All small business owners want both the best from their employees and the best for their employees. Because, let’s face it, a miserable employee is also miserable to work with.
Perhaps you feel like, on paper, you’re doing all of the right things. You’re following the best practices when it comes to performance management and getting the most out of your employees. And yet, your employees continue to struggle to meet goals, fail to do their work well, or need constant management. Or maybe you’re just dealing with constant turnover and feel like your employees quit as soon as you get them trained.
It’s tempting to wonder whether performance management is really just a matter of hiring good employees in the first place. Surely if you had the right person for the job, it wouldn’t be this hard! Yet, a recent 2018 Gallup poll shows that 53% of employees are not engaged in the workplace and another 13% are actively disengaged and would call their workplace experience “miserable”. Is it really possible that 66% or two-thirds of all employees in the workplace are just bad employees? Probably not.
There are a lot of reasons employees can become disengaged in the workplace. Micromanagement, unreasonable expectations, and systemic problems that keep the employee from doing their job all work together to discourage an employee from taking ownership in their work. Maybe your employees actually want to be challenged more! Bored employees quickly become disengaged workers. It could be a matter of unclear expectations. Have you given your employee an accurate job description and do they know what their responsibilities are? Are your expectations reasonable? Perhaps there are obstacles to getting the work done that you’re unaware of.
If lack of engagement is an ongoing issue for you and your company, perhaps it’s time to take a step back and consider whether the problem isn’t actually the employee. If so, don’t be discouraged. If two-thirds of employees are disengaged or miserable in the workplace, there are a lot of employers out there who don’t know how to engage their employees either. This is your chance to do something different. You can be a company whose employees are engaged, invested, and more productive than ever!
Still unsure of what to do next? Read more about Performance management here . Then, come talk to us and see how we can help.
Article written by by Anne Beshears
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