Truly, there is no secret strategy for employee performance that would fit all. There is no one-size-fits-all approach here.

And every HR manager already knows that. You can read a case study about the success of one company and adopt that strategy to achieve results. But, you may end up making no difference. Of course, sometimes, you might. But, not always.

Instead of following a strategy for improving employee performance, use these tricks to encourage better performance. Through some common steps and collective changes in HR behavior, culture, structure, and management, things can be modified.

Let’s see how this can be achieved.

Know Yourself!

Before you dive and help your employee improve their performance, you need to analyze yourself. Being the HR manager, you are required to know your performance scale, likes, dislikes, expectations from the company, how you communicate, and how you respond.

All these factors impact your employees as well. For instance, the way you respond will impact your issue resolving capabilities, which will affect your employees.

Consider all these questions:

• How well and quickly you are able to resolve issues?
• How well do you react in case of stressful situations?
• How formal or informal are you?
• How blunt, humane, or interactive are you?

Looking at all these factors and features through the lens will help you analyze what is not working for your organization. Take being blunt, for example. Some employees may love it, some may not. So, you choose the side that is not okay with it and adopt a tone which is feasible for everyone.

Common Problems

The performance of your employees may be low due to one or more of the following reasons:

• The low individual performance which may arise when employee’s output for work is less than promised or expected.
• A wrong attitude towards situations which means responding negatively when a situation of stress arises.
• Negative attitude towards the team which arises when the employee has an issue working in a team. He or she may not be a team player.
• The quality of work is not up to the mark or constantly decreasing due to some underlying issue.
• While the quality of work is excellent, the timelines and ability to meet deadlines is missing.
• Uptight attitude towards office culture such as refusing to follow the client’s instructions for the project.

Collaborate

Now that you have assessed your abilities and your employees’ abilities, it is time to talk. The best method is one-to-one talking. Just sit with the employee and discuss the issues. Understand what is the issue behind this behavior or lack of performance and try to sort out the issue. Here’s how it goes:

• Understand employee’s nature.
• Align that nature to the company’s culture.
• Analyze whether you are providing the right environment or not.
• Make changes when things are wrong at your end.
• Then, sit and talk about what the employee thinks.
• Again rectify the remaining issues or help the employee.

For example, when your employee is not able to concentrate due to personal life issues, ask him to take leaves. Assure that his job is safe and he can relax a bit. It is required to support and encourage your employees in critical circumstances.

Create Opportunities

Collaborate with valuable universities and educational institutes to provide the right growth opportunities to your employees.

Just making a knowledge bank is sometimes enough to help employees educate themselves.

You need to think about the personal growth of employees to encourage them to work harder and improve performance.

Focus on Team

Sometimes, you may encounter an employee who simply doesn’t fit in the equation. While the other employees of the team may be excelling, he may be delaying deliveries or following a poor schedule. Observing the performance of the other employees can further discourage this employee.

Instead of letting him sink in the inferiority, encourage you’re A-performers to uplift low performers. When A-performers talk to low performers and try to make them comfortable, employees start learning from each other.

Check External-Internal Influences

This is the first thing that the HR should focus on – right from the first day of the employee. Many employees gain success in their career but due to lack of proper training, they lag in their methods. The use of hit-and-try method than industry recommended methods. This doesn’t mean that this employee is not worthy enough.

Of course, if he can achieve success with hit-and-trial, imagine what would he do with proper training?

Hence, train such employees for improving their performance.

Inspire, Motivate

Always keep inspiring employees with recognition and rewards. Allow them to feel motivated and work for themselves.

Conclusion

Improving the performance of the employees is necessary to upsurge the growth graph of the organization. Hence, HR managers should take careful steps to motivate employees toward better performance.