Successful Ways to Confront Problem Employees

My last blog was about my fears about confronting a problem employee. As a small business owner, part-time pros, I have to not only manage my own staff but often counsel clients on how to manage theirs. A good friend and colleague, Shannon, suggested that I follow up with some tips on how to confront employees “correctly”. So with the help of google (not sure what we did before this) and a lot of soul searching I came up with the following.
Always remember your goal as manager/ owner of a business is to confront undesirable job behaviors, and to confront the employee about his/her behaviors. Many supervisors put off confronting an employee, but they should attempt to correct the problem when it is first recognized. The sooner a problem is acknowledged, the sooner performance can improve. Confrontation can be very uncomfortable. What is important is that you do not let your discomfort stop you from doing your job.
When confronting an employee try to implement some or all of the following:
• Do establish the levels of work performance you expect.
• Determine what is acceptable and unacceptable to you and communicate this to employees.
• Do document all absenteeism, tardiness, incidents on the job, and poor performance. Be specific with dates, times, and people.
• Do be consistent. Treat all employees equally.
• Do base the session on WORK PERFORMANCE, not on personal issues.
• Do be firm. Be direct. Speak with authority.
• Do be prepared to deal with the employee’s resistance and denial, as well as hostility. (
• Do avoid talking to the employee about personal problems.
• Do get a commitment from the employee as to what steps he or she will take to improve work performance. Continue to document.
• Set a time frame to have a follow up discussion – 1-2 months later to discuss improvements and if improvements have not occurred consider termination.
Please feel free to e-mail questions to me directly- you can go to my companies contact us page and I will get a message instantly: http://www.parttimepros.net/Contact_Us.aspx?pageid=35

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