Let’s face it, some days your team members seem capable and committed to the job – don’t you love it when the team is pumping and managing employees is easy. But then there are some days when managing employees seems just hard, and as a business owner, you wonder if they have the capabilities to do the job or perhaps they are just not committed to getting the job done.

As Business Coach Melbourne, I chat with and listen to business owners about your frustrations with employees, and why your leverage to a successful business is not quite working the way you need or expect it to. Do you recognize some of these issues with your employees:

  • Went off and did some work that wasn’t really necessary and as a result, an important deadline was missed
  • Had a big night out and slept in – either ran late or a no-show
  • Does about 50-80% of the job really well, but drops the ball on the rest
  • Objects to following your processes, or even sabotage it, and finds new ways each week to avoid the paperwork you need to monitor performance
  • Complains that the work expectations are too stressful and you expect too much from the person
  • Loves a few particular customers and spends all the time with them, but ignores or shortchanges many more
  • Does not make your customer feel special and respected during the sales or service process

What I know, and this is consistent across all employers in a range of industries, is that managers and business owners generally apply the same management style across the board to all employees. And so when we dive deeper into the inconsistency of employee performance, I uncover a surprising fact; managers fail to separate the capabilities of an employee from their commitment.

Capabilities are made up of three separate items:

  1. technical skills needed to do the job,
  2. communication skills to deal with team members and people external to your business, and
  3. planning/ organizational skills in how they plan their activities during their working hours.

These are 3 separate parts of the makeup of capabilities, and each needs to be assessed individually if you want to optimize employee performance.

On the other hand, commitment to your business and to the job includes an organization’s culture/environment, as well as the employees’ mindset in aligning and accepting the role.

But it also a function of where an employee is at with their learnings of your culture within the business and within the role or job they are doing. What do I mean by this?

There are 4 stages in the employee’s journey with an employer.

Stage 1 New to the job/role

Stage 2 Got some knowledge but not going as quick or as far as I would like within given timeframe

Stage 3 Feeling confident in the job/role overall, but some things are not quite right

Stage 4 In charge, self-managing

When managing employees, it is important to understand that your employee will have different challenges at each stage. These challenges pertain to capabilities and skills needed for the role, and the impact these have on your employee’s mindset and confidence, hence, motivation and commitment.

So your homework for this week is to assess at which stage your employees are at, and how you would rank them each at the levels of technical capabilities, their internal and external communications, and then their planning and organizational skills. To do this effectively, you will need to set out your benchmark at each of the 4 stages and then assess the employee against the relevant stage for them – the easiest way to do this is to create a simple table to give you a snapshot of the status today.

In my next blog, I will share some of my insights about the difference management styles. As a Melbourne Business Coach, I am confident that my approach will provide you with more insight and a better understanding than before – our aim is to get better performing employees, more consistently, and for the business owner managing employees, a better structure to assess the employee’s journey and requirements to build your dream team.

Which means less stress for you as a business owner! Sounds like a good idea to me! What about you?