Employee Relations
The everyday matters that become expensive if they're handled badly.
Underperformance is usually tolerated for a year before it's addressed
By the time an employer asks for help with a performance issue, the pattern is familiar. The problem has been obvious for months. Several managers have mentioned it informally. Nothing is documented. And now something has forced the issue. A customer complaint, a safety incident, or a manager who has finally had enough.
The difficulty is that starting a formal process after a year of apparent acceptance looks, to the employee and often to a tribunal, like something other than performance management.
It's still fixable. It just needs doing properly.
You might be dealing with
- An employee whose performance has been below standard for a long time
- A capable person whose behaviour is the problem rather than their output
- A supervisor who avoids the conversation and escalates instead
- Performance issues that emerged after a role change or restructure
- Someone on a performance plan that isn't working
- Underperformance where a health condition may be a factor
- A performance process complicated by a complaint being raised
What's included
- Diagnosis Establishing whether this is genuinely capability, conduct, health, role design or management: because the process differs, and getting the category wrong wastes months.
- Standards Making the expected standard explicit, measurable and documented. Most performance processes fail here.
- Process design Meeting sequence, what's said, what's recorded, timeframes and review points.
- Documentation Improvement plans, meeting records, warnings and correspondence: clear enough to be understood and specific enough to be defensible.
- Manager coaching Preparing the person delivering it, including for the reactions they'll get.
- Attendance Supporting or leading meetings where the matter is sensitive or the manager is too close to it.
- Exit or resolution Whichever it turns out to be, handled cleanly.
What makes a process defensible
- A clear standard, communicated The employee must know what's expected and how they're falling short: specifically, not "attitude."
- A genuine opportunity to improve Real time, real support, real review. A plan designed to fail is visible as such.
- Contemporaneous documentation Records made at the time, not reconstructed later.
- Consistency If two people perform similarly and only one is managed, the difference will be examined.
- Proportionality The response fits the shortfall and the history.
Common questions
How long should a performance process take?
Long enough for genuine improvement to be possible, depending on the role and the issue. Too short looks like a formality; open-ended helps nobody.
We've never documented anything. Is it too late?
No, but you're effectively starting now. Trying to rely on undocumented history is where employers get into trouble. Start properly from this point.
The employee has raised a complaint since we started. What now?
Handle the complaint properly on its own merits. The performance process usually shouldn't simply stop, but how the two run alongside each other matters if the matter is later characterised as adverse action. Get advice before deciding either way.
What if there's a health issue?
That changes the process significantly, including obligations around adjustments and how any medical information is handled. Don't proceed on the ordinary performance path without advice.
Ready to talk?
Tell us what you need and we'll take it from there.
Related services
All services →Terminations & Dismissals
Valid reason, fair process, proportionate outcome, and documentation that stands up if the decision is challenged.