Photo by Evangeline Shaw on Unsplash
If your profits are declining, you probably need to assess your costs, reshape your staff and cut your labor expenses.
This means you have to be accurate in your evaluations and astutely evaluate who stays, who gets coaching and determine who must go.
You also have to be careful to avoid discrimination lawsuits, so think about several salient considerations.
Ask yourself questions that will yield “yes” or “no” answers:
- Is the person over the age of 40?
- Is the person disabled?
- Has the person been injured in your workplace and/or filed a workers’ compensation claim?
- Is the person a minority or woman?
- Is the person able to claim discrimination based on religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual preference or other related reasons?
- Has the person been victimized by sexual harassment?
- Has the worker been a whistle-blower?
If you answer yes to any question, go slow and be diligent about making your case for layoff, termination or other corrective action.
Human Resources: 12 Errors to Avoid in Evaluations
Furthermore, don’t make excuses for allowing poor performances.
Typical excuses made by timid managers:
1. “I need the person.” Usually, the person is viewed as being essential or has connections.
However, you must be pragmatic: Weak performing employing employees who have a unique skill set or who aren’t carrying their weight in your organization. These factors mean their costs aren’t justifiable.
2. “It’s my fault.” Assuming you’ve made every attempt to coach the person, a weak employee isn’t your fault.
Evaluate your steps for correction and the resulting performance. If you’ve taken every reasonable coaching step without success, you have a decision to make.
Management: Coach Your Employees to Better Performance
3. “I feel sorry for the employee.” If the person’s poor performance stems from a personal problem, you must act. Instead of allowing a poor performance to continue, refer the person to the right resource to get help.
4. “I don’t want to punish the person.” Some managers feel guilty about having to take corrective action. It’s using bad practices to confuse punishment with discipline.
If you’ve done everything possible to coach the employee but the person fails to improve, no need to feel guilty. Remember you’ve done all you can.
From the Coach’s Corner, here are related topics:
Dreaded Discussions You Must Have – 7 Management Tips – In most organizations, managers must inevitably have conversations with employees regarding their work. Here are seven crucial steps.
Management – 8 Steps to Solve Employee Incivility – Obviously, mutual respect are vital in cooperation and teamwork for performance. Clear management strategies are necessary if you have uncivil staff members.
Management – 3 Common Mistakes in Performance Reviews – Not only do most workers stress over getting performance reviews, many bosses stress over having to give them. For management solutions, see these management tips.
Scaling Your Business Starts with Effective Management – Confidence starts with knowing the difference between scaling and expanding – and growing with the help of your culture and employees. Here are Biz Coach strategies in human resources to scale your business.
7 Management Tips – Communication with Difficult Employees – Multiple problems will include loss of profit that result from ineffectively dealing with difficult employees. Here are seven Biz Coach tips.
“No business in the world has ever made more money with poorer management.”
-Bill Terry
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