A disengaged employee often stands out because of poor performance. Their performance typically is due to an absence of motivation, lack of skills needed to properly complete a task, team disagreements, personal issues, or not being challenged in the role.
As a manager, you must talk with your disengaged employee about their poor performance. Otherwise, your team engagement and productivity will decrease. This lowers job satisfaction, employee retention, and your bottom line.
Follow these guidelines to discuss poor performance with a disengaged employee.
Schedule an Employee Meeting
Find an appropriate time to discuss your disengaged employee’s poor performance. You want to avoid waiting too long and further decreasing team performance.
Clarify Employee Performance Metrics
Remind your disengaged employee of their performance expectations and metrics for success. Then, show how the employee’s poor performance is not reaching these expectations.
Include the employee activities you tracked for the success measurements. Show how these activities did not reach the anticipated levels for success.
Ask Questions
Find out whether there is something about your disengaged employee’s work situation you do not know about but should. This shows trust, concern, and empathy for your employee.
Actively listen to your employee. Restate what you hear to check your understanding.
Ask follow-up questions to gather more information. Focus on finding the root cause of your employee’s poor performance.
Develop a Solution
Work with your disengaged employee to create concrete steps to improve their poor performance. Include how you can help reach this objective. Involving the employee in the process encourages buy-in for the solution.
Create a timeline to implement the change and a measurement for success. Include what will happen if the employee does not reach the desired performance level. This may involve disciplinary action.
Follow Up
Meet with your employee at the designated time to follow up on their performance. Discuss any changes you noted and whether your employee reached their performance expectations. Include what the next steps are based on the outcome.
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