Trained managers skillfully handle employee counseling in a timely manner.
Managers are charged with looking out for the workplace’s bigger picture, and the buck ultimately stops with them.
When faced with a poor performing or underperforming employee, chronic dread can set in for a manager. Instead of confronting the employee, many managers avoid the situation. However, this is not a time to postpone taking action—which is employee counseling i.e., disciplining—because matters usually only get worse.
Managers may postpone taking necessary employee counseling steps for a couple reasons: (1) They anticipate heightened emotional reactions from the employee; and (2) they get lost in their own work. They have their own tasks to perform and disciplining or counseling employees is very easy to put off. Managers may end up telling themselves, “This really isn’t such a big deal right now. I’m sure things will change.”
So they wait for those employee performance issues to change, and many times they do not change for the better. The underperforming employee can cause matters to get progressively worse, and the workplace environment then gets out of hand. In these cases, the manager is not looking out for the bigger picture and not adequately managing employee performance.
So why do managers ignore and avoid dealing with this issue? Part of the answer is because managers perceive employee counseling as an unpleasant confrontation, one that could lead to a potentially emotional scene. Managers are human, too. Dealing with emotions in the workplace can be difficult and challenging for most of us. Some people are more emotional than others. Then again, some people have trouble relating to emotional people. They may be relatively unemotional themselves, so they prefer avoiding people who they perceive as overly emotional.
As a result of avoiding the situation, managers can find themselves in damage-control mode, which could have been prevented. Oftentimes this is what happens: Employees come up through the ranks and they are promoted to managerial positions. Suddenly those employees are managers, and they’ve had little or no training about handling their new responsibilities.
Managing employee performance is a major responsibility, and employee counseling requires learned skills and techniques. For instance, training will help managers learn how to focus on improving the employee behaviors without demeaning or degrading the individuals. One is not born naturally knowing these things.
So, an untrained or unskilled manager may anticipate that if he or she sits down and engages an employee in a counseling situation—whether it’s approached verbally or in a written format—that the situation could escalate to an emotionally charged one. They then start to wonder, “How will I handle that?” In trying to avoid that scenario, they avoid the entire situation.
By contrast, many managers do not realize this point: If they simply ‘nip it in the bud,’ their lives end up being so much easier. Again, they’re failing to look at the bigger picture.
Underperforming employees normally do not change simply by giving them more time. As I mentioned already, postponing employee counseling only makes matters worse. And ultimately the manager is held accountable for their employees’ performances, so they are also responsible for allowing such matters to get out of hand. For instance, if upper management starts noticing performance issues within a team or department, they will look directly at the manager and start there.
To keep an employee performance issue from going from bad to worse, it’s important to realize that: (1) managers should receive proper training and development; and (2) managers can become so consumed in their own tasks, they end up failing to raise their employee antennas.
For more information on employee counseling, check out these HRTools.com Insights:
Employee-Counseling Manager Training is Important for New and Seasoned Managers
Provide Managers with Employee Counseling Training