The Personal Cost of People Problems In Your Team
When you have any people problems in your team, you face one of the biggest risks to your job security and success as a manager. Facing underperformers, lazy staff, bullies, aggressive staff, overly negative individuals, those that undermine or who are stuck in their ways … and getting to a good result for the team and business is a serious test of management skill and resilience.
Mess up and your career is on ice at your company or worst case, you don’t keep your job.
The reason managers face this pressure, and these consequences, is problem people are very costly to companies. Literally tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands in lost productivity and profits. I personally have taken over teams where the cost of underperformance has reached millions.
Just work out the profit impact of a 5% drop in performance for your team. You will arrive at a much bigger number than you expected. Think how much pressure you would be under if the performance drop was 30%?
How long would any company put up with that level of very avoidable costs?
Not long.
Resolving problems in your team is very much your responsibility. You might get advice and support from others, yet all the conversations and actions are down to you. It can feel quite lonely.
Solve the problems quickly and without costing the company much and you are treated a bit like a hero. You will get more people to manage and promotions will follow.
Incur these avoidable costs too long and you are history. The costs involved for the company make removing the manager an increasingly certain event.
Knowledge and confidence are the only big barriers to you being the hero. You have the skills to get a great result for you, your team and your business. You wouldn’t be in the manager position if you didn’t .
Knowing what to do and having the confidence and resilience to take effective action are your only real barriers. [We are offering you the knowledge and confidence to take effective action now – click here to learn more].
When faced with people problems in your team, you have three practical outcomes.
Which of the 3 People Problem Outcomes Do You Want?
The three outcomes you nearly always get when dealing with underperforming or poorly behaving staff are:
- No Change – the individuals don’t change, despite your efforts and the status quo seems easier than to carrying on fighting an uphill battle
- Remove them – You get the support and budget to remove the individual (s) and recruit better replacements
- Improve them – You get the individual (s) to improve their performance and behaviour to at least the average of the team
Understanding the pros and cons of each option will help motivate you to choose the best course of action for you, your team and your business.
You personally have a lot riding on making the best choices for you and your team.
The Costs, Risks & Opportunities Of: No Change, Remove Them and Improve Them
Taking each one in turn:
1 – No change
Putting up with “No Change” is the easiest option for a manager in the short term and the most costly option for everyone involved.
There are plenty of reasons why many managers end up with tolerating the situation. A few common ones include:
- Lack of support within the business to take other options
- Limited training or limited knowledge of what to do to resolve the issues
- Fear of the emotional challenges when removing or improving
- Fear of further damaging relationships and trust and making the situation worse
These are all very real blockers for effective action. The right process and approach will significantly reduce each of these barriers AND make overcoming them easier and more enjoyable for the manager.
Pros and Cons for You
Short term, it is easier, safer and much more enjoyable to put up with the issues in your team, than confront the issues head on. You don’t have to risk confrontations with team members.
You will have to put up with growing unhappiness in the team, spend a lot more time resolving issues and calming emotional team members down. Your team members will become angry and resentful towards you personally for not sorting out the problems. You will also watch team performance slide downwards over time.
In the medium term, with the issues left unresolved, they will get worse and spread. The damage to team motivation and performance is significant and this damage will keep growing over time. In addition, the damage to team trust in you and your credibility and authority as a manager will also be significant.
As mentioned earlier, this option has the biggest negative impact on your career prospects, pay prospects and job security. [For your sake, please take the actions needed to “Remove Them” or “Improve Them”]
Pros and cons for the Team
There are few pros for the team.
The performing or behaving team members will experience resentment, frustration and building anger because they will have to put in extra work to cover the problem person’s shortfall or deal with the emotional fallout of poor behaviour.
Because a team member is being allowed to produce less or behave worse, the other team members sense of fairness will push them into reducing what they do or let some of their own behaviours slip. A downward spiral starts to develop. The team is a less enjoyable place to work. Job opportunities elsewhere start to become more and more attractive.
The team’s performance starts dropping and will continue to slide. If team members start leaving, the performance drop can accelerate quickly and recruiting new people into the team and keeping them becomes harder and more costly.
Pros and cons for the Business
No change means little risk of employment legal action – a very small pro.
No change brings a ton of costs and risks over time. Many of these costs are “hidden”: targets not met; more people leaving the team; extra recruitment, training and getting up to speed costs; higher salary costs to keep people; reputational risk and the risk the problems spreading to other teams.
All these costs quickly mount up. They will start in the thousands and quickly reach tens of thousands, incurred every single month by the business.
The pressure on bosses to replace the manager will keep on growing as performance drops.
No change is the worst option for everyone. It is surprisingly easy to fall into the situation of tolerating the problems. As time goes on it becomes harder and more costly to resolve these problems – for the manager and the company.
A much better option is to “Remove Them”
2 – Remove Them
Pros and Cons for You
Removing the problem person from the team (and potentially the company) will protect your job security as a manager. Taking action will send a clear message to everyone in the team that you are not prepared to accept lower performance or poorer behaviour. This prevents a lot of future problems occurring and establishes strong boundaries and expectations.
The downsides are you will have to put in time and energy to remove the individual, recruit a replacement person, train them and then get them up to speed. This distraction will reduce team performance in the short term and distract you personally for 3-6 months.
Another downside, if not managed carefully, is removing people creates doubts and fears in the minds of the remaining team members. “When is it my turn?”. Remove people too often, without careful communication, and you can easily create a culture of fear, which leads to lower team performance and a higher cost for keeping team (higher salaries, higher recruitment costs etc).
