How to Get Underperforming Employees Up to Par

Do you have underperforming employees? If so, you must make them shape up or ship out. You will learn how to handle them.

The first thing you should do is assess their attitude. It is vital to do this in order to determine whether it is worth your time and theirs to try to help them. If they have a poor attitude and refuse to try to improve, you should let them go right now.

As for the ones who carry a positive attitude and have the desire to do better, you should stick with them for a while. In fact, you could give them a trial period. You can do this by placing them on probationary status for three to six months with the stipulation that you will reevaluate them at the end of their term.

There is another way that you can give them a second chance. This option is to retrain them indefinitely. This is a good way to try to help them and see if they can be an asset while not committing to keeping them around for a guaranteed amount of time.

It is not a good idea to leave them in the dark while they are being granted a second chance. One thing that you should do is periodically give them a report on their progress. Another is to give them feedback on their performance and office conduct.

Instead of heavily focusing on their results, you can evaluate their situation. Not long after being hired to do in-store magnetic window display demonstrations nearly fifteen years ago, I had trouble getting leads after giving shoppers my booth display presentation while some of my fellow demonstrators fared better because they were pretty females. Because my boss was so impressed that I knew the company script better than everyone else, he chose to transfer me to two other stores rather than terminate me. I started doing much better in the other stores because they had more customer traffic plus more potential customers who were willing to listen to any demonstrators, no matter how attractive they were.

Another thing that you should consider doing is catering to their strengths. If they are weak in certain areas, you should have them spend most or all of their time doing the tasks they are good at, at least for a little while.

Firing your underperforming workers is something you must only do as a last resort. By following the advice you have learned, you probably will not have to fire many workers.