No amount of pay can adequately compensate the employee who resents a manager or CEO for expecting him or her to take up the slack of co-workers who settle for meeting only the minimum requirements of the job.
Too many managers and CEOs lean on their most-valuable players to redo the substandard work of their peers. Just as many managers and CEOs take on that extra work themselves.
That’s because when it comes to managing people who haven’t gotten the job done, conflict-averse managers and CEOs often figure it will be easier to salvage the assignment on their own than to require an underperformer to do it over and do it right.
A lot of organizations are in a world of hurt because their managers or CEO do this.
So many employees continue to perform at less-than-optimum levels and often don’t even know they’re doing it because their managers, directors, vice presidents and CEOs are simply taking care of the revisions themselves instead of stopping and turning the underperformed work back to the employee who submitted it.
In a lot of cases, these “conflict avoiders” decide they would rather take on the extra work themselves instead of confronting a poor performer, coaching the employee to improve and insisting on revision after revision until the job is done well.
And if the managers or CEOs aren’t doing the re-dos themselves, they’re pushing the work onto their best performers.
That’s a risky practice.
The fact is that not holding underperformers accountable punishes the hospital’s best performers. The organization’s retention rate for its best employees will fly right out the window if managers and executives continue this practice.
When productive, engaged employees want out of an organization, it’s often because their managers refuse to hold their underperforming colleagues accountable. They don’t want to work for managers who find it easier to push the work onto those who will do it right. If this practice exists in an organization, it is coming from the top: The CEO is likely pushing the work onto those he or she feels will do it right.
The problem is: If a hospital’s best performers keep getting this work, they’re going to leave. And that hospital deserves it.
Trust me; they will leave. Even if the pay is amazing, they will leave because for top performers, pay isn’t enough.
Not holding underperformers accountable means a manager or one of the team’s star employees will spend a lot of time feeling overworked and resentful.
Don’t forget that it’s these same star employees whom the competition is seeking out and trying to hire away. How easy is your organization making their decision to leave?
Stop productive, skilled employees from quitting by making a commitment to discontinue the practice of rescuing, fixing and saving underperformers. A CEO or manager who allows a mediocre employee to get away with substandard results but covers the poor performance by getting someone more responsible to redo the work is doing more harm than good.
Some managers get an ego boost out of “saving the day” by making everyone look good in the end. But do that enough, and the hospital’s culture eventually will devolve into one that encourages laziness and low quality among less-engaged employees who know they don’t have to work hard because the boss will get someone else to correct their mistakes and polish their lackluster end products.
While those mediocre employees are slacking off, their highly engaged co-workers are exhausted and too busy to focus on the real work that would make the hospital excellent and successful.
CEOs: Get your own personal accountability house in order. Learn the skill of holding your people accountable. Get coaching from a colleague who does it well. Role-play the difficult conversations. Do not reward mediocrity by covering it up. Do not punish productivity by requiring your best employees to participate in that cover-up.
It really is not easier to do someone else’s work yourself, and that isn’t a manager’s job anyway. It really is not simpler to have a good employee pick up the slack for a poor one, especially if it means you’re going to lose the good one.
If you are committed to the success of your employees — from the most productive to the least — take take the time to put the work back where it belongs. If you’re not committed to their success, go ahead and rescue, fix and save your poor performers at the expense of yourself and your star employees, who will seek to leave your employment as soon as they can.
Be accountable. Turn unsatisfactory work back to the employee who submitted it for modifications, even if that means you take the fall because a project is late.
If you don’t want to do that — if you want to continue your personal practice of rescuing, fixing and saving underperformers so they can slack off without consequence — then write that into your employees’ job descriptions.
Don’t worry if all the good ones leave because of it. I know a lot of unaccountable people who want to work for you.
Linda Galindo is the author of two books about personal accountability: “The 85% Solution, How Personal Accountability Guarantees Success” (2009) and “Where Winners Live” (2012). She is president of Galindo Consulting Inc. in Park City, Utah, and has worked for more than 20 years as a consultant, keynote speaker, leadership development facilitator and executive coach. Contact her at Linda@LindaGalindo.com.
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