How well do my People Managers manage their staff?
One of the most important questions you can ask yourself as a Leader is quite simply “How well do my people managers manage their staff?” Sound simple? Think you have an answer? Will let’s put it in context before you make that decision.
If you stop and think about your workforce right now – how many employees can you confidently say are high performers? More importantly, how many employees can you say are poor performers? How many have toxic attitudes/behaviours? How many are taking excessive leave?
It’s safe to say that most employers will have at least one person who falls in that ‘challenging employee’ category and the big question here is why hasn’t this person improved and/or been moved on already?
Well the answer is usually quite simple – the person hasn’t improved or been dismissed because his/her Manager isn’t adequately Performance Managing them. In fact, most poor performing employees can go on like this for years with no improvement, simply because his/her Manager doesn’t want to have the difficult conversation with them, or doesn’t feel confident in knowing what action can be taken.
So realistically, how long will it be before that Manager is in your office, asking if they can simply terminate that employee immediately? How much time will it take to start going through the Performance Management process now when the employee should already be either terminated or half way out the door?
Poor understanding of how to manage difficult conversations and how to Performance Manage employees can cost your business a lot of time, money and potentially reputation – so while you’re doing your strategic planning, consider including upskilling for your people Managers to help them breach this barrier and deal with these issues before they snowball into something much bigger and much more expensive.
You can now upskill and develop your people Managers on-site with TalentCode HR’s ‘Managing Difficult Conversations’ and ‘Understanding Performance Management’ half-day training courses. To find out more, call us on 1300 559 585.
