All managers, from time to time, will need to deal with an employee who is performing poorly. On some occasions, the manager's goal will be to help the employee understand that they are genuinely not suited to the role. On other occasions, the goal will be to change the employee's behaviour in a positive way.

The way the manager deals with the situation is undoubtedly important. In many cases, however, the employee's co-workers will have more influence on the outcome than the manager. Understanding how co-workers respond to poor performers within the team is therefore an important part of the performance management process.

Co-workers' response to poor performers

The most important factor that determines how co-workers will respond to a poor performer is the co-workers' beliefs regarding the cause of the poor performance. Research suggests that co-workers attribute poor performance to one of four causes:

• No interest in performing well: If co-workers believe that the employee could perform well, but is simply not interested in doing so, then they are likely to respond with anger and rejection.
• Temporary drop in motivation: Sometimes co-workers attribute poor performance to a personal 'bad patch' that the employee is going through. This attribution is likely if the employee has been a good performer in the past and nothing in the task has changed, but motivation is currently perceived to be lacking. When this attribution is made, co-workers typically respond by trying to re-motivate/re-engage the employee.
• External change that can be coped with: If the poor performance is caused by a change in task requirements that was beyond the control of the employee and co-workers believe that the employee has the capacity to 'step up', then they are likely to respond by training, assisting and advising the poor performer.
• External change that can't be coped with: Under these circumstances, co-workers are likely to feel empathy towards the employee because the change that caused the poor performance was beyond their control. This attribution is often made when the change in task requirements takes the employee completely out of their depth. Co-workers may attempt to compensate by adjusting the task requirements as much as they can.

Managing co-worker attributions

When managing a poor performer, it's important for the manager to be aware of and to control if necessary, the attributions that are made by co-workers. This is especially important when the manager genuinely wants to work with the employee to enhance their performance. If co-workers leap to the conclusion that the employee is performing poorly because they are simply not interested in performing well or because they can't cope and will not be able to cope in the future, then the manager's efforts to train and enhance the employee's performance may be undermined by the reactions of co-workers.

The best way to manage the attributions that are made by co-workers is to ensure that the employee achieves progress early in the process in a way that is public to other employees. This will ensure that co-workers perceive the poor performance to be temporary and perceive the employee to be taking positive steps to improve. In the absence of early public success, the employee and the manager run the risk of co-workers making attributions that do not assist the performance improvement process.

Matthew Neale MAPS is a Senior Organisational Psychologist and National Consulting Manager at Onetest. For more information about this topic, please call 1300 137 937, e-mail enquiries@onetest.com.au or visit www.onetest.com.au