Strategies for Managing Underperformance & Coaching Employees Back to Success

Underperformance doesn’t have to lead to termination if managed correctly. This blog provides strategies for identifying the root causes of underperformance, offering constructive feedback, and creating tailored coaching plans to help employees improve. If you do ultimately need additional employees to help fill the gaps, PrideStaff Financial is ready to assist!

How to identify the root cause of underperformance:

The first step is to understand if an employee’s underperformance stems from a lack of skills, motivation, clarity, or external factors like a poor work environment or some personal conflicts that are impacting their performance at work. You can figure out root causes by analyzing performance metrics, identifying a lack of skills training, or unclear job expectations. Part of identifying the root cause is to gather feedback from other employees, colleagues, or client perspectives. Also, have an open and honest conversation with the employee about what they feel is causing issues for them. Take a step back and examine team dynamics; it may not be the employee’s lack of drive or skills, but quite possibly the team that is causing systemic issues.

Communicate preferences openly and honestly:

Talk openly to your teams about your preferences, particularly when it comes to methods of communication. Managers of multiple generations can set an example by helping their team members find ways to clearly communicate with each other. If you have direct reports who are both older and younger than you, ask your employees what kind of interactions they feel most comfortable with.

Stay goal-oriented:

It’s important to establish explicit goals that help your employees better understand their roles and how their responsibilities fit into the mission of your organization. It’s helpful to create workflow maps for your teams with visuals that help employees picture how tasks are connected, where collaboration may be helpful, and what the end goal of a particular project is. Further, by maintaining a goal-oriented mindset on your team, you can better measure your employees’ ability to reach objectives, which can help you provide real-time support and intervention whenever necessary.

Accountability needs to be a priority:

If your employees aren’t meeting your expectations, you need to communicate this by keeping them accountable for their performance and offering support that might encourage their increased focus and engagement. It’s important to remember that you need to balance accountability measures with authority—in most situations, you’ll want to avoid handing out negative consequences and instead find methods for helping your employees succeed. When your employees perform highly, you can enforce positive accountability, performance rewards, and offer increased responsibility or constructive feedback.

Offer more training:

You can also encourage continued employee development through supplemental training programs, professional retreats, conferences, workshops, and coaching systems. These tactics can help your employees expand and strengthen their skill sets, which in turn, can help them improve their performance. In addition, investing in an employee’s development can help foster a culture of loyalty and respect that may reduce turnover and increase engagement.

PrideStaff Financial’s highly skilled staffing consultants are ready to support your hiring needs. Contact us today to see how we can help you hire skilled accounting & finance professionals.