How to Handle Employee Performance Issues: Match the Cause to the Right HR Solution
Part of our role as Talent Management professionals is to close the gaps between the performance we desire in our organizations and the performance that currently exists. We do this with limited time, funds and support. PPS International Limited has created a tool that matches the reasons and causes of performance gaps to potential solutions. And, we scope the amount of resources needed to make the solution a reality if selected.
This guide publishes the tool in full as two tables and adds the method around it: what a performance gap is, the nine causes of employee performance problems and the questions that reveal each one, how to handle employee performance issues step by step, why a skill-versus-will diagnosis misses most causes, what the manager's conversation looks like once the cause is known and how talent development leaders use the pattern across teams. It sits within our performance support tools work, because several of the least expensive solutions in the tool are performance support: job aids, documentation and information at the point of need.
What is a performance gap?
A performance gap is the difference between the performance an organization needs from a role or a team and the performance it is getting, stated in terms that can be observed and measured. "The team is not proactive" is a complaint. "The team resolves 78 percent of customer issues on first contact against a target of 95 percent" is a gap. The difference matters because a gap stated in observable terms can be traced to a cause, and a complaint cannot.
Gaps come in two forms. A results gap is a shortfall in output: sales, error rates, cycle time, customer scores. A behavior gap is a shortfall in what people do: managers who skip one-on-ones, sales representatives who do not update the pipeline, supervisors who avoid safety conversations. Behavior gaps usually show up before results gaps, and the diagnosis we share below supports both.
Nine causes of employee performance problems
Most performance problems get one of two labels, a training problem or an attitude problem, and both labels are wrong often enough to be expensive. The tool sorts the causes of performance gaps into nine categories. Only two of them, knowledge and skill, are things training can fix.
The categories extend a framework Thomas Gilbert originally published in 1978. Gilbert sorted the conditions behind poor performance into three environmental factors, the information people receive, the resources they work with and the incentives attached to performing, and three individual factors, knowledge, capacity and motives, and argued that the environmental side is usually the more economical place to start [1]. We still find these to be true in performance management work today. Robert Mager and Peter Pipe supplied the test that separates a skill problem from everything else: could the person do it if their life depended on it? If the answer is yes, it is not a skill deficiency, and training is not the fix [2].
| Cause | What Is Included | Questions That Reveal Cause |
|---|---|---|
| Agreements and expectations (unknown or mismatched) | People are working to a different standard than the one they are judged by, or to no standard at all | Can the person state what is expected and by when? Does their manager state it the same way? |
| Consequences for performance (unlinked or inappropriate) | Good performance and poor performance lead to the same outcome | What happens when someone does this well? What happens when someone does not? |
| Data and information (not currently available) | People cannot access the data and historical information they need in order to take action | What would the person need to know at the moment of decision, and do they have access to this information? |
| Environmental support (lack of) | The culture, the workload or the job design works against the desired behavior | If the person did this well, what in the organization would get in the way? |
| Individual ability and capacity | The role asks for something the person cannot supply, no matter the support | Has anyone with this profile done this role well? What did selection look for? |
| Knowledge deficiency | The person does not know what to do, or why | Can they explain the process, the policy or the product? |
| Motives and desire | The person can do it and knows how, and does not want to | What do they say they want from the role? Was the work ever done willingly? |
| Resources and tools (unavailable or out of date) | The systems, budget or equipment do not allow the standard to be met | What do top performers use that this person does not have? |
| Skill deficiency | The person knows what to do and cannot yet do it fluently | Could they do it if their life depended on it? Have they practiced with feedback? |
In our experience the first two rows explain many performance problems, and they are the least expensive to fix.
How to handle employee performance issues: diagnose before you prescribe
Handling a performance issue well benefits from considering causes of performance gaps in a certain order, eliminating causes that are least intrusive and expensive to fix before investing further. Here is the sequence we recommend.
