Managing underperformance

Having a productive, talented workforce is the key to accomplishing both team and company goals and vision. If individual members of a team are not meeting performance expectations or are getting derailed, managers need to determine what's causing this situation to occur. In this workshop, participants will learn how to identify the signs that a team member is underperforming and start having early, informal conversations to avoid further problems.

Max 15 participants

100 mins

Staying on track, represented by a person running on a track.

Impact

On your business

Improved relations — early conversations allow leaders to start managing underperformance early, help employees stay on track and prevent small concerns from snowballing and causing friction between managers and their team.
Increased productivity and efficiency — managers can get their team members back on track and therefore working to a greater level and quality of output.
Retention — keeping team members on track avoids escalation to more formal performance management procedures and improvement plans.

As a result of this workshop participants will

Consider the importance of helping employees stay on track and the potential implications of not doing so.
Learn key principles and tips for instigating and driving an empathetic conversation.
Reflect on how to pre-empt and manage challenging responses.
Create an actionable plan to enable leaders to manage underperformance with practical steps to move performance back on track.

Learning activities

Workshop

Discussion

Action plan

Online resources

Want to know more?

Research tells us that the majority of employees are avoiding difficult conversations — sometimes delaying them by weeks, months, and even years! When faced with growing demands and packed schedules, it’s all too easy to let conversations about managing underperformance fall by the wayside. However, helping employees stay on track is an important part of being a manager. Putting it off until later down the line can have a serious impact on outcomes for both the underperforming individual and the business as a whole.

In this workshop, participants will learn how to identify the early signs that a team member is underperforming. Once it has been established that a team member is at risk of going off track, participants will explore the different types of conversation that they need to have depending on each individual case. Participants will consider how to instigate these conversations, and how to drive the dialogue in a way that gets to the root of the issue.

Finally, participants will create a plan of action to begin managing underperformance and commit to the practical steps they will take to ensure that their team members are guided back towards staying on track.