Each week, Dr Kirstin Ferguson tackles questions on workplace, career and leadership in her advice column, Got a Minute? This week: poor performers, celebrations for all and intergenerational relations.
Employers who do not address underperforming staff risk damaging office morale or even loss of valued team members.Credit: Dionne Gain
I’ve worked at all levels of government and at each place there has been a proportion of poor performers. In most cases, managers know who they are but do not address it even though tackling the issue may well lead to a happier and more productive work environment. Why are managers so reluctant to deal with poor performers?
Failure to deal with poor performers is a perennial problem. Regardless of the company, most culture survey results rank this category with the worst scores. So why are managers so reluctant to deal with it?
First, many leaders avoid difficult conversations and performance management is all about tricky conversations. Second, it takes effort to deal with a poor performer for regular performance discussions, documentation, offering regular feedback and monitoring how the person is responding. Third, the leader might like the poor performer, or they may be a superstar in other areas, so they become reluctant to rock the boat. Finally, the leader might not have documented what good performance looks like in a role making it much harder to identify what the person is not doing well.
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None of these reasons are valid. Failing to deal with a poor performer always comes back to bite in the end. That might be through good team members leaving when they see poor performance ignored, other team members slacking off because they know nothing will happen, morale declining, absenteeism rising, you name it. So for leaders with a poor performer, get onto it. Stat.
I work for a multinational organisation that employs a diverse range of people. Locally, corporate management celebrate different cultures and lifestyles throughout the year, for example Christmas, Lunar New Year, Mardi Gras, Easter and Diwali. I have mentioned to management previously that if you celebrate one you need to celebrate all. There are never celebrations for Orthodox Easter or Hanukkah, for example. I feel corporations shouldn’t pick and choose. What do you think?
Your suggestion seems to be that if an employer can’t celebrate all of them, then they should not celebrate any. There is a middle ground. In principle, I agree every culture and their accompanying celebrations should be equally valued. Practically, this will be difficult to achieve for even the most accommodating employer. The Diversity Council of Australia has a useful calendar of diversity and inclusion days, for example, and the Federal Government publishes a list of cultural and religious dates. Together, it would be a full year of celebrations.
If your company employs a high proportion of people who celebrate Orthodox Easter and Hanukkah, but not Diwali or Chinese New Year, it makes sense to adjust the celebrations to reflect your employee or perhaps even your customer base. Otherwise, your company is doing its part to find a compromise. What matters most is that people in your organisation feel valued and respected regardless of their cultural background.
