The McKenzie Mailer

Keep Your "A" Players

One of the best ways to ensure that you will have many issues with employees is to allow poor performers to continue working at the same level of low performance day after day. In the business world today, an “A” player is not measured the same way grades are given out in high school or college. A flunking grade in business is 95%. If you are working as a manager or supervisor in a typical organization, you are spending 95% of your time dealing with the 5% of the employees who are not measuring up. One example of this is looking at attendance records. There are 20 work days in a typical month. An employee who shows up 95% of the time is out one day a month. This is far from acceptable in most organizations. Whether the issue is attendance, disruptive behavior or the inability to consistently meet standards, your “A” players have to pick up the slack of the slackers. This will have a negative affect on the morale of your hard working employees.

As a manager or supervisor, it is your job to ensure that the work is done as expeditiously as possible. Coaching and discipline are unpleasant tasks. However, it must be a part of a supervisor’s everyday job duties. Since it is unpleasant, many avoid this part of the job. Here are a few things supervisors often do that can get organizations into trouble.

Ignore the problem by counting on peer pressure to correct sub-standard performance. This rarely works. What is more likely to happen is the employees will talk about the ineffectiveness of the supervisor who does little about the problem. By ignoring the problem, the risk of losing the good employees is much higher. The loafer is will stay until told to leave.

Have a group meeting. Instead of dealing directly with the problem employee, a meeting of all employees of the work group is held and standards of performance are repeated with the hope that the slacker will get the hint. All this accomplishes is wasting the time of the “A” players. Additionally, the slacker rarely gets the hint.

Transfer the slacker. When the slacker applies for a job in another department, the supervisor gives the employee rave reviews about their work habits. When the transfer is made, one supervisor gives a sigh of relief and the other just sighs.

Delegate discipline to a subordinate who is not the direct supervisor of the individual. In these cases a supervisor asks a trusted employee to work with the slacker to improve the slacker’s performance. This is not fair to the trusted employee and it is not fair to the slacker. All this accomplishes is having your good employee baby sit the problem child.

Hiding behind a lay off. Often times, there is not enough documentation to terminate the individual for cause, so the supervisor chickens out by saying that you have to lay them off. A month or two later a new employee is hired. Since everyone is a member of a protected class, you may be looking at a charge of discrimination.

There are a few of things to keep in mind. First have measurable standards. If the employee is not meeting those standards, it is easy to figure out. An example of a measurable standard is a shipping clerk has to process 25 shipments per day. If an employee is only processing 20 a day, the standard is not being met. The second is to clearly communicate what you expect from the employee and why the expectations are important to the company. A third item to keep in mind is fairness and consistency. Fairness in that everyone should be given a chance to improve. Consistency in that the same type of coaching, counseling or discipline should me delivered for the same type of offenses. To do otherwise may show favoritism and possible discrimination.