How many of your employees to you supervisors want to fire? The answer; more often than you think. Your supervisors are most likely writing your employees up and turning it into HR or to the managers. And if they are not writing people up it is because of one of two reasons. You either have a smaller organization with great employees and a solid culture, or you are in a larger organization and your supervisors have given up on your ability to take action on the paperwork they spend time doing.
When a supervisor takes the time to do the right thing and document the poor performance of an employee, they are expecting the HR or management team to back them up. The worst thing that can happen is to have you do nothing. This sends a message to the employees that there is no accountability and that the supervisor does not have any real power. A supervisor without the ability to document performance and use it as a tool to get the employees in line with the organizational values is like being stuck in the middle of a fight between your spouse and your best friend. There is no way out, and they cannot win. The employee will continue with the destructive behavior and the supervisor will either quit or give up and be resigned to accepting the low standard.
Supervisors have a grueling job to do. Not only must they understand the work that must be done, but they also must know what the managers what and how to translate those desires and directions into actual tasks the employees can execute against. Do your best to remember your time as a supervisor and how difficult it was to have to deal with a poor performer, especially a confident poor performer. Letting the supervisor face these challenges alone will kill your organization.
If you help your supervisors hold the standard by supporting them when they need it, you will rarely be in a position to need to find new employees. Happy employees will find other great employees for you, and your turnover rate will be low. But unhappy employees combined with supervisors that have given up will also find new hires, but bad new hires. The big difference is you now have a low turnover rate with employees that have low standards and an organization with a damaging culture. It’s hard to sustain and you will find yourself in a never-ending cycle trying to deal with problems in the processes and personnel issues.
The final word here is to have your supervisors’ back and teach them when they make mistakes. Even at the cost of some lower-level employees.
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