HR Student's Point-of-View

By Anonymous

We Can’t Fix Everything

A few months ago, a co-worker and I were tasked with putting an under performing employee on corrective action. The meeting itself was one of the most gut wrenching experiences of my life.  In less than ten minutes, I watched this person go from a completely together, driven, professional young business person, to an unstable wreck.  And in the meetings that followed over the next couple of months, we learned that this individual’s life, both inside and outside of work, had quickly begun to crumble. 

I couldn’t help but wonder, did we do something wrong?  Were we not sympathetic enough during that initial meeting?  Had we come off too harsh?  I had sat in with this same co-worker on numerous occasions to deliver similar messages to employees, all of whom were able to keep it together.

In my experience thus far, I have seen employees go in one of two directions after being put on corrective action.  They either become extremely defensive and shortly give their resignation, or they make a conscious decision to do everything in their power to improve their performance (I always hope for the latter).  But this reaction was new to me. 

For the first time I realized that it isn’t all about how we handle the situation.  We can’t predict how an employee will react to bad news.  And often times, there may be things going on in the person’s life outside of the job that will influence how they take the news.  No matter how prepared we are, or how good we are at our jobs, we can’t always guide difficult conversations and situations in the direction that we want them to go.  And as much as you want to help someone succeed and move in the right direction, sometimes they might be beyond help. 

It was a learning experience, but I kind of wish it was a lesson I didn’t have to learn. 

Comments

[Ellen Doren]

If this employee was "a completely together, driven, professional young business person" how could they also be an "under performing employee"? Who was doing the assessment?
Perhaps the underperforming behavior went on way too long before it was addressed.