- Describe the gap in observable terms. What is expected, what happens instead, how often, since when and what it costs. Write it down. These become the measure of success for the role. They also become the basis for setting agreements and expectations.
- Rule out the environment first. Work through expectations, consequences, information, environmental support and resources with the questions in the table, in conversation with the employee and the manager. When the cause sits in one of those five rows, changing the person is unlikely to change the result.
- Look at the individual. Examine knowledge, skill, capacity and motives, in that order, because the first two are the easiest to confirm and the least expensive to fix.
- Match the cause to solutions and select those most available given organizational resources. Use the tables below. We've listed a rating for time, funds and stakeholder support for each potential solution, so a job aid (fast, inexpensive, little support needed) can be compared with a compensation change (slow, moderate cost, high support).
- Agree the plan, act and review. Agree the cause and the solution, set a review date and measure against the sentence from step 1. Most causes have a fast, inexpensive first move, such as clarifying the expectation, giving the feedback or supplying the job aid. Take it before the larger investment.
Matching performance problems to HR solutions: the tool
The tables below reproduce our downloadable tool on matching performance problems to HR solutions in full. For each cause, the potential solutions are listed with three ratings: the time needed to implement and maintain the solution, the relative investment required and the level of support needed from stakeholders for it to succeed. On the printable version these appear as one to three marks; here they read low, medium and high. Several solutions appear under more than one cause, and their ratings can differ by cause because the scale of the change differs.
Environmental causes
| Cause | Potential Solution | Time | Funds | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agreements and expectations | Job documentation | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Agreements and expectations | Manager actions | Low | Low | High |
| Agreements and expectations | Performance improvement plans | Medium | Low | High |
| Agreements and expectations | Personal performance objective-setting processes | High | Medium | Medium |
| Agreements and expectations | Team building | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| Consequences for performance | Compensation links and systems | High | Medium | High |
| Consequences for performance | Feedback and information on performance | High | Medium | High |
| Consequences for performance | Incentive systems and links | High | Medium | High |
| Consequences for performance | Reward and recognition programs | High | Medium | High |
| Consequences for performance | Manager actions | Low | Low | High |
| Consequences for performance | Terminations (without replacement costs) | Low | Low | High |
| Data and information | Data access (databases, security restrictions and similar) | Medium | High | High |
| Data and information | Professional conferences | Low | Low | Low |
| Data and information | Job documentation | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Data and information | Job aids and skill cards | Low | Low | Low |
| Data and information | Access to reference books and online references | Low | Low | Low |
| Environmental support | Corporate communication | Medium | Low | High |
| Environmental support | Culture change initiatives | High | Medium | High |
| Environmental support | Job and work redesign | High | High | High |
| Environmental support | Manager actions | Low | Low | High |
| Resources and tools | Budget allocation | Medium | Low | High |
| Resources and tools | Job documentation | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Resources and tools | Job aids and skill cards | Low | Low | Low |
| Resources and tools | Technology additions and upgrades | High | High | High |
Individual causes
| Cause | Potential Solution | Time | Funds | Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Individual ability and capacity | Career planning and development | High | Medium | High |
| Individual ability and capacity | Staffing and selection | Medium | Medium | High |
| Individual ability and capacity | Terminations | Low | Low | High |
| Knowledge deficiency | Case study reviews | Medium | Low | Low |
| Knowledge deficiency | Corporate communication | Medium | Low | High |
| Knowledge deficiency | Education | High | High | Low |
| Knowledge deficiency | Job documentation | Medium | Medium | Low |
| Knowledge deficiency | Reading sources | Low | Low | Low |
| Motives and desire | Career planning and development | High | Medium | High |
| Motives and desire | Coaching | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| Motives and desire | Compensation links and systems | High | Medium | High |
| Motives and desire | Incentive systems and links | High | Medium | High |
| Motives and desire | Manager actions | Low | Low | High |
| Motives and desire | Reward and recognition programs | High | Medium | High |
| Motives and desire | Staffing and selection | Medium | Medium | High |
| Motives and desire | Team building | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| Skill deficiency | After-action reviews | Low | Low | Low |
| Skill deficiency | Coaching | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| Skill deficiency | Education | High | High | Low |
| Skill deficiency | Job aids and skill cards | Low | Low | Low |
| Skill deficiency | Job shadowing | Low | Low | High |
| Skill deficiency | Self-paced learning | Low | Low | Low |
| Skill deficiency | Training (company-sponsored or external) | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Two patterns stand out. First, manager actions appear under four causes with the same rating each time: low time, low funds, high support. They are the fastest lever in the tool and the one that depends most on the manager's own manager backing it. Second, education appears under two causes and training under one, and education carries the highest time and funds ratings in the tool, which is the reason to diagnose before you prescribe.
