Steps to Deal With a Poorly Performing Employee

It is extremely important to deal with poor work performance in your business if you want your business to thrive and grow. Here we will discuss our 5 steps to help you deal with a poorly performing employee in the correct manner. We rely on Real Business to help us understand the process.

1. Informal Conversations

The best place to start is to catch the behavior early and sit down with the employee in a private, informal setting. Use this meeting to find out what is going on with the employee and to encourage the performance that you want.

2: Offer Support

If there is a cause for the employees poor performance you should offer help and support. This is a good way to set time scales and objectives to monitor the employees growth.

3: Performance Review Meeting

If after steps 1 & 2 the employee is not performing better you will need to set up a more formal procedure by conducting formal performance review meetings. These meetings will lead up to you  being able to issue formal warnings. These meetings must be in private and you should have an HR representative present to take notes.

4: Decisions and Sanctions

After the performance review meeting you will decide on a course of action and the appropriate level of sanction.

      Levels of sanctions include:

• First written warning - this is the normal appropriate action after a first formal meeting. Here we provide an example of a proper warning letter. 

• Final Written Warning - if a first written warning has been issued and the employee's performance has not improved you should issue a final written warning. Here we provide an example of a proper final warning letter.

• Dismissal - if you have issued the previous 2 letters and held formal performance meetings and there has not been any improvement in the employees performance, you may decide that dismissal is the next best course of action.

5. Inform the employee

 

Once you make a decision you should communicate it to the employee in person and in writing. make sure to communicate facts, dates, etc. for your reasoning.

 

 

It is important to be specific with your facts and dates through all of these steps, to not approach in anger, and to approach the issue immediately.

 



This is an example of the wrong way to discipline an employee. Take tips from this video in what not to do.