Managing for peak performance is never easy. But if done right, it’s worth your investment, many times over. You need to accurately identify and then address any problems with your employees’ job performance so you can keep your organization at maximum productivity, continually enhance customer service, and keep your entire team happy and engaged.
Focus on Attitude and Knowledge
There are two fundamental areas that drive employee performance. They can be summarized as follows:
- Does an employee know how to do their job?
- Does an employee want to do their job?
When analyzing job performance, keep these two questions top of mind. If there’s a problem, it could be your fault – or not. But like a skilled physician, you need to accurately diagnose it and treat it accordingly.
Underperforming employees may have:
- Both knowledge and desire: In these cases, their failure to perform is due to something outside their control. It may be a shortage of resources or a culture-related factor that inhibits them. Culture is very powerful and can make the performance of an otherwise average individual soar – or destroy the best performance and motivation. Don’t blame these employees. Top performers simply don’t last with organizations that offer unreasonable expectations, poor resources or an ineffective culture.
- Knowledge, but not desire: If an employee’s attitude is at the root of the problem, simply ordering them to work harder probably won’t work. Instead, change the rewards or the consequences of their work outcomes. Take decisive and immediate action. The situation will not improve on its own.
- Desire, but not knowledge: Unless you have hired someone knowing that they don’t know how to do the job, this scenario represents a management or organizational failure. Be sure you provide effective training, enough training, and time for employees to practice what they learn on a regular basis. Superstars are not created with inadequate, poorly delivered or rush training processes.
- Neither knowledge nor desire: This also is an organizational or management problem. Take a hard look at your candidate selection process. Why was this person hired in the first place? Why were they placed in this particular position? A transfer may be the solution, but you also need to face reality: It could be time for a termination. Keep your eye on the prize: Maximum performance, morale and company productivity.
Use Data Analysis
Poor employee performance costs serious money. Between attrition and lost productivity, companies lose more than $350 billion a year. Analyzing Big Data can tell you more about your employees’ behavior, removing the guesswork involved in trying to build performance and productivity.
In one recent study of 121 million employee behavioral and performance records, these behaviors were gleaned:
- Telecommuting is a valuable benefit. Work-at-home employees stayed at their companies 20 percent longer than their office-bound colleagues.
- Browsers matter. Workers using Chrome or Firefox stayed at their jobs longer than those using Internet Explorer. In addition, they missed 15 percent fewer workdays and delivered higher levels of customer satisfaction.
- Social employees perform better. Performance was higher among employees who used three or four social networks.
As you seek to source, hire and retain high-performance talent with high-impact results, consider partnering with the specialized recruiters at Employment Professionals Canada. Contact us today to learn more.