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Select any of the links below for information on sticky
issues you may face as a manager (as well as as an employee):
Counseling Employees with Personal Problems
If you have a hard worker who hasn't been working up to his or her potential
lately, there could be a personal problem. Don't avoid discussing this situation
because the performance problem stems from a personal issue. Identifying
the nature of the problem and then developing an action plan to return the
employee to previous high levels of performance is not prying. You're justified
in alerting the employee to the decline in his or her performance since
continuation of the situation could mean termination.
Be gentle, yet professional, when talking with the employee. Don't demand
that the person pour his or her heart out to you, because he or she may
feel uncomfortable talking about the problem with a supervisor. If your
company offers an employee assistance program (EAP) or other type of counseling
service, make sure the person is aware of available services and direct
them to your HR department or the company’s employee handbook for additional
information.
However, your goal is to get the employee to acknowledge a decline in performance
and the need to return to his or her previous level of performance. If it’s
a personal problem behind the performance decline, the employee can determine
what he or she wants to do. But you need to set a timetable by which time
performance should improve. And stick to that timetable.
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Sexual Harassment
If one of your employees comes to you complaining of being sexually harassed,
consult immediately with your HR department and work with them regarding
your company’s policy against harassment. Depending on corporate policy,
either you or the HR department will conduct an investigation of the charge.
This should be done as quickly after the incident is reported as possible.
Determine, too, if any other employees have experienced any form of harassment
at work.
You may also want to consider separating the two employees while the investigation
takes place, particularly if they work together on a regular basis. However,
the best defense against sexual harassment is to develop a policy against
such behavior, communicate it to all employees, and develop a method to
receive and properly respond to any complaints.
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Same-Sex Harassment
Same-gender (or same-sex) harassment may occur less often in the workplace,
but the number of complaints reported to the U.S. Equal Opportunity Commission
have tripled since 1991 and now account for more than 11 percent of all
harassment claims. Same-sex harassment also can put your company in the
same liability as harassment between men and women. Consult with your HR
department; the charge should be quickly investigated and acted upon. Given
the legal liability, your company’s anti-harassment policy should prohibit
same-gender harassment and be communicated to all employees. Many companies
see it as a terminable offense.
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Work/Life Balance
Balancing work and family demands is not easy for working parents. But the
issue of balancing work and personal life creates just as many demands for
employees without children. More companies today are recognizing this fact,
given the faster pace of business and the longer hours many workers put
in each week. Some employers now offer flexible scheduling, compressed work
weeks, telecommuting and leaves of absences as benefits employees can take
advantage of to help them with any personal or family problem, not just
child-related issues.
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Elder Care
If you're not caring for an elderly family member yet, chances are you will
soon. Joy Loverde, author of The Complete Eldercare Planner, suggests
the following:
- Seek advice. Start the conversation by asking
your parent’s advice: "I always admired the way you planned for
retirement. How did you do it?"
- Set a goal. Acknowledge beforehand what you
want the conversation to accomplish, whether it’s getting power of attorney
or setting up a family trust.
- Consider timing. These are never easy conversations,
so don't broach the topic late at night or after a long day. Better
yet, schedule the talk before, or during, a relaxing lunch.
- Listen. If your parents see you're listening,
they may offer the information you're seeking and be more willing to
compromise during what will likely be an emotional conversation.
- Don't delay. Elder care usually has two stages;
the planning stage and the crisis stage. Lack of family planning often
results in family members making poor decisions that can easily empty
bank accounts and retirement funds. If you consider that the average
elder requires 18 years of some kind of specialized care -- and Medicare
does not pay for the most common kind of elder care, custodial care
-- it pays to start the planning process early.
- Explore benefits. Even small businesses offer
flextime and family and medical leave for those juggling elder care
responsibilities and work.
Loverde also suggests asking the following questions:
- How much have your parents set aside for long-term
care?
- What is the cap on your parents' insurance coverage
coupled with government aid?
- What are your parents' wishes for long-term care?
- Do your parents want to be cared for at home with
part-time nursing care? Are they covered financially for at-home care?
- Do your parents need (and are they covered) for full-time
care in a nursing facility or hospice care in case of terminal illness?
- Which family member has power of attorney if your
parents become incapacitated?
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What Is Good Documentation?
Documentation isn't just important to prove cause for termination of an
employee. Done correctly, it provides a means of pinpointing areas for performance
improvement. What is good documentation?
Documentation should reflect your observations of actions and results. You
can also include observations of other managers who have worked with the
employee on projects in which you were not involved. It shouldn't reflect
hearsay or include opinions, even your own. (You may feel they are justified
but as a valid record they mean nothing.) Don't document rumors or personal
comments about an employee’s attitude or appearance. The documentation should
reflect behavior of the employee. For instance, you wouldn't write that
an employee is lazy if he or she refused to lend a hand to a co-worker with
a tight deadline. Rather you would write that the employee didn't offer
to help and refused when asked to lend a hand and that this is repeated
behavior on his or her part.
There are two kinds of records on employees you should keep:
- Incident reports. These document specific events,
including actions taken by the employee and the results, as well as
the dates of these incidents. The nature of the information can be positive
or negative. (Actually, in the case of the wrongful termination hearings,
ideally a manager should be able to point to both strengths and weaknesses
as evident from the incident report, and there should be such reports
for each and everyone of his or her subordinates.)