Skill or will? Why a two-factor diagnosis is not enough
When performance gaps are present, managers can play a role in development. The skill-will matrix, a coaching model that sorts people into four quadrants by how much skill and how much will they bring to a task, is popular because it gives a manager a coaching style for each quadrant: direct the person with low skill and low will, guide the one with low skill and high will, excite the one with high skill and low will and delegate to the one with both [3]. For choosing how to coach an individual, it is useful. For deciding what to fix, it is incomplete, because it assumes the cause sits inside the person.
A sales representative who does not update data in CRM systems may look like a willingness problem and turn out to be a consequences problem, because nothing happens whether the representative enters the data or not, or a resources problem, because each entry takes twenty minutes and access to the CRM is spotty on the road. Coaching for will in either case spends the manager's time and the representative's goodwill on the wrong thing. We recommend using skill and will to decide how to coach once the diagnosis is done, and the nine causes to decide what to change.
For managers: the improvement conversation
Once the cause is known, the conversation is different from the one many managers dread, because it starts with a diagnosis rather than a verdict. A few practices we recommend include:
- Describe the gap with the evidence from step 1, in the employee's language, and ask what gets in the way before offering a view.
- Agree the cause together. In our experience employees usually know whether the problem is information, tools or skill, and they seldom claim motivation when the cause is something else.
- Pick one or two solutions from the matrix and one fast first move. If the cause is expectations, a written agreement is the solution and a performance improvement plan is its formal version. If the cause is anywhere else, a plan that only restates the expectation tends to fail.
- Set a review date and the measure, and hold the review even when things have improved.
- Run the improvement discussion as a forward-looking conversation. Our feedforward format asks for suggestions about the future instead of replaying the past, and our appraisal discussion tool gives you an agenda.
- Build the skill if the conversations are the difficult part. Our programs Conducting Performance Reviews and Having Tough Conversations practice them with participants' own situations.
For talent development leaders: using the tool across an organization
For talent development leaders, the tool does its best work in aggregate. One performance issue is a case; the same cause in three teams is a system.
Read the pattern, not the case
Geary Rummler and Alan Brache made the point that when a good performer is put into a poorly designed system, the system wins almost every time [4]. We recommend logging the diagnosed cause of every performance issue that reaches HR or the talent team for a quarter. The distribution tells you where to invest. A run of expectations problems points to how goals are set and communicated; a run of consequences problems points to the reward system or to managers who are not giving feedback; a run of resources problems points to a system or a budget, and no amount of development will close it.
Decide when training is the answer
Training answers knowledge and skill deficiencies; the other seven causes need something else. Before commissioning a program, confirm the cause with a training needs assessment that asks about the environment as well as the skill, and plan the reinforcement, because a skill built in a workshop and unsupported by consequences on the job tends to revert to the old standard. Our list of ways to reinforce training covers what to put around the program.
Scope with the three ratings
For a given cause, the low-time, low-funds options, such as job aids, documentation, manager actions and after-action reviews, can start this month while the high-support options, such as compensation links, job redesign and culture change, go through the sponsorship they need. Our performance support tools cover the fast options: job aids, skill cards and point-of-need resources that live inside the systems people already use.
