Sounds strange doesn’t it? Many managers cause good employees to leave by constantly heaping on more work, while they let poorer performers get away with doing less. It is more common than you think. Let’s look at some examples and how to correct this problem.

Punishing Good Employees

Here are some examples of how managers punish their good performers:

• Ask them to help out by staying late – because they usually say yes and are helpful, it’s easy for the manager to keep asking
• Ask them to help poor performers – getting your good employees to do the work of your poor employees is the ultimate insult
• No time for training – good employees cannot take advantage of training, development or upgrading because they are too busy making up for poor performers
• Not discussing performance – holding back feedback so the good employee receives little reinforcement
• Focusing too much attention on problems and not on the good things - even good employees can become less good if they see that the boss only focuses attention on what is wrong
• Hire weak coworkers – by hiring even more poor performers, the good employee see no way out
• Promote them to be the boss of poor performers - and do not allow them to fix the problem
• By not addressing the poor performers – good employees hate it when the manager decides it’s easier to put up with bad performers, than to confront them and fix the problem

Rewarding poor performers

Stop these behaviors which only reinforce poor performance and tick off your good performers:

• Having good employees help them complete their work
• Giving them overtime to complete their work
• Ignore them so they can do what they want
• Not discussing performance – so they can continue doing poorly
• Expect less of them
• Don’t ask them to anything extra

Tips to correct this problem

• Identify the employees who are not performing and fix the problem
• Turn them around by focusing on something good, build on it
• Provide training, motivate, or ultimately terminate
• Clarify expectations of employees
• Treat good employees well – show appreciation for a job well done

Consider providing training, development or coaching for the leaders in your organization so they can positively influence the morale, attitude and productivity of employees.

Unique Training & Development provides outstanding training and coaching to help managers identify and correct the one or two behaviors that keep them from achieving full potential for themselves and their work groups.

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Call 800-622-6437, or 519-685-2116 or email info@uniquedevelopment.com