- Progress reports. These reports evaluate employees'
problems and successes as they work on team projects or other ongoing
assignments. They can also be used to record any training the employee
has taken or incidents that over time suggest a shift (either for good
or bad) in performance.
There are also two other documents. Whereas the previous two may be solely
for your use, these others are designed to be shared with employees. They
are:
- Performance memos. If you want to alert employees
to a problem or commend them for a fine job, write a "performance memo"
describing the situation. If the purpose of the memo is to describe
a counseling session you and the marginal employee had, describe the
agreed-upon action plan with its timetable. Be clear about the consequences
of failure to improve performance as you and the employee discussed.
- Warnings. Like performance memos, warning memos can
use standard memo formats unless your company has a specific form it
uses. The warning memo is prepared when there is no improvement in performance,
and it identifies the consequences of continued poor performance—termination.
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How to Set Standards of Performance
Too often, objectives set aren't clear to either the employee or manager,
or both. To avoid confusion standards and/or performance goals should adhere
to what is called the SMART model. That this, they must be:
Specific. They must state specifically what must be done.
Measurable. They must be quantifiable (for example, put in terms
of cost savings, productivity improvement, or profitability).
Attainable. They may require "stretch" but they should be within
reach.
Realistic. After discussion, both you and the employee have to agree
that the objectives an be attained. If an employee argues that they won't
be possible, then you need to hear him or her out. Together, you need to
find a way around the problem.
Time sensitive. There needs to be a date by which the objective or
outcome will be accomplished.
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How to Handle Confrontational Appraisals
If you have done your supervisory job, providing needed coaching when the
need arises, a poor assessment should not come as a surprise to an employee.
Still, we tend to hear what we want to hear. So sometimes you will sit down
with an employee and provide your assessment, even show your documentation,
and the employee will shout. Don't reciprocate, even if you are the target
of overflowing anger. Stay calm while the employee blows off steam. Until
he or she has had the chance to vent, the employee won't be ready to talk
about the situation with you.
Remain quiet. Don't interrupt. Any comment you make until the employee is
done will only escalate his or her anger. It suggests that you aren't interested
in an explanation. Rather than interrupt, maintain eye contact. Lean forward
to show you want to hear what the employee has to say. When the employee
pauses for a moment, acknowledge that she has the right to feel as she does.
Summarize what you have heard to verify that you've understood.
Once the employee has regained control, propose that you both review, once
again, your documentation. Focus on the performance, not on the consequences
of the performance (life bonuses or merit pay). Indicate that you want to
help by developing an employee development plan that will address the shortcomings
in the employee’s performance so these problems don't recur next year.
It’s important that the performance appraisal process isn't just the means
by which you compensate the employee for performance over the previous year.
It is also an employee development opportunity—and you need to take
advantage of it if you don't want to have to engage in employee counseling
and, if there is no job performance improvement, procedures toward termination.
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How to Make Empowerment a Success
Empowerment involves more than delegating a task to an employee. When you
empower, you give an employee not only a task to complete but the right
to make decisions toward completion of that task.
Too often efforts at empowerment are unsuccessful because managers haven't
done their job correctly. To ensure that you are successful in encouraging
employee stretch through empowerment:
- Train your employees for the opportunity. If you
don't, your employees won't be able to handle the work and, worse, their
self-confidence will be eroded, which will make it more difficult to
get them to attempt similar stretch in the future.
- Trust your employees. You have to have faith in their
abilities to make the right decisions. That means being patient if they
make the wrong decisions. Explain why the decisions were wrong, and
give them the foundation of information to make the right decisions
in the future.
- Be clear about your expectations. This is even more
important when you empower an employee than when you give him or her
a routine task to complete. Your employees won't be successful if they
have no clear idea of the results you want.
- Build on worker strengths. Build self-confidence
by pointing to those occasions when your employees made the right decisions
or exceeded expectations.
- Share information. Put the project, assignment, or
task that the employee is being empowered to do within the bigger picture.
Without the broader picture, they aren't likely to make the right decision.
- Encourage employees to believe in their potential
and capabilities. Encourage them to look at problems as challenges and
to look at their answers as opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities.
- Recognize employees' accomplishments. If you can't
provide financial rewards, look for more challenging assignments to
give employees further opportunity to demonstrate their abilities. Or,
better yet, see if you can redesign their jobs to make fuller use of
their newly discovered talents.
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Setting Ground Rules for Teams
Teams need self-discipline, and setting operational ground rules can achieve
that. Although the setting of ground rules might seem to fall under a team
leader’s responsibilities, ideally the rules should be set by the group
as a whole. This way, you get buy-in by the entire group.
Ground rules cover both team task and group dynamics. Which means the ground
rules should cover details like the time and length of meetings and the
responsibilities of members and the mission of the team but it should also
cover , how decisions will be reached, and most important how conflict within
the group will be handled. To help with the latter, ask team members to
consider what behaviors will detract from the team’s mission and what behaviors
will contribute to its achievement based on their experience on other teams.
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