- Hong Kong business leaders are devoting 14.4% of their time to coaching and/or supervising poorly performing employees
- Only 4% of Hong Kong business leaders say they do not have poorly performing employees
- Hong Kong employers are most likely to use coaching or mentoring strategies to manage poorly performing employees (56%)
- Hong Kong employers are least likely to deal with underperforming employees by letting them go (25%)
Hong Kong’s senior business managers feel that poorly performing employees are a constant challenge. In turn, this is impacting productivity, morale and reputation. Investing in employees (time and money), Hong Kong bosses are looking for solutions to employees who are not meeting expectations. According to the research by Robert Half, Hong Kong business leaders spend around half a day every week coaching and supervising poorly performing employees.
Assisting low-performing employees to raise their standards and meet expectations, over half of Hong Kong employers use standard coaching or mentoring strategies. Elaine Lam, Associate Director of Robert Half Hong Kong explained, “Identifying areas where employees are not meeting expectations, and implementing appropriate measures early, are key to minimising the costs of underperformance. Efficiency around managing poorly performing employees can reduce costs— financial and non-financial–to businesses, while managers and leaders need not spend as much of their valuable time on protracted training and supervision processes.”
The Impact
Financially, the cost of underperformance usually includes the salary that is not reflected in expected output, as well as paid time for mentoring, additional training costs, potential lost revenue from missed opportunities, costs linked to employees being let go and the resulting cost of new recruitment.
Employee underperformance also brings a raft of non-monetary costs, such as negative impact on the culture and staff morale, alongside potential damage to company reputation. The impact of low-performance often spreads beyond a single employee, placing further pressure on colleagues to shoulder additional workloads and a need to make up for the underperforming employee.
Lam added, “As companies turn their attention to growth and profitability, every employee should demonstrate measurable results towards the company’s development and strategic goals. In a competitive market, it is highly important to act quickly and proactively to mitigate the impacts of an underperforming employee as they arise.”
Terminating employees who underperform
Staff retention is a high priority for Hong Kong managers, who are facing a skills-short market where talented candidates are in high demand. Therefore, it is no surprise that the last resort for underperformance is to let the employee go.
Lam continued, “While the idea of letting an employee go might be what first comes to mind, Hong Kong business leaders understand the high costs of vacant roles and repeating hiring processes. Offering additional support, spending more time on the onboarding process or assigning alternative roles are usually more viable options that are considered first.”
5 tips on how to manage underperforming employees:
- Swift action
Deal with the employee as soon as possible to look at areas of overall performance and a managed action plan, but try do so in a sensitive and construct manner in order to avoid receiving a negative reaction.
This must involve listening to your employee, identifying challenges they might be facing inside or outside work that could explain their performance and change your course of action.
- Clear goal setting
Look at the role’s core competencies to see in what areas the employee is coming up short. Use these to work with the employee to develop a mutually beneficial plan that sets out specific goals and timeframes, SMART analysis, identifying the additional methods and resources required to support improvement.
- Providing regular feedback
Create regular timeslots meetings to monitor the ongoing plan. These meetings may be used to reinforce what the employee is doing well alongside any improvements that need to be made.
- Positive reinforcement
It is always important, for all staff, to acknowledge good work and positive progress in their roles. Incentives for employees is a key factor to providing ongoing motivation and a drive to improve.
- Sometimes staff need to be let go
If underperformance is ongoing, despite efforts to rectify it, the effect will be inordinately costly. Therefore, if an employee shows no signs of reasonable improvement, it is important to know when to finally bring their employment to an end. Crucial to this is a well-documented action plan with measurable goals, which will help you recognise when to make this call and justify the action taken.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
