What to Do When Employee Performance Dips

Is the performance of your employees in a slump?

Perhaps they aren't meeting their monthly sales quota. Or there has been a noticeable decrease in the number of leads and prospects. Or maybe your company's profit per employee has gone down.

Regardless of the metrics you're using to measure employee productivity, once there's an established trend of a performance dip, you must act before it's too late. But what are some of the most effective measures you can take to correct the dip in employee performance?

You've come to the right place for expert advice, so keep reading!

Establish the Core Reasons for the Declining Employee Performance

It's normal for the performance of your employee to ebb and flow over a period of time. After all, they are humans, not robots.

However, when their performance declines steadily over a couple of months, it's usually because of something. The first step to fixing the performance dip is to get to the root of the cause.

The most effective way to do this is to collect feedback from the employees. You can use anonymous surveys or face-to-face conversations depending on the nature of the relationship you've built with them.

Some of the common reasons for poor employee performance include:

  • Lack of adequate skills to do the job
  • Lack of proper equipment and tools
  • Toxic workplace culture
  • Burnout

Once you have the information, you'll be better positioned to implement the right strategies to improve performance.

Offer Incentives and Rewards

Did you about 52 percent of employees in the U.S. do their work without any enthusiasm?

It doesn't matter whether you've provided your employees with the latest tools and built an amazing workplace. If your employees lack self-motivation, they won't fire on all cylinders.

You can hire these business motivational speakers to help inspire your employees, but couple it with incentives and rewards and you'll see positive results. Running an incentives and rewards program can spark that extra fire your employees need to up their performance.

That being said, ensure the incentives and rewards you're offering excite your employees. For example, if your employees love working remotely but are only entitled to 1 day of remote work a week, a good performance-based incentive can be an extra day for those who meet the targets.

Tighten Your Performance Review Program

63 percent of U.S. companies perform annual employee performance reviews, according to a 2021 survey. If you're among those companies, that's a good start. But when your employees' performance is on a decline, you need to do better than annual reviews.

Tightening your program and conducting the reviews every three months, for instance, will enable you to catch and address performance declines before they get worse. Plus, your employees will appreciate their regular feedback on their performance.

Don't Let Poor Employee Performance Ruin Your Company

Your employees are your most valuable resource, but you need them to put their best foot forward. Unfortunately, employee performance can decline even when you're doing your best for them. The key to fixing the issue is to identify the primary cause and implement appropriate corrective measures.

Running a business requires constant learning, so keep tabs on our blog for more insightful articles.