Growing a business is hard enough when things are going well. Yet, in my 22 years of coaching, I see business owners constantly compounding their challenges by failing to act when action is clearly called for.
The area of inaction I see most often—literally every week—is the failure to address employee performance issues.
We all know someone else in business who has that “problem child”—a toxic or underperforming employee. From the outside, it’s easy to see that they should let that person go. But when it’s our own business, we find ways to ignore the problem.
Are You Avoiding the Issue?
There are two major signs that you are avoiding a performance problem:
- The Policy Trap: You believe that if you just put a few more policies in place, everything will get better. But let’s face it – policies are not going to fix a bad employee or make them magically disappear.
- The Time Waster: You and your other team members spend more time complaining about this specific employee than you do talking about how to improve any other part of your business.
When you choose inaction, the costs aren’t just financial. There are three main areas where your business—and your life—will suffer.
1. Your Team Suffers
When an employee isn’t pulling their weight, the rest of the team has to step in and compensate. They fix the mistakes and finish the tasks, typically without any recognition or thanks. In a cruel twist of irony, the underperforming employee is often the one who gets the most attention just for showing up.
Even if the problem employee does a good job as an individual, toxic behavior will bring the rest of the team down and sabotage productivity throughout the business.
In this environment:
- Quality drops across the board.
- A-players become distracted and resentful.
- The team spends their morning wondering which version of their teammate is walking through the door.
Eventually, your best people won’t just resent the coworker—they will resent you for allowing the environment to exist.
2. Your Clients Suffer
Even if your team tries to cover up the cracks, eventually, the client feels the impact. This can manifest in obvious ways like schedule delays, returned products, or canceled orders.
But it can also be subtle. Small errors compound over time. Some clients will tell you why they are leaving. Others—who have plenty of other options—will simply move on to a competitor who is easier to work with, and you won’t even know what happened.
3. You and Your Family Suffer
Running a business is stressful enough. Adding the weight of a toxic team member creates a level of stress that inevitably follows you home.
You might find yourself snapping at your spouse or your kids without even realizing why. The source is often a day spent tolerating poor performance and bad behavior, or listening to complaints. You are carrying the weight of your inaction, and it is stealing your peace of mind.
You Won’t Regret Taking Action
In over two decades of coaching, I have never had a client terminate a problematic employee and come back to tell me they wish they had kept them for another six months.
It is almost always the opposite.
They realize the massive weight that has been removed from the business, and they wish they had acted sooner. Usually, their team is standing there wondering, “What took you so long?”
Stop Tolerating, Start Transforming
If you’d like to learn how the ActionCOACH Business Operating System (ABOS) can help you manage your team’s performance more effectively—helping you avoid these situations or act quickly when they arise—schedule an intro call and let’s talk.
Author: Mark McNulty, Business Coach in Louisville, KY