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Performance Management

Published December 2008

What Lies Beneath Low Performance

 

  Susan Tonkin

Instead, talent managers need to provide comprehensive feedback to recruiters so similar mistakes can be avoided in the future. This approach enables the organization to turn a hiring mistake into a process that will improve success rates for new hires.

Build a Culture of Performance Improvement

With a firm understanding of these root causes for low performance, organizations also need to build a true performance culture that sets up all employees for success. This approach has two important components: the proactive changes talent managers can make to organizational culture to avoid poor performance before it starts, and reactive steps to rehabilitate poor performance once it appears.

Organizations can do a lot to avoid poor performance if they understand how to align individual and group productivity with overall goals and objectives; foster a sense of teamwork, even when teams are geographically dispersed; and ensure measuring progress and performance are a seamless part of employees' daily work activities.

For example, if low performers suffer from a lack of engagement, perhaps they need to be integrated more effectively into connected corporate communities that provide support and assistance when needed. Many employees underperform when they feel they are working in isolation. Innovative technology solutions can enable employees to tap into community-based knowledge and experiences that are relevant to their job functions and activities. People can connect, exchange ideas and insights, and learn in formal or informal environments using wikis, blogs, discussion forums and team spaces, as well as real-time e-learning and online collaboration tools.

If employees are confused about what they should be working on or are working diligently but on the wrong tasks, perhaps talent managers need better alignment between strategic goals and objectives and day-to-day job functions and activities. Leaders need a process that can be easily and efficiently refined, adjusted and used to align employee activities across traditional and cross-functional hierarchies.

The communication process is incredibly important. Consider the example of an employee identified as a high potential in the organization. This individual was asked to take on a new role in the organization, and a year later he was transferred again. These moves were only vaguely explained as, "We'd like you to get some experience with different roles," and the employee began to feel like he wasn't seen as successful because his responsibilities kept changing.

His performance declined as he became less engaged, and only in the exit interview did the employee discover the various changes in role were not due to his failure to perform. In fact, he was in a formal development program for high potentials focused on creating well-rounded leaders by assigning them job rotations.

Proactive approaches to close individual skill gaps also are key. Employees need a better understanding of the specific competencies required for particular job roles and a way to proactively close those gaps. Whether the plan involves formal training or more informal experiences such as coaching or mentoring, this process is essential to grow the talent needed to manage a company and respond to market opportunities and customer requirements now and in the future. Talent managers might be surprised how often a low performer's attitude or motivation is not the problem, but lack of preparation and efficient access to knowledge and expertise is.