Do Disengaged Employees Impact Engaged Employees?

It's no secret that people in organizations have an impact on those around them...both positively and negatively. According to Gallup, 72% of US workers are not engaged in their work. To what extent the exact level of disengagement might be, we can't say for sure, but any material level of disengagement will affect overall results.

And, also according to Gallup, 18% of disengaged employees actually undermine the success of fellow employees....18%! So what we have here is a group of employees who who are disengaged at some level who intentionally or unintentionally wreak enough havoc among other employees that the actual impact of disengagement is much bigger than one might imagine.

Here are a few ways that could happen:

- The disengaged employees talk disparagingly enough about the company or management on a regular basis that the engaged employee starts to have doubts and becomes somewhat less engaged.
- The disengaged employee's work is sub par and/or the level of productivity is so low that other employees become irritated and blame management for allowing it or causing it to happen.
- The engaged employee's work is dependent on work performed by the disengaged employee and productivity/output of the engaged employee suffers.
- The engaged employee intentionally disrupts or sabotages the work of the engaged employee.

The bottom line is that engagement, while perhaps an overused term, is a real issue in most organizations. It's important to have a plan to minimize disengagement and to "manage out" those individuals who have a negative impact on those around them. Is that plan in place in your organization?

Could It Be Me?

When an employee's performance falters, the natural reaction is to blame the employee first. Employees are responsible for at least meeting expectations and when they don't they are surely doing something wrong, aren't working hard enough or just can't do the job. Right? Well probably, but is the manager doing his or her job effectively to help that employee be successful?

An employee's performance is often tied directly to the quality of management oversight and assistance. The role of a manager is complex. The following list offers an idea as to what the manager should generally be doing with respect to supervising employees:

- Hiring people well suited to the job.
- Establishing rapport and trust with employees.
- Setting clear, demanding and reasonable expectations for employees.
- Communicating effectively on a regular basis.
- Training and development of employees.
- Planning and defining projects and work.
- Enforcing accountability.
- Creating an environment where high performance can occur
- Providing ongoing informal and formal feedback about performance to employees.
- Coaching and counseling of employees.
- Employee discipline when necessary.

When an employee is struggling, managers should first ask this question; "Am I doing my job to the best of my ability?". There are many cases where an ineffective manager has a profound negative impact on one or more employees. When a manager is ineffective, even an employee who has a history of good performance can be affected in a negative manner.

Looking at the list above, how many of the tasks do your managers do consistently well? Managing people requires constant attention to your own performance. The trickle down effect of marginal management on employee performance can't be overstated. But, as we know, it can be difficult for some managers to admit that they are contributing to an employee's performance problems.

Employees who might ordinarily struggle under a less effective manager sometimes flourish under a manager who consistently does his or her job well. But why? A good manager understands their employees' weaknesses and works with them to strengthen those weaknesses. The challenge in managing people is that is takes hard work and a lot of time to do it well. Most managers are unwilling or unable to put in the time and effort required to help employees be as successful as possible.

Effective managers tend to be willing to spend the time necessary to help their employees do their jobs well. They don't immediately dismiss the employee as the problem. Rather they work with them to develop their skills and create an environment where the employees don't feel threatened if they do make a mistake.

Obviously, there are employees who will never be able to do the job they are currently attempting to do. How the manager deals with these employees is critical to the performance of the work unit as well. Too many managers ignore problem employees. Left unchecked, problem employees not only underperform, but they can cause those around them to do so as well.

When every attempt has been made to coach and assist an employee to higher levels of performance, but it becomes obvious that the employee just cannot do the job, it's time to deal with that employee either by finding a job they can do well or by following the prescribed discipline and termination process.

When an employee is struggling to meet expectations, ask why? Look first at yourself. Are you really managing effectively? Use the list above and continually critique yourself in terms of how well you are doing each of the things on that list. Ask yourself if an employee's performance problems could be associated with your ineffectiveness and, if so, in what manner. Ask your employees to give you feedback about your performance. Let them do so in a nonthreatening way. Ask your peers to do the same.

Develop A Training Plan Based On Skill Gaps

Since training is an expensive proposition, it is critical that training dollars be spent wisely. We find that far too many companies allow their employees to select the training they will participate in or they put everyone through the same training.