Pros and cons for the Team
The pros for the team are a source of frustration, unfairness and annoyance has been removed and replaced with hopefully a better person, who will contribute at the same level as the rest of the team. Better team performance usually leads to better opportunities for promotions and increased pay – good for all team members.
The team also know they have a manager who will not put up with underperformance or poor behaviour. The manager is looking after the good of the team. These actions create team confidence in their manager.
The cons – removing people from the team creates doubts and fears about job security and increases pressure to perform. A little fear and clarity over the consequence of not doing your part for the team is okay. Too much, and a culture of fear develops which becomes very detrimental to the team and business over time (lower team productivity and profit and higher team costs)
Pros and cons for the Business
Pros for the business include
- the removal of a person that was costing the business thousands if not more in lost productivity and profit each month.
- Team culture has been safeguarded, and the problems will not spread
- Clear expectations have been set or reinforced in the team and within the wider business
The cons include:
- The cost of removing the individual and the cost of recruiting a new person. Per LinkedIn, this is at least the annual salary cost for moderately complex jobs and up to 4 times annual salary for complex jobs.
- Team performance is disrupted for a period and management and HR time is needed during the process of removing the individual
- The company might potentially be exposed to legal risk and the time and cash costs associated with this
- Remove too many people and the business risks a culture of fear developing which is costly in terms of team productivity and profit and in terms of keeping team costs down
Removing people who are causing problems is a common action for many managers and companies – if improving the individual is NOT achieved. The costs and risks of removing people are a LOT LOWER than accepting lower performance or poorer behaviour from individual staff members.
An even better outcome for the manager, team and company is to “Improve Them”
3 – Improve Them
Pros and Cons for You
When you encounter under performance or behavioural issues in a team, the quickest, easiest, cheapest and least risky way to remove these issues is to improve the individual team member.
The time and effort taken to improve an individual is a FRACTION of the time and effort taken to remove a person, recruit a replacement and get them up to speed. That is more time you can proactively put into positive actions that increase team motivation and performance. A double benefit.
Taking action to reinforce expectations and standards sends a clear message to the rest of the team preventing a lot of future problems occurring. The positive process and outcome also increase team trust and loyalty to you personally, which in turn helps you increase team performance.
You also build a reputation for being able to resolve people problems quickly and without replacing team members. This is powerful. You will keep getting more staff to manage and promotions will follow.
The cons are improving an individual takes understanding, people skills (such as persuasion) and implementing a step by step process to create improvement. Humans are creatures of habit. A couple of conversations are rarely enough to create a new habit (i.e. get improvement).
It is career enhancing to learn the exact steps needed to improve problem individuals and resolve the issues quickly, cheaply and very effectively. Doing so is a great advert to the whole business of your skills and effectiveness as a manager.
If you don’t know exactly what to do to create improvement, and peers and bosses can’t help you, here is a course teaching you exactly what to do throughout the process from start to finish.
Pros and Cons for the Team
There are a lot of pros for the team and very few cons. The people problems are removed, which removes any bad feeling or sense of unfairness. Expectations have clearly been set through the actions taken by the manager, which prevents a lot of future problems occurring.
The team feel more psychologically safe, with higher job security because they know they will get a chance to improve and help to improve, if they start underperforming etc. This is powerful in building trust and motivation, which in turn increases performance.
The team trust you, as a manager, to look after what is best for the team and do so in a very positive way. This is very motivational and certainly increases team loyalty to you. The team culture improves, making your team a more attractive place to work. (Good for staff attraction and retention)
Pros and Cons for the Business
There a lot of pros of “Improve Them” for the business, some being:
- Team performance is restored quickly and usually increased to a higher level
- The costs of getting team performance improvement are around 70% lower than a Remove Them approach. Easily tens of thousands saved.
- Team morale, motivation and trust increases, thus avoiding risks of a culture of fear developing
- Improves the business brand and reputation overall – a positive place to work which helps attract staff and keep the cost of employing talent down
- Reduces potential legal risks by around 70%
- Staff loyalty increases through a more positive environment, better access to development etc
The cons are
- Using an Improve Them approach is that process to start removing a person is delayed by a month or two (in the UK). This impacts around 30% of team members causing problems.
- The business has to train staff in the skills and process needed to improve team members. There are 4 main reasons for people problems in teams and each of the 4 reasons needs to be covered through the process used to achieve improvement in around 70% of people problem.
“Improve Them” is easily the quickest, easiest, cheapest and least risky way to resolve most people problems in any team. Improving staff is a process that requires understanding, knowledge, and confidence. Most managers already have the skills needed.
The Improve Them approach has so many benefits to the manager, team and business that providing the manager have the skills, knowledge and confidence to achieve this outcome, it is by far THE BEST approach to take and outcome to achieve.
Most managers will have enough skills to use an “Improve Them” approach very effectively. The biggest barrier is a lack of knowledge of what steps to take when and a lack of confidence. Learning the exact steps of the process of improving team members is one of the best investments any manager can make.
If you don’t have peers or bosses to learn this process from, take a look at our course teaching you exactly what to do.
Our How to Manage Difficult Employees is a comprehensive one day course teaching you the exact interdependent steps any manager needs to take to get improvement in most team members. Improvement is by the far the easiest, quickest, cheapest and least risky way of resolving people problems in teams and getting team performance increasing again.
