Dealing With Under-performing Employees

In every organization, we can identify three categories of employees based on their level of work performance. The first category consists of the A players or star performers and they represent a minority group making up to 5% of the total staff strength. The second group which forms the bulk is the B players or core players. Research has shown that about 90% of employees fall into this group. The remaining 5% of the employees are the C players or the under-performers who aren’t meeting their established goals.

Under-performing employees are not unqualified or incapable people. Today's A or B players can become tomorrow's C players. The causes of under-performance may be due to a lack of competencies, mis-match into a job role, ineffective management, lack of commitment and/or poor communications, or purely personal problems.

Let's take a look at the case of Johari, a senior researcher in a premier R&D institute. Johari holds a PhD in economics from a well known foreign university and worked as a lecturer in a local university. He was then headhunted to join the policy research unit of his present employer. As a senior researcher, his new job required him to develop a knowledge-based economic model for purposes of national development planning. During the first two years, he worked very hard and put in a lot of time and effort to emerge as a star performer.

However, things changed in his third year of service. Due to frequent changes in strategic directions, his organization went through a series of restructuring and reorganization. The policy research unit where Johari worked in was disbanded and its staff redeployed to other departments within the organization. Johari himself was first assigned to the Corporate Strategic Planning but subsequently, he was posted to two other departments i.e. Market Development and Product Commercialisation respectively within a span of 3 years.

During these times, Johari's work performance suffered and deteriorated year after year. Johari found himself trapped in a vicious cycle of decreasing morale, low motivation and non-performance. From a star performer, Johari became a C player shunned by almost all department heads and colleagues. Management was on the verge of a decision to terminate his service with the organization.

Meanwhile, the Corporate HR Division introduced a new performance management initiative known as the Employee Performance Improvement Program(EPIP). The EPIP aims to offer those non-performing employees a second chance to improve their work performance with the guidance of an external performance coach within a mutually agreed time duration. Johari was one of those non-performers recommended and he also agreed to be put under the EPIP.

The first two months were very challenging indeed for both Johari and his performance coach. However, once trust was established, Johari opened up and shared his problems, both personal and professional with his coach. Having understood exactly the causes of Johari's poor performance over the years, a specially designed work program with specific goals, deliverables and timelines were drawn up by his coach with agreement from top management.

After 3 months, there was a marked improvement in Johari's performance. His morale and motivation were up. The last I heard about Johari was that he is now back in the mainstream of things. Obviously, he has resurrected his career from a C player to become a B player and begins to contribute positively to his organization in a different capacity. It will take some time for him to become an A player again. In most situations, not many C players are as fortunate as Johari.

Dealing with under-performing employees is a tough challenge for the direct superior of the under-performer. Apart from having to deal with several team issues, they have to handle the difficulties in achieving performance targets and yet at the same time, thinking of how to retain the A players. Most managers or supervisors often take the easy way out by firing the C players with dire consequences to the organization with damages taking the form of future recruitment costs, termination benefits, or prolonged industrial court cases and hefty compensations.

Most of the times, what is really needed is just an external person to converse and coach the under-performing employees. However, at other times, when the organization has no choice but to let the under-performer go, then do so in a manner that allows the person to keep his/her dignity.