Comments on: Confronting Poor Performance

By: Margaret

Margaret — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:24:36 +0000

I have found myself in this situation, but as a co-worker to the employee that is performing poorly. We work as a very integrated team, and this co-worker has been trained, mentored and repeatedly re-trained on the processes we depend on him to do. He is actually responsible for the simplest processes the team performs because we have found he does not follow through on the details. Our manager has excused his performance, saying “at least he’s a body”, and has refused to assign him work that would require responsibility to detail. This puts a strain on the rest of the team to take up this extra work. We also have to “babysit” the work he performs for potential errors that would affect our assignments. The rest of the team members and myself are frustrated by his low performance and our manager’s refusal to hear anything negative about his work, even though she is well aware of the issue. We are at a loss to understand her consideration towards him at the expense of the rest of the team. Our productivity as a team has declined due to this situation. We are trying to wait out for the negative comments from users, because we have heard the complaints first hand, but I believe these are quashed at our managers level. This has been going on for 2 years, and even though I like my job and my manager, this causes such stress, that I consider moving on.

By: Laura Moen

Laura Moen — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:16:53 +0000

I found this scenario to be a familiar one from many places and experiences. One thing I find myself wondering about is the fact that the employee’s co-workers are aware of her difficulties; from your brief description, it sounds as though they have commented to you without attempting to assist her. However, I may not be clear on what you meant; do I have this right? Would the other employees normally help one another and this type of behavior is specific to the employee in question (indicating another issue you should perhaps deal with in your workplace)or would nobody be willing to help anyone else (also a problem that would need attention)? Sometimes peer mentoring in different areas/skills can be a helpful way of working out situations like these, but I would be cautious about implementing them without assessing the interpersonal relationships and office culture first – you might need some preparatory work for everyone (including yourself) before you put something like that in place. Overall, though, I agree that two years is too long for this to have gone one.

By: Cheryl Forbes

Cheryl Forbes — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:12:21 +0000

Thank you for this very uplifting article. After walking away from a job that treated me poorly because I could not keep up with all they wanted me to do, I have been beating myself up and scared to move on. Now, I realize that training was sparce at best, the manager used my suggestion to update a process that wasn’t working, as “negative toward the company”. They expected two people to do the work of what used to be four and the clients knew they were being rushed through. At first, I thought it was my age but now I know, it was too much power at the top and not enough listening to the scared employees. Thanks, again. Cheryl

By: Susan Cottey

Susan Cottey — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:02:05 +0000

I appreciate your steps for management to deal with an employee’s low performance, but it seems that one thing was overlooked. Do others have problems with the system too? Some of this is covered in your additional training comment, but could it be that the system isn’t working. Either the software or the process that the office is using? And how could that be analyzed?