High performance or high pressure?
Do you expect your employees to be high performers? No doubt the answer to that is “yes”.
And I’m sure that’s what every company would like to say about their employees. Unfortunately, though, that’s not always the case. Being expected to be a ‘high performer’ can also bring with it a vast amount of high pressure.
As you are most likely aware, many employees fair very well under pressure, but there are also those who don’t.
So, what do you do with those who can’t handle the pressure and don’t perform well?
The obvious answer here is ‘Help them to improve’. But that’s not always the easy option. It may be quite straight forward where you have a really low-performer – have a meeting, issue a performance improvement plan etc. If there is no considerable improvement, then the probable outcome is a dismissal.
But would you put all of your employees, regardless of their seniority, under the risk of dismissal? Most likely not!
What’s happening with Lloyds Banking Group?
Their current plan is to have their employees working in a ‘high-performance culture setting’.
In order to achieve this, managers have been asked to rank their teams on their performance. Those who are considered to be under-performing will be placed on structured support plans. Failure to improve could then lead to dismissal.
They have estimated that approximately 5% of their current workforce (approximately 3,000) will receive warnings, with the possibility of approximately 1,500 eventually being dismissed.
Why are they doing this?
Apparently, it’s due to the fact that there is a very low turnover of staff within the lower performers. Less than 5% of these under-performing employees are leaving their jobs each year, compared with the previous average of around 15%, possibly due to the uncertainty of being able to get another job.
So, what are they trying to achieve?
The intention is to have highly skilled teams in order to deliver ‘exceptional customer experiences’. To achieve this, they say that they are continually looking for ways to help their employees to perform at their best.
This is after announcing in January this year that they planned to cut 1,600 staff from their branches throughout the country but were also creating thousands of new positions as they make the shift to more digital banking and asset management.
As a result, they have hired hundreds of IT engineers in India, leading people to think that they could start cutting out more roles in the UK.
I suppose the only answer here is to ‘wait and see’ how things progress.
Would this approach fit your business?
I would think probably not.
If you have an employee who isn’t performing well, contact our Advice Team on 03450 730240 and choose option 2. They will be able to assist you to deal with each individual in a clear and concise manner.
