7 Causes of Poor Employee Performance - And How to Address Them

Bernard Marr

Bernard Marr

📖 Internationally Acknowledged #Author 🎤 #KeynoteSpeaker 🤖 #Futurist 💻 #Business, #Tech & #Data Advisor

Published Mar thirty, 2015

It's every director's least favorite part of the chore: someone on your team isn't performing upward to expectations, and it'southward time to do something nearly it.

But before you decide how to address a performance trouble, it'southward important to diagnose the root cause.

In my experience, operation is the confluence of ability and motivation. An employee needs to have the ability to perform the task besides every bit the motivation to do so. Figuring out which is the cause of the functioning problem can assist you decide how to address information technology.

Lack of ability

The commencement four causes stem from a lack of power:

  1. Resource
    If your employee is lacking the time, coin, personnel, or supplies to consummate a chore, he won't be able to complete information technology, no matter how much he wants to. This is probably the easiest root cause to address, but you should besides tell the employee that he should have come to you lot with his trouble sooner instead of trying to make it piece of work without the proper resources.
  2. Obstacles
    Obstacles might include getting a decision from clients or higher-ups, problems collaborating with another department, or other obstacles outside the employee's control. As the manager, hopefully yous can step in and help her tackle or find a fashion around the obstruction to go the job done.
  3. Skills
    Sometimes a performance trouble is a simple lack of skills. Perhaps the employee was promoted before he was ready, or a new set of chore duties has been assigned. Hopefully some extra preparation or mentoring can solve this performance problem.
  4. Expectations
    If no clear parameters or expectations for a project have been set, or if the employee has misunderstood them, this tin can exist a major crusade of poor operation. Go over project goals and deliverables again and see if you tin can help clear up any confusion or miscommunication.

Lack of Motivation:

The 2d gear up of causes for poor operation are more than personal and emotional to the employee and are based in a lack of motivation:

  1. No carrots
    Are employees praised or rewarded for proficient work? Some employees may begin to slack off if they perceive that their difficult piece of work goes unrecognised. For some people, having their good work recognised is vitally important to their piece of work satisfaction, and their performance may improve just from past proficient works beingness recognized.
  2. No sticks
    The opposite problem to having no carrots is having no sticks. If there are no penalties for poor performance, some employees may feel they can "go away with" turning work in belatedly or shoddily done. Don't merely start handing downward punishments of a sudden, however; have the time to review or design a step-past-pace series of consequences for poor performance and announce them to the unabridged team earlier implementing. The first stride tin be equally simple every bit talking virtually the problem, with consequences increasing from there.
  3. Burnout
    If an employee seems bored or burned out, it'southward the managing director'south job to try to help reenergize him. Being burned out is not a costless pass for doing sub-par work, but it is a red flag to a good managing director that the employee's talents may be underutilized. A quick note: poor performance can likewise be a passive-aggressive fashion for an employee to try to redress what she sees as wrong, so exist aware if she seems to harbor any anger or resentment as well.

As you can see, one size does not fit all when information technology comes to treatment performance problems. Handing down a punishment for someone who lacks the proper resources or doesn't accept the necessary skills isn't the right approach; nor is prescribing additional preparation for someone who really needs praise. Identifying the root crusade of the performance problem is primal before you lot can find the correct solution.

Are you a managing director who has had to deal with performance problems in the past? How did yous diagnose the trouble to discover the proper solution? I'd love for you lot to share your experiences in the comments beneath.

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Thank you lot for reading my mail. I regularly write about performance management
as well equally the mega-tendency that is Big Data for LinkedIn and Forbes. If you would like to read my regular posts so please click 'Follow' and feel gratis to also connect via Twitter, Facebook and The Avant-garde Performance Institute. When I am not writing then I assist companies put in place operation management approaches that work. My latest book is Primal Performance Indicators For Dummies.

To celebrate the launch of this book, Rocket Software is sponsoring a volume launch and you are invited. Why don't you join us on April 23rd in London, I would love to meet you and you lot become a risk to network over a glass of champagne and too receive a complementary signed copy of my volume. For more information and to annals, become hither: http://info.rocketsoftware.com/Bernard-Marr-Book-Event-registration.html

Finally, hither are another contempo posts I take written on the topic:

  • Encounter 7 Make New Large Data Billionaires
  • How the FBI Manages Performance
  • How To Set Performance Targets That Piece of work
  • The Seven Secrets of Summit Performers
  • The Top 5 Functioning Management Tools: Expert News And Cautionary Tales
  • The 25 KPIs Every Manager Needs to Know
  • Wrong KPIs? Why Questions Are The Answer!

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