The Challenge of Underperformers

If you are a maintenance manager, crew leader, or senior maintenance worker, how do you handle the challenges presented by an underperformer?

It is critical that any interaction with the underperforming employee meet these criteria:

• It is always respectful. Putdowns, for example, create an environment of mistrust and defensiveness.
• The problem is clearly identified. Beating around the bush or dropping hints is cowardly and ineffective. It’s also unfair to the underperforming employee.
• The expectations are clearly identified. The underperforming employee needs to know what level of performance is expected and in specific terms.
• The communication is two-way. Perhaps the employee needs something and it would easily solve the problem. Or perhaps it’s not the employee who is underperforming. You share a problem, so you share the solution.

Begin by assessing the type of problem. Generally, it will fall into one of the following categories. The first four are systemic, meaning they are the fault of management and the solution lies with management.

1. Lack of training. This is the most common reason for underperformance. It should be your default assumption. Management needs to assess what training has been done and whether it was sufficient. Management also needs to assess whether that training was appropriate for that employee given the employee’s existing skill set.
2. Lack of practice. It takes time to develop competence with a new skill and even more time to develop expertise. Has the employee received enough supervised practice to develop the expected degree of skill?
3. Inadequate equipment. This cause is more common than most managers believe. Many companies have a policy in which the employees provide their own hand tools; someone decides what other tools and test equipment the company will provide. But that person’s merit raises are often evaluated at least in part on how much money they save out of an already too-thin budget. The solution here is to drop the “save money, even at great cost” mentality and evaluate what is needed for quality work done safely and efficiently.
4. Poor hire, lacks the basic skills. A hiring mistake needs to be owned by the hiring manager. The easiest solution is to admit the mistake and let the employee go. But if the employee is a hard worker with a great attitude, it may be fixing one mistake by making another one. It may be best to lay out or provide a remedial program to bring this employee’s basic skill levels up to par. That is an increasingly common approach these days, simply because it is difficult to find prospective employees who have enough math background to even be a trainee. Numeracy is the exception, not the rule.

Bad attitude

Then we get to bad attitude. This can arise from personal difficulties, such as the employee is going through a divorce. A bad attitude needs to be assessed both for its cause and for its effect.

If the cause is something transitory such as a divorce or death in the family, the manager needs to have a discussion with HR and then the employee. Perhaps a combination of paid and unpaid leave would help.

If the cause seems to be something such as immaturity or an attitude of entitlement (“You owe me this job!”), consider these approaches:

• Manager. Pull the person aside and describe the attitude. Ask if the employee finds this attitude acceptable and, if so, why. Ask the employee to think about how this might negatively affect others and to give an example. Then give one of your own. Explain the company policy on discipline and ask what the employee needs so “we can avoid going down that path.”
• Crew leader. Pull the person aside and describe the attitude. Ask the employee if they would enjoy having to deal with other crew members exhibiting this attitude. Ask the employee to describe the attitude of a crew member they look up to. Explain that’s the attitude you want to see. Ask the employee if there’s something you can do to help. Document a summary of the discussion in writing to the manager.
• Senior worker. Pull the person aside and describe the attitude. Explain why you don’t like it. Explain how it can only hurt them in their career. Ask them to tell you how they can do better. Document a summary of the discussion in writing to the manager and copy the crew leader.

A common problem among younger workers is they rush through an assignment instead of doing it mindfully and methodically. It’s not because they don’t care about quality; they want to prove themselves through quantity. You can best help by assuring them they have nothing to prove. Nobody’s judging them on how fast they can do their work. Of course, this is a different problem from the employee is really slow. Citing adages such as, “Never enough time to do it right, always enough time to do it over,” and “Measure twice, cut once” can help the rushers develop the right mindset.

An employee who shows resistance to these approaches requires a different treatment than one who is eager to accept mentoring and grow into the job. An assessment will need to be made as to whether this employee should be terminated or if the company should continue to invest in developing this person.

A termination is not an execution. It is sometimes the best thing you can do for a person, so don’t feel guilty for going down that path. Sometimes, an underperformer is just in the wrong line of work or in the wrong cultural environment.