in delivery of the information when asked questioned
  • She thinks she’s being challenged when someone asks her a question.

How can we help Heather?

First it is important to acknowledge Heather’s strengths – her knowledge and ability to write training courses. Then we need to find out what she thinks about the feedback she’s getting and how she feels about the delivery of the courses. Does she enjoy that part of the job? If so, we can help her build up her confidence. Has she had any training in presentation skills? If not and she wants to continue with the delivery, we can look at the right training to help her.

In situations like this, it’s important to hear all the sides of the story, before rushing to any conclusions or imposing a solution. Work with your members of staff to find the best outcome for both of you.

How do you deal with issues of under performance in your business? Leave a comment here to share your views and ideas.

What’s the Best Way to Deal with Underperforming Staff?

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Heather works in the training department of a large IT organisation. She is responsible for designing and delivering interpersonal skills training, including communication skills, networking, and new management training classes.

Heather has excellent knowledge of how to design a training class. She includes behaviour modelling and practice into all her classes. She has also done research on what good communication consists of, how to network and what new managers need to know to be successful.

Sounds good so far!

However, people who attend Heather’s training classes often give her low ratings, saying that she has a hard time answering specific question. They say that she doesn’t seem approachable after the classes or when individuals want to ask questions.

What do you think may be causing Heather’s under performance?

How do you think a manager should address the problem of poor performance?

We’ll give you our opinion on this blog in a few week’s time. Leave a comment here to give us your suggestions!

5 Tips for Managing Performance with Your Team

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As a boss, manager or supervisor, you play an important role in promoting employee commitment, motivation and retention. You are responsible for developing and nurturing your staff.

Here are 5 tips to help you look after your staff and improve their performance, which will lead to improvements in the overall performance of your organisation.

  1. Set meaningful, attainable expectations aligned with the mission and objectives of your business. Be clear about employee expectations and explain any measurements that will be used.
  2. Approach this process as a collaborative effort, engaging staff in the process. Work with your employees to develop appropriate outcomes that support your work and lead to the achievement of organizational goals. Don’t just impose objectives on your staff without first talking to them.
  3. Provide employee access to the necessary tools and resources needed for performance enhancement. Ask about relevant technology, available literature or other materials they need to improve their performance. Provide them with the coaching and mentoring they need and allow time for employees to learn improved methods and procedures.
  4. Continually asses and communicate progress regarding performance. Don’t save all your feedback until the end of the year. Provide employees with mid-year progress reviews and final evaluation feedback. Face-to-face progress reviews and final evaluations should be scheduled in advance. Engage your employees in discussions about the best ways to meet their future goals.
  5. Show appreciation of employee performance through the use of one of the many forms of recognition and reward available to you.

If you need specific help on managing and improving the performance of your staff, to improve the performance of your business, why come to our next free workshop on 22 November? Being held at The Old Post Office in Wargrave, near Henley in Oxfordshire, this is your chance to get some expert advice on your own issues. Click here for more details and to book your place.

How Do You Get More From Your Staff? Part Two

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In a recent blog we looked at the importance of managing performance as a way of getting more from your staff, without dramatically increasing your costs.

Here are some top tips you can actually put into action, to get more from your people:

  • Provide a stimulating working environment that encourages members of staff to contribute to the progress of your business.
  • Encourage your staff to reach their full potential by providing opportunities to develop their skills through training and development, as well as coaching in the soft skills needed to be an excellent team member.
  • Carry out formal performance reviews on a regular basis, setting clear objectives and achievable targets; don’t wait for annual appraisals.
  • Build good relationships by providing regular informal feedback and guidance; allow your staff to air their concerns within an environment of trust and honesty.
  • Deal with issues as soon as they arise – don’t wait for them to become problems.
  • Offer a clear career path, to encourage employees to be the best they can be and stay with you for the long term.

How do you get more from your people? What have you done that has worked – or not worked? Leave a reply below.

If you still have questions about how to improve the performance of your team, come to our next workshop on 22 November 2012 near Henley. Places are free but limited, so click here for full details.

Dealing with Gross Misconduct

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What do you do when a trusted employee acts in such a way as to fundamentally breach the contractual relationship you have in place between you?

No easy task and always a worse nightmare situation for any employer, acts of gross misconduct are unfortunately all too often a reality we have to face.  So what tools do you have in your armour to help you deal with the situation quickly, efficiently and with the minimum of damage to your business?

Where gross misconduct is concerned you have the right to implement a summary dismissal procedure, an immediate dismissal without notice or payment in lieu of notice, as long as you can demonstrate that you have a solid reason, have conducted a thorough investigation and have followed proper procedure.  However, it is advisable in all except the most extreme cases to conduct a full disciplinary process first including two to three warnings (written and verbal) and provision for the employee to appeal.

Dismissal is always a last resort but armour up and ensure you have the right procedures in places to deal with this if you have to.

Capability vs Disciplinary – Case Study 2 – Suggestions to Combat Underperformance

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Last week we introduced you to Karen, she has been underperforming for the last eight years with your company.  She is unsociable, intimidating, rude and fails to take responsibility for her actions.  This has led to numerous complaints from her peers, supervisors and managers, with one colleague threatening to resign as a result of Karen’s behaviour.

What action should you take to deal with Karen? What procedures should you invoke? Here are a few suggestions:

  • Conduct an informal interview with Karen in the first instance with the aim of getting to the root of the problem.  Ask her to explain why she is behaving the way she is – what are the underlying problems from her point of view
  • Gather evidence from other people – her colleagues, supervisors and managers.  In particular talk to the person that has threatened to leave, find out what has been going on and persuade them to stay by reassuring them that you are dealing with the problem
  • Get input from your HR department and consultants.  It can be very valuable to get input from someone who can look at the overall situation and be impartial.  The line manager cannot do the investigation and  decision making
  • Don’t let it go on too long – Karen’s manager may need help with performance reviews / dealing with staff issues
  • If all else fails invoke a formal disciplinary procedure including informal and written warning and dismissal if appropriate.