Build the diagnosis into manager capability
Managers make most first-round diagnoses, and without a method they default to what they know. Adding the nine causes and the five steps to new manager programs, to Manager as Mentor & Coach and to HR business partner practice raises the quality of the requests that reach the talent team and reduces the number of training requests that are not training problems. It also gives managers and HR a shared vocabulary, so a request arrives as "a consequences problem in the claims team" rather than "they need a course."
Measure
The gap statement from step 1 of "How to handle employee performance issues" is the desired outcome. For training solutions, our article on measuring training success covers the evaluation design. For every other solution, the measure is the gap closing and staying closed at the review dates.
Three worked examples
Here are three examples, generic rather than client cases, of how the diagnosis changes the solution.
| Situation | First Label | Diagnosed Cause | Solutions Chosen |
|---|---|---|---|
| A customer service team resolving 78 percent of issues on first contact against a 95 percent target | Training problem | Data and information: agents could not see order history without opening a second system | Data access, a one-page job aid and weekly feedback on first-contact rates from the team leader |
| Sales representatives not updating the pipeline after customer visits | Attitude problem | Consequences and resources: nothing happened either way, and each entry took twenty minutes on a laptop | Mobile entry, pipeline reviews run from the system's own data and a short skills session for the four representatives who had not used it before |
| New supervisors avoiding performance conversations | Motivation problem | Skill and expectations: no one had shown them how, and no one had said it was part of the job | A job description update, the Having Tough Conversations program and coaching from their managers through the first three conversations |
Frequently asked questions
What are the most common reasons for poor work performance?
The nine causes in the table above cover them: unclear or mismatched expectations, consequences that do not change with performance, missing information, a lack of environmental support, a mismatch between the person and the role, a knowledge gap, low motivation, missing resources or tools and a skill gap. In our experience expectations and consequences come up most often, and they are the two that organizations most often try to fix with training.
When is training the right solution?
When the cause is a knowledge deficiency or a skill deficiency, confirmed with the Mager and Pipe test, and when the environment will support the new behavior once the program ends. If people could do it if their life depended on it, the cause is elsewhere, and training tends to produce a well-run workshop and the same gap.
What is the difference between a knowledge deficiency and a skill deficiency?
A knowledge deficiency means the person does not know what to do or why; they cannot explain the process, the policy or the product. A skill deficiency means they know what to do and cannot yet do it fluently. The distinction changes the solution: knowledge gaps close with documentation, reading, case reviews and education, and skill gaps close with practice, coaching, job aids and training with feedback.
Should we start with a performance improvement plan?
Only when the diagnosis says the cause is expectations. A performance improvement plan is a formal, written agreement about what is expected, and it works for that cause. When the cause is information, resources, consequences or skill, a plan that restates the expectation adds pressure without removing the obstacle, which is why so many of them end the way they do.
How do we scope the resources a solution needs?
Use the three ratings in the tool: time to implement and maintain, relative investment and the level of stakeholder support required. Low-low-low solutions, such as job aids, reading sources and after-action reviews, can be tried immediately. Solutions rated high for support, such as compensation links, job redesign and culture change, need a sponsor before they need a budget.
Where to start
Pick one live performance problem, write the gap in one observable sentence and work through the nine causes with the manager and the employee before anyone proposes a solution. Then choose from the matrix, take the fast first move and set the review date. The printable version of the tool is available as a two-page PDF for use in the room.
References
- Gilbert, T. F. (1978). Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. McGraw-Hill.
- Mager, R. F. and Pipe, P. (1970). Analyzing Performance Problems: Or, You Really Oughta Wanna. Fearon Publishers.
- Landsberg, M. (1996). The Tao of Coaching. HarperCollins.
- Rummler, G. A. and Brache, A. P. (1990). Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space on the Organization Chart. Jossey-Bass.
