You Are Not in Your Power When You Neglect to Address the Low Performer. Period.

If you are not addressing your employee’s poor performance, you are not in your power. Period. Not only that, you are forcing that person’s co-workers to be at a disadvantage as well. If they know you won’t address the problem, they will feel stuck with it instead of empowered.

Here’s the thing, every company wants to run “lean.” To do this, you need a talented, highly engaged workforce. To get that, you need to hire REALLY well and then manage well too.

Bottom line, if you are passionate about your business, you deserve to have employees who are passionate about your business. Right?

Nothing hurts a company more than the unengaged employee who does just enough not to get fired. Or, more specifically does just enough to make it tough for you to let them go.

Maybe they don’t make huge mistakes, but they just aren’t getting the work done well and generally fall very short of what you expect the workload to be.

Leaving this person in their role and giving what should be their work to your “A” players, is NOT the way to go. I know it’s easier to give the work to the person who gets it done, believe me, I’ve been a manager, but it’s not a good long-term solution.

You know the saying “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch?” Well, that’s true when you have an employee who is not pulling their weight and the team knows they are picking up that person’s slack.

But the bigger issue is energetic. When you neglect to address the low performer, you are not in your power.

When you neglect to address the low performer, you are not in your power, they are.

I’m not talking about Machiavellian walk-in-and-terminate-everyone power. I’m talking about your energetic power where you address issues and take ownership of situations to resolve them.

It generally forces that person’s coworkers out of their power too if they feel management will do nothing to change things, or to back them up, and they feel stuck with that person’s behavior.

Additionally, ignoring the problem is not productive. With my career in Human Resources, I can tell you 100% that your other employees will spend their time discussing just how much that person is slacking and begin to resent you if you keep redistributing the workload. When it gets to the point where you star performer is taking on too much of their co-worker’s job for the same pay, they will start looking for a new job where they make 20% more and go back to having just their own work (see The Risk of Leaving Rewards on Autopilot).

So what can you do? Address the problem!

Sounds easy, right?

Well, it isn’t always that easy. We tend to get our emotions caught up in this process.

Maybe we feel responsible for hiring the person who is not performing and we keep hoping they will do better. Maybe we are super busy and we’d rather focus on our own work.

Maybe, just maybe, these conversations are difficult and if we are being honest about this, we just don’t feel like addressing it.

But, letting it fester, ignoring it, doesn’t solve it.

It gives the poor performer the power and they usually begin to demand more and feel more entitled – which is backwards!

Instead of ignoring the issue, or sweeping it under the rug, you can shift this energy.

In fact, even making the decision to resolve it, even if you don’t know how yet, will begin the shift.

The solution may not be quick. If you’ve neglected a problem for two years, you can’t expect to fix it in two minutes.

However, the good news is that once you start the process, the momentum will grow. So even though you may want to push back or skip it, when you begin taking action it shifts the energy for the better almost immediately.

It doesn’t shift the person’s performance necessarily, but the energy of “living with the problem” instead of addressing it will dissolve.

Addressing a performance problem, taking steps to fix it, has a much more positive vibe than ignoring it, doesn’t it?

Taking steps to fix an employee issue, has a much more positive vibe than ignoring it.

Taking steps also signals the employee that you are getting serious. If they’ve been unhappy and thinking of leaving anyway, it may get them to take action to start revising their resume and start job hunting.

Once you shift this energy, start looking for solutions, the employee and their co-workers will all feel it. Your star performers are your biggest concern, don’t lose sight of that. You want be legally cautious how you handle your low performers, follow your company guidelines, etc., but you want to keep in mind that top talent is hard to find. How you handle you “D” players, is affecting the retention of your “A” players. Big Picture!

Do you have employees like this? That sometimes you wonder why they even show up if they aren’t there to work? Or are you an employee living with co-workers like this? I’d love to hear from you in the comments.