Employee Performance Management – Easier said than done!

Employee Performance Management……a term that unfortunately all too often conjures a negative connotation because typically most people, both managers of people and individual contributors, will tend to associate the words with under performance or poor behaviour.

To be fair, some organisations may encourage this view, particularly if they are in any way under duress as our experience is that in these situations the more positive aspects of employee engagement, for example, training, team building, additional employee benefits, etc will be of low priority compared to the daily high profile stressful problems that the business is facing. However, this is not an insurmountable issue provided that the organisation retains a balance on focusing on recognising and rewarding good performance with its staff over the medium to longer term.

While there is agreement in principle among everyone that I have ever spoken to across industry that “poor performance should not be tolerated” and “our good folk should be taken care of”, in our experience the optimal balance of achieving this is not delivered for a variety of reasons.

Key areas of divergence

While there are many complex contributing factors in these areas, fundamentally there are three key reasons where the strived for perfect balance in the 360 of performance management fails to be achieved.

An unwillingness of some managers to have “difficult conversations” and instead taking the more comfortable route of focusing attention onto the employees’ strengths rather than their weaknesses.

A taking for granted of good/strong performing employees by some managers with the narrow attitude of “that’s their job, that’s what they get paid to do.”

Even when either of the above are avoided, sometimes the process/procedure adopted in managing the situation is just not appropriate, for example, an opportunity to address a behavioural issue that could be easily resolved with some early feedback in a friendly manner in an informal situation ends up being approached with a more formalised situation causing unnecessary stress, resentment and demotivation for the employee. Conversely when the constructive informal feedback does not result in the improvements required and a more formalised methodology is required to progress matters and is not properly followed up, the individual may well then falsely believe that “it’s obviously not a big issue as we seem to be back to business as usual now” and not understand the impact of their issue on their peers or the wider business and things will therefore not improve as required to everyone’s frustration and detriment.

Another common, if understandable, failing is for some managers and leaders to completely focus on the “5-10%” of issues/people that are problematic in the business and not pay enough attention to the “90-95%” of things/people that are going well/doing great. Your author has been guilty of this on more than one occasion through his career.

IMIG’s approach to Employee Performance Management

As previously discussed, this is a wide and complex subject matter that has a plethora of research, discussion, and conclusions (often conflicting) on the best approach to manage this effectively. Similarly, if you speak to experienced managers and leaders, you will find a number of different (sometimes subtle but important) ways in their personal experience to get the best out of their charges. The truth being that there will always be some failures as well as successes, even among the most accomplished of people managers.

Bearing this in mind, IMIG’s approach is to be apply a methodology that achieves the maximum possible benefit in the least an amount of time, to enable both a quick turnaround in performance in the short to medium term whilst also building the foundation path for sustainable long term improvements and imbedded culture change towards effective 360 degree performance management.

The key stages to achieving this are.

1. Establishing frequent one-one sessions with key employees/stakeholders in a safe and secure environment to ensure the individuals can have an open and honest discussion about what may be troubling them either in the work environment or personally, which may be having a direct impact on their performance or behaviour. In our experience most poor performance/behavioural issues can be fully resolved or at least improved as an output of this. However we are constantly surprised to learn of the number of organisations who “don’t have the time to have these meetings.”
2. An accurate independent assessment of the client’s employees (which critical input from the client’s experience) on both the employees’ technical skills/knowledge and equally importantly their attitude/behaviour, with an objective view on the relative positive/negative scaling compared to the employee’s peer group.\
3. A calibration session with the client to map out the positioning of the team on this 4-quadrant matrix and ensure there is no performance bias from different seniority/role expectations in the business.
4. Taking the appropriate actions to recognise, support and reward positive strong performing characteristics while doing likewise to resolving negative elements.
5. Continuously reviewing the impact of these actions to ensure staff are progressed away from negative quadrants and that strong performing employees are successfully retained within the organisation.

Defining employees into their correct categories.

In our experience, every employee can be accurately assessed and broadly fitted into one of the four quadrants for the appropriate next steps, even if this positioning is on some occasions initially surprising to the client (normally due to a perception bias that has built up over time).

For calibration ease, we would classify the categories as follows.

Superstars – Employees with high levels of technical competence and a consistent positive attitude.

Typically these are individuals who are either over-performing in their current role/position and may be looking for/needing a promotion or a new challenge or individuals performing at the top of their game in their particular role and motivated to retain the feelgood factor of being recognised as a strong contributor and an asset for their company.

It is vitally important for the business to recognise and reward as appropriate in this area as this group of people will typically be the most likely to be head hunted or become demotivated and look for other opportunities if they become sufficiently dissatisfied with the feedback (or lack of) that they are getting.

Players – Employees with medium to lower levels of technical competence but displaying a consistent positive attitude.

Whilst a lot of managers tend to be attracted to their superstar grouping, most organisations need a core of “players” to sustainably operate as they typically provide reliability, reassurance, continuity, and acceptable levels of overall contribution to the business.

This group would most benefit from specific training & development on their technical skills to help move them as far up towards the superstar quadrant as possible.

Problem Children – Employees with high levels of technical ability but inconsistent or negative in their outlook/attitude.

Arguably the most challenging and potentially rewarding of the employee groupings because if the business can uncover the root causes reasons for the negativity and resolve them, then there is potential superstar waiting to be unleashed.

Conversely if the reasons for the negativity are unable to be resolved then the potential destructive influence of these smart operators could become toxic for the organisation and effective results across the business. If the individual cannot be changed with either coaching and/or a new role/challenge to fully motivate them, then the painful recommendation would be for them to leave the organisation.

Walking Dead – Low levels of technical competence and negative attitude.

Most readers will wonder how a business could possibly hire such performers into their team and clients often ask, “do we really have folk like this on our business?” While the answer is often yes, it is worth noting than most folk in these categories may not have been recruited in this condition and instead may have gradually worked their way there over a long period of time.

Commonly some employees end up with this rating due to being previously overpromoted when they were performing well in a less demanding role, and if they could be transferred back into a role where they are more technically competent and performing satisfactorily, then it’s also likely that their mood and motivation will also improve with a positive reaction in their behaviour and attitude.

Unfortunately for those who cannot be redeployed and ultimately rescued, these individuals need to leave the organisation as they will be a continued drain on business resources and a major source of distraction and potential resentment for the rest of the organisation.

Conclusion

Simple, isn’t it?? Unfortunately, the challenges with implementing this approach can be painful, stressful and time consuming. But it can also be extremely rewarding and successful for the business and for the majority of their good employees.

It takes great courage to manage these situations with the appropriate levels of compassion, focus and determination, but ultimately this is what differentiates superstar leaders/managers from players and if this culture is widespread in the business it can differentiate between good organisations and great ones.

If your organisation needs any help on this challenging journey, IMIG would be your perfect partner to help you succeed.

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