When a client becomes concerned with staff performance or behaviour there are several things we investigate.

We’ll establish what are the specifics of the performance issue considering things like:

• What are all the manager’s performance expectations of a competent person?
• How well communicated are expectations?
• Is the job spec out of date or woolly?
• Are success measures clear and has interim feedback been communicated?

We’ll then find out why has performance dipped below acceptable levels. The reasons may include:

• Knowledge – the person does not know what needs to be done or how to do it
• Skills – the person knows what to do and how to do it but needs practice
• Attitude – the person is not motivated to do it, there is no positive consequence for good performance and no negative consequence for poor performance
• Capability – no matter what is done to help, the person will never be able to perform to the required standard – you’ve got a recruitment or a promotion issue
• Resources – the person is working flat out and doing as best as can be expected in the circumstances, however does not have the team or equipment needed
• Processes – a poor process is getting in the way of the work being done efficiently

Once the reasons have been identified then the solutions become a bit clearer too: further training or coaching, further practice, arranging a consequence which matters, changing the role, changing the resources, changing the process or perhaps as a last resort change the person.