Managing Poor Performance

Transcription

1 Managing Poor Performance Introduction These three short cases will enable students to develop competence in managing poor performance or conduct. Each case forms the basis for a role play of a 'counselling' meeting between a line manager and a member of their staff, as recommended by ACAS as a preliminary stage before formal disciplinary action is taken. Role briefs are provided for both the line manager and the member of staff. Case 1 The Late Finance Officer You are the Finance Manager. You have noticed that one of the Finance Officers who reports to you seems to have been late regularly over the past few months. You have checked the records and found that this individual has been over 10 minutes late on six occasions in the past three months, and on one of these occasions was more than an hour late. This is beginning to present a problem as the finance department is not 'covered' first thing in the morning, which is always a busy time. On a couple of occasions you have had a passing word with this employee about their lateness and received various excuses and a promise that it wouldn t happen again. The employee is a hard worker, who has worked for you for three years and has an excellent disciplinary record. Because of this you had been reluctant to take matters further until now, but you feel that it is time to address the issue in a more formal way. Employee s Role Brief You are a Finance Officer. The Finance Manager has asked to see you about your lateness. You are rather surprised and indignant. For a start you haven t been late for three weeks. Admittedly you have had problems in the past, particularly when you ve had to drop your child at the nursery before work. In any case you can t remember being more than five minutes late, except on one occasion when your partner had to use the car and the bus was late. Lots of people in the department are late from time to time and they ve not been counselled by the Finance Manager. Besides, if you could start ten minutes later every day you could guarantee being on time each day and you would leave ten minutes later to make up the time. This would fit in much better with your childcare arrangements. You are very upset about this and angry that you are going to get a disciplinary record for something so trivial, particularly as you have been such a good worker since you joined the department three years ago.

2 Case 2 The Slow Library Assistant You are Section Head in a large public library. One of the new Library Assistants has been causing you some concern. He has been employed for nearly two months now and is diligent and conscientious. The problem is that he is extremely slow at his work. You wouldn t expect him to be as fast as the experienced staff at this early stage, but you would expect him to be approaching that standard. Unfortunately he gets through only about a third of the amount of work of an experienced Library Assistant. You ve checked the records and he takes six hours to do his section of shelving as opposed to the normal two hours. There is always a long queue on the counter when he is serving. The other assistants have started to complain to you about him because they have to work harder to make up for him. Unfortunately it is not possible for the library to function if all the staff are not working up to speed, and you feel that the issue needs to be addressed. The employee in question will have his first probationary review in a month s time, but you feel it is important to tackle the issue now. Employee s Role Brief You are a Library Assistant in a large public library. You have been working in this, your first library job, for about two months now. You are really enjoying it and you feel that you are ideally suited to this type of work. Your attention to detail and thorough approach seem to lend themselves to library work. The work is quite complicated but you seem to be getting the hang of all the procedures now, although it will be a while until you are as familiar with them as the other library staff. Already you feel that you are doing as good a job, if not better, than some of the other staff. Your shelving areas are much tidier than theirs, and your lending registers are much neater and more orderly. You particularly like spending time with the customers to help them find the right book. Some of the other staff have been muttering about you being a bit slow, but the way you see it is that they are a bit slapdash; after all, if you want to do a job properly you have to spend the time on it. Your manager told you when you joined how much work you were expected to get through, but in your view these 'targets' are entirely unrealistic. You can meet them, and some of the others do, but only by cutting corners, and that s not your style. Your manager has asked to see you in her office. You are a bit surprised because your probationary review is not until next month.

