How to Handle a So-So Employee

ByMatt

First, I will say, for anyone working at CapForge today, this is NOT about anyone specific or currently working! I know some people tend to get a little paranoid about a topic like this!

Instead, this is something that will come up sooner or later when you have employees for everyone, period.

There is also a lot of bad advice about this topic. Or maybe more accurately, advice that sounds good on paper but isn’t very practical in the real world.

For example, I’ve heard the stories about the famous leader of General Electric Jack Welch who would instruct his managers to fire the bottom 10% of performers each year. That sounds pretty dumb to me for a lot of reasons and it seems in hindsight he wasn’t as great as people thought at the time.

It certainly isn’t something the average small business owner is going to put into practice.

I do believe that if you have someone who is clearly not working out, either because they just can’t seem to absorb the training or even come in on time or follow basic work rules then you should have no problem letting them go.

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Allowing someone to keep working who is causing problems, customer complaints, creating more work, or motivating the good people to look for work elsewhere is just foolish (not that it doesn’t happen all the time, it does).

If you are a business owner you have to know that letting people go is going to have to happen sooner or later and not doing that is going to harm the whole business you’ve worked hard to build. It’s never pleasant (in fact, I think someone who enjoys firing people is a red flag in itself) but it is part of the deal you sign up for when you own a business.

But even though it’s not something you look forward to, letting someone go who is an obvious problem is more of a relief than anything and not what I’m talking about here. The situation I’m referring to is when you have someone who is just OK, or maybe even not that good, but they aren’t hard to like or maybe even very well liked overall. Or they may be good at their job but just not good at getting along with co-workers or management.

This is a situation that comes up often and is the kind of management challenge most small business owners don’t have much experience dealing with.

How to Handle Someone Who Isn’t Doing Great But Isn’t a Lost Cause (Yet!)

The first thing to do is recognize that you do have to deal with the situation. These things never get better on their own or at least not at the pace you’d be willing to accept.

The next thing to do is to try and turn the situation around. There could be a lot of things that are contributing to this person’s failure to live up to your expectations, including frequently not knowing what they are in the first place! Here are some actions you can take to start:

  • Figure out exactly what the person is doing that is a problem- you can’t go to someone with vague complaints- write down what words or actions they are doing that are causing problems and provide some specific examples
  • Determine if they need to be refreshed on company policies or procedures
  • Determine if they ever got the right training or need a refresher on the training or if there is training for the problem you are facing with them
  • Provide ultra clear expectations on the actions you want them to take in writing and provide examples if needed (ie- don’t say, provide better customer service, say “answer the phone like this, respond in this amount of time to an email, write emails this way, etc” so they know exactly what you expect and what doing it right looks like)
  • Essentially, make sure they know that there is a problem, what you expect from them and the way they can correct the problem and that you will be following up

Once you’ve done this then you need to follow through and make sure they are now meeting standards. If they are, let them know and that you appreciate their efforts. If they still aren’t, let them know that, too and that if they continue to not meet the requirements the next step is a written improvement plan.

Then follow through with that, as well, if needed. Otherwise, empty threats become meaningless and people learn they can ignore your words and directions. The improvement plan will then either motivate the desired results or else give you reasonable cause to let the person go.

Of course, hopefully, most of the time simply identifying the problem with the person and setting clear expectations should resolve the issues.  Most business owners I know fail at this stage- they don’t provide very clear, detailed expectations and the training and procedures needed to get there. Then when people don’t meet the goals they didn’t even know about the owner gets mad.

But instead of then fixing the issue sometimes they retaliate passive-aggressively by cutting hours, assigning the harder tasks or worse shifts to the people they don’t like, etc. This damage and demotivates everyone and creates drama where there should be none.

You want all your employees to be performing their best and working towards success for the business. If you have people who clearly aren’t a fit let them go as soon as you recognize it and realize it can’t be fixed. For the ones in the middle, who are OK but not doing great, it most often can be fixed by owning the problem as the manager and doing everything you can to help them improve. If you do try everything and it still hasn’t worked, then they may not be the right person for the job, but you did what you could to try and make it work.

If you follow this advice you’ll have a great team of people who are happy working with you and who are motivated to do a great job the way you want it to get done.

In my experience, most people want to do a good job- you just have to support them getting there and be clear on what a great job looks like to you. If you do this, you’ll find pretty soon all you have are great employees without a single so-so in the bunch! I know it works because it’s what we do here! 

LETS GROW TOGETHER

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