How to manage a bad performance?

One of the major issues we’re facing in recruitment, but also other sectors, is people not performing well. Within our company, we don’t base our decisions only on cash performance (what we call in recruitment “billing”) but at each quarterly evaluation we value:

1. The Results based on a quarterly target given beginning of the year,

2. The Activities or kpi’s — key performance indicators — the means to achieve the results,

3. The Attitude.

Results

The target we set up to our consultants is based on :

1. Experience — number of years in recruitment,
2. Seniority level — for each salary rise, we naturally expect the consultants to increase the level of income they generate.

Most recruitment agencies only look at the figures and if the consultant didn’t get his target during a specific period, they would immediately let them go.

I strongly believe that, if someone is not or less performing, this can be the consequence of:

• Lack of motivation
  We would then ask him the question about the reasons.
• Lack of trainings
  Maybe this consultant needs to be trained on specific skills he’s lacking, whether it’s negotiation, succeeding candidate/client meetings, sales techniques or even digital marketing, everyone now needs to understand how the online tools are working in order to differentiate themselves.
• Wrong strategy
  If we’re asking someone to bring in as many new clients as possible without being able to deliver at some point, there is no way this team member will be able to perform and hit his target.
• Personal situation
  We always take this into consideration as, let’s face it, everyone can have a setback due to personal bad news and we, as a company, need to empathetic to that.

That’s why, if someone has not hit his quarterly target, we would immediately consider the 2 others points.

Activities

My partner in crime always says: “it’s a number game” — the more targets you reach, the more chances you have to increase your performance and make successful placements.

During an evaluation, when we look the employee’s objectives, we discuss whether:

• The activities that have been set are in line with the market needs,
• The sales conversion ffrom getting a lead to making an actual placement is good,
• The consultant has actually thought about what he did or if he just reached the KPI’s because he had to perform — like a robot.

“You can’t improve what you can’t measure”

By setting SMART objectives to your employees, it will also help you to improve each team member’s targets and by this the company’s performance.

Attitude

Simon Sinek said “you don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills”.

The man is absolutely right and during each good or bad recruitment we did in our company, we had the confirmation that attitude is the real key to performance.

When I hire people, the first thing I look for during the interview is the sparkle in their eyes. Passion is one of the key drivers and I’m convinced that passionate people always give the best of themselves. They might be more impatient and sometimes more difficult to manage but you can go everywhere with passion.

We’ve seen people with absolutely no sales skills when they arrive, learning fast, thinking outside the box and progressing much faster than the others just because they’re passionate.

Our values within Gentis are: Passion, Ambition, Dedication, Integrity, Efficiency, Performance.

If candidates have the relevant skills and experience but don’t stick to (some of) your values, don’t hire them as, sooner or later, you or they, will be disappointed.

Keys to help managing bad performance

There is no miracle but here are some additional questions you should ask yourself if you’re facing bad performance:

• Does this person have the right attitude to perform?
• Is this person working hard enough to hit his targets?
• Is he receiving enough support from colleagues/management?
• Does he receive enough recognition about his work?

And a little food for thought: emotional reaction never helped anyone fix bad performance, however by actually listening to people you might find the right solution to fix performance.

“We have 2 ears to listen, and only 1 mouth to speak” …