3 Case 3 The Errant Salesperson You are the Sales Manager in a large call centre. Your department has recently introduced a new procedure for handling telephone enquiries. This involves sales staff following a 'script' when answering calls. In the past, sales people were allowed to use their own judgement as to what to say, but the new system has been shown to increase sale by 10% in other offices, and you have decided to adopt it here for a trial period of two months. All staff were consulted on the introduction of the new system and have received extensive training. Staff have been reassured that the company will make up any shortfall in individual sales commission during the trial, so no one should lose out; but if the system is adopted at the end of the trial and is as successful as it has been at other offices, staff should expect their commission to be higher than at present anyway. The trial has been going for two weeks and seems to be working well. However, you have noticed that one member of staff has, at least on the occasions when you have overheard her, been 'playing it off the cuff' as under the old method. She was one of the best sellers under the old system, but you feel that if the new system is to have a proper trial everyone must use it consistently. Employee's Role Brief You are a Salesperson in a large call centre. You have been working in the telesales department for several years now, and consider yourself to be one of the best sellers. In fact you have regularly won sales awards and your commission earnings are among the highest in the department. You put your success down to your sales 'patter' which is very informal and based on plenty of ad-libbing. The department has just introduced, on two months trial, a new system where you have to follow a script. Everyone has been consulted and trained in its use, and their existing commission earnings have been guaranteed during the trial. You can see the merits of the system for the less successful sellers, but you don t think that it will do you any good, in fact it will probably make you less successful. You ve kept your reservations to yourself, largely because you intend to ignore the new system and carry on in the same way as you always have both during the trial and thereafter if the new system is adopted. Why shouldn t you? After all, your commission will be at stake if the system is adopted at the end of the trial. Obviously, you revert to the new system when the boss is around, but once or twice she has noticed you ad-libbing. She has asked to see you for a 'counselling' meeting. You think that this is rather ridiculous and quite laughable. All you are doing is trying to do your best, and the company is trying to make you worse at your job. Anyway, what can they do about it? They can t watch over you all the time and you intend to carry on as you are. Author: Ben Lupton, Manchester Metropolitan University

4 Tutor s Notes Case Managing Poor Performance A realistic case which illustrates the different perspectives that can be held by the parties involved in a disciplinary case. Keywords: Counselling, disciplinary, line manager CIPD Professional Standards: Background Reading: Performance Management: Performance management processes Performance management skills Managing underperformers People Resourcing: People management People Management and Development: People management and development in practice Marchington, Mick. and Wilkinson, Adrian. People Management and Development: Human Resource Management at Work 2 nd Edition. CIPD, 2002 (Chapter 11). Taylor, Stephen. People Resourcing 2 nd Edition. CIPD, 2002 (Chapter 9). Debrief The role-plays themselves typically take around 10 minutes to conduct, although the 'line manager' will need some time to prepare, and time will need to be allocated for feedback. Alternatively the cases may be used as a basis for classroom discussion; for example, students could be asked, as HR professionals, to provide advice for a line manager who is preparing to conduct the meeting. The notes below are designed to facilitate feedback by tutors and students on the conduct of the role-plays or on the content of the advice given to line managers. 1. The physical and social environment - To what extent was the room/furniture layout appropriate for the purpose of the meeting? To what extent did it enhance/inhibit constructive discussion? - How did the way in which the manager opened the meeting influence the conduct and outcome of the meeting? - Did the manager make clear the purpose and informal status of the meeting? 2. Interpersonal skills - How effectively did the manager use active listening and appropriate body language to facilitate good two-way communication?

5 - How appropriate was the manager s balance of talking and listening for the purpose of the meeting? 3. Preparation - What evidence was there that the manager had prepared his/her approach to the meeting? - To what extent was it clear that the manager had decided before the meeting what, broadly speaking, would be a successful outcome to aim for? - How successfully did the manager adapt his/her approach to unexpected responses? 4. Content - To what extent did the manager allow the employee to explain his/her behaviour/performance and to suggest mitigating circumstances? - Did the manager refer to 'facts' to support his/her argument? What effect did this have? - Did the manager suggest solutions to the employee or allow him/her to suggest his/her own way forward? What impact did this have? - To what extent was the manager ready to offer support to the employee to assist them to improve performance or conduct? 5. Agreement and Closure - To what extent did the manager reach an agreed solution with the employee? - How far did this solution meet the manager s objectives? - Did the manager agree a review period for future performance and conduct and make clear the consequences of a lack of improvement by the employee? - Did the manager undertake to make a written record of the meeting in due course and to seek agreement with the employee that the record was fair? Why would this be important? 6. Overall - What do you think that the impact of the meeting is likely to be - on the employee s future performance/conduct? - on the mood and motivation of the employee in the short and long term? - on the relationship between the manager and employee? - on the ability of the manager to take things further in the event of no improvement in performance or conduct? Is there anything that the manager might have done differently to achieve a better outcome in any of these areas?