It is a fact that very few employees are a perfect fit for the jobs they hold. This means that they will need to be coached and trained to help strengthen skills they might lack or be deficient in. Understanding where each employee's "skill gaps" are is important to developing a training plan that helps enhance overall company performance. Putting employees through training they don't need is a waste of money. There needs to be a very targeted approach to training employees. A shotgun approach is wasteful and frustrating for all involved.

For each employee develop a good understanding of what skills they lack to perform the jobs they hold. This can take some time to develop and are often uncovered over a period of time. A coaching assessment tool can be of great assistance inspeeding up this process by identifying the deficiencies of the employee against job requirements. The Prevue Assessment is an excellent tool for creating a training plan for new and current employees by uncovering areas where the employee lacks sufficient skills or tendencies.

A training plan will help focus training on skills that are critical to employee and company success. And it will be based on specific and individual needs rather than generalized ideas about what training is needed. The training plan should take the form of a matrix that shows each employee and the specific type of coaching or training required. Once this is determined, the task is to find training programs that meet your needs in terms of delivering excellent quality at a reasonable cost.

We are firm believers that sending someone off to a public seminar or workshop is rarely as effective as individualized coaching, mentoring and training. An employee must be mentored and coached to higher levels of performance and a one or two time exposure to concepts and theories is usually not retained and, therefore, not very effective.

Look for training providers that offer individualized and group training with follow-up and mentoring. Mentoring helps isolate the specific needs of the employee and allows the mentor/trainer to instill specific skills over a period of time. This approach helps immensely in getting the skills to "stick" with the employee.

Remember that training should be focused, individualized and carefully planned for. A haphazard approach to training will only frustrate you and your employees.

Inventory Your Employees Regularly

The title of this article sounds cold and impersonal. But it's not meant to be. You and your people are the number one key to the success, or failure, of your business or work unit. Taking inventory of your employees simply means taking stock of the quality of your people in order assess:
1) how well you have been hiring,
2) how well you have been training them,
3) how well they are being managed and
4) how healthy your company is likely to be.

We readily recognize that virtually all businesses of any size have some marginal performers. Our definition of a high performing employee is someone who consistently meets or exceeds reasonable, but demanding expectations. Think about your business or work unit in terms of the performance level of your employees. How many would qualify under this definition? Marginal and weak employees are defined as those who consistently fail to meet reasonable, but demanding expectations. Also, there are employees that seem to have potential to be high performers, but tend to fall just short of qualifying as high performers for whatever reason(s). They are the employees that meet or exceed expectations most of the time but slide back occasionally. Then there are those that seem to drift between high performance and marginal perfromance more often and, therefore, fall into the category of inconsistent performers.

Other categories in which to place employees are:
1) those who have been promoted beyond their ability and are struggling in their current job, but performed well in their previous position and
2) people who have been promoted and have not proven themselves in any capacity within the organization.
The latter category is especially perplexing, but does exist in many organizations because these employees have either played the right games or because management hasn't recognized or has ignored important deficiencies in performance.

So how should you go about inventorying employees? It will require either you or a group of people objectively evaluating your people based on the definitions offered above. Then we suggest doing an actual head count for each of the following categories:

High performers.
Potential high performers.
Inconsistent performers.
Marginal or weak performers who will never be high performers.
Employees that have been promoted beyond their ability and have virtually no chance of being high performers in their current position, but could be in another position with the company.
Employees that have been promoted beyond their ability and have not proven they can be high performers in any capacity within the company.
Ok, so you've done the head count. Now what? First of all, what does your inventory reveal about the quality of your work force? Does your company seem to be top heavy in marginal or inconsistent performers? What percentage of all employees are high performers or potential high performers? We like to use the 95/5 rule in terms of performance. Our philosophy is that businesses should strive to have 95 percent of their employees legitimately fall into the high performer or potential high performer categories. Without question, there are few organizations that can legitimately claim that they meet this target. It is our belief that to hit this target, businesses must do a lot of things very well in terms of hiring, training and managing employees.

Most businesses don't do all three of these things consistently well enough to reach the 95% target. And most businesses don't do a good enough job of "cleansing" themselves of employees that simply don't have a good chance of becoming high performers in the jobs they hold. In fact, we would argue that there are too many organizations where the ratio is reversed. In other words they have 5% of their employee base represented by high or potentially high performers with the others falling into the other categories. And there are many more companies that fall somewhere in between this level and the desired target. How does your company or work unit stack up?