In a previous Insight, employee motivation techniques were explained. As discussed, employees bring their own motivations and perceptions to the workplace. It’s a manager’s job to get to know and understand their employees in order to inspire and engage them to be top performers.
When top-performing employees get off track.
Managers can occasionally find themselves faced with an employee who has gone off track. When this happens, a manager may conclude that it is a result of a straight-forward performance or training issue. Oftentimes, managers or supervisors will jump to this conclusion and decide that some particular training class is in order.
I’ll share a real-life example to help illustrate: I worked with an employer that had a historically outstanding employee. In fact, he mentioned that this employee rated a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Then, all of a sudden, things changed. This employee was no longer operating in the same way. He was not as motivated and his work quality dropped. The employer could not understand or figure out what had changed.
In fact, as it turns out, the employee’s role had changed. To the owner, it was a subtle change; purely a matter of informing the employee what he needed to focus on and that he needed to prioritize. However, the employee found the change as an unfavorable one. He didn’t enjoy his work as much; it wasn’t "his thing." He didn’t identify with the new role, and he didn’t see it as fitting his purpose for being there.
There’s a reason why employee performance slides, and it helps to investigate.
When employers notice that an employee’s performance has changed and he is not performing like he used to, it helps to understand why. An employee may feel awkward in confronting the manager and explaining, "You know what? When you reassigned me to do something different, which affects how I spend my time, I’m just not enjoying my work as much as I used to."
So when stepping in and helping this employer, we talked it through. I asked him, "Is it possible that this employee is now doing work that they don’t enjoy as much as they used to? The energy and excitement are not there anymore, and you’re seeing a drop-off in performance."
I further explained, "This is pretty normal. It’s like anything else in life. If you enjoy a hobby and then someone asks you to work on something else and it’s not your thing, you’re not going to be into it as much as you used to be. And without the energy and interest, you can potentially lose their performance."
Once he followed up with that employee and confronted the issue, he acknowledged, "Yes, that is exactly what has happened." This awareness left the employer with an important decision: Should he continue assigning this employee to a new revised role that may not work out?
To retain top-performing employees, managers sometimes have to be flexible.
I suggested that he could consider tweaking things a bit and give the employee more of what he used to do and reallocate the new work to someone else. The employer ended up compromising because he did not want to lose this employee.
All in all, we discussed all the possible scenarios before coming to this conclusion. For instance, was there anything personal going on in his life, some sort of crisis, etc. And once the employer went and talked with the employee, one-on-one, he was able to investigate the change in behavior. That discussion led him to the real problem—the role change.
Again, it’s the manager’s job to find that healthy balance for their top-performing employees. Employees typically need enough stress and challenge in their roles to bring out their best. Too little stress or challenge can lead to boredom—too much, burn out.
Even the smartest and brightest can become bored or burned out in their roles. It’s finding that ideal environment for your "superstars" so they can maximize their performance potential. With this approach, the employee feels good about showing up to work and what they’re doing while they’re there, and the business is also getting what it needs.