PART I INTRODUCTION AND PROBLEM IDENTIFICATION
CHAPTER 2 INVESTIGATION OF THE CAUSES OF POOR EMPLOYEE
I. EMPLOYEE FEEDBACKS WITH SURVEYS & INTERVIEWS
I have collected information from informal feedbacks like employee conversations, formal feedback like exit interview, meetings and from my observations of real situation. Most typical and obvious feedbacks that I got for the question “why you/ your subordinates underperformed?” being asked in different ways have been recorded. There are other questions I asked employees who wanted to resign from the company, and I think these employees were much more willing to express whatever the issues are, what they really felt about anything, if we have done the questions in the proper way. (attached Exit Interview Questionnaire Form in the Appendix).
I divided the reasons into 4 big groups of factors and illustrate the main reason with the below chart:
- Managerial and Organizational Factors: pay, working hours, promotion system, authority and responsibility, managerial behaviors and participation in management, communication, reward and penalty, work design, company support, guidance, processes, corporate culture, etc.
- Physical Factors: Lighting, noise, thermal comfort, ventilation and humidity, hygiene and cleaning services, etc.
- Technical Factors: Workplace design, technology, machinery, devices and materials, etc.
- Personal factors: competencies, attitude, education and self-development, etc.
The results of my rough calculation of surveys, interview, and observations can be summarized as the Figure 4 below.
Figure. 4. Factors Affecting Employee Performance
The main group factors affecting employee performance are Managerial and Organizational Factors (70%), and personal factors (20%). Here are details of the factors and reasons in order of highest to lowest importance and impact:
Managerial and Organizational Factors
- Employee dissatisfaction and low motivation due to unfair performance appraisal, unfair KPI system which I will explain further in more details in the next part, and slow payment of KPI incentives accounting for up to 50% of their pay;
- Lack of support from line managers and colleagues, little team work and joint effort in solving problems;
- The company or department goals are not communicated by the management to employees, so employees don’t really understand what they are expected of;
- The views and feedbacks of employees are not taken seriously by the management.
- They are not guided enough processes and procedures, even if they have been told, they are too complicated to understand or implement;
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80
Managerial and Organizational
Factors
Personal factors Physical Factors Technical Factors
Group Factors Affecting Employee Performance
- Their roles are not clear and being changed frequently;
- They are struggling to perform the job without guidance, so they are too stressed, and overloaded;
- They don’t understand clearly and fully all of their responsibilities, what should be expected, goals and/or standards or workplace policies and consequences are not clear (or have not been set);
- Managers are exhausted to manage their subordinates in micromanagement way;
- Employee does not know whether they are doing a good job because there is no counselling or feedback on their performance regularly;
Personal factors:
- There is a mismatch between an employee's capabilities and the job they are required to undertake, or the employee does not have the knowledge or skills to do the job expected of them;
- Lack of personal motivation, low morale in the workplace;
- Personal issues such as family stress, physical and/or mental health problems.
The feedbacks strongly reflect many of the causes of poor performance are coming from the company rather than only because of the employees themselves.
I used 5 Why method to analyze deeper into these tentative feedback results and assumptions to find what the root causes affecting employee performance.
Figure 5. Root Cause Analysis of Poor employee performance
Poor Employee Performance
Employee Company
Chose the wrong job
Lack of needed competencies
Personal problems
Overloaded Wrong moral/
attitude
Lack of good processes &
procedures **
Unfair EPM system Causing employee
dissatisfaction &
low motivation
Lack of support &
no team work
No guidance or little training
Objectives not well defined &
communicated clearly
Performance feedback not provided
Ineffective micromanagement
style Lately/ wrong paid
KPI incentives
EPM system not function properly
Improperly designed &
implemented EPM system * Unfavorable
working environment
Lack of good processes &
procedures **
Lack of good processes &
procedures **
Wrong delegation/
job design ***
Improperly designed &
implemented EPM system *
Low personal motivation Not chose right
competent employees
Wrong delegation/
job design ***
Lack of good processes &
procedures **
Poor selection process
Chose the wrong job
Physical problems
Mental problems
Lack of training/
self-learning
Too much work/
unbalance work - life
Work over capabilities
EPM system not function properly
Improperly designed &
implemented EPM system *
Note: a*, b**, c*** are repeated causes
As showed in the 5 why chart, those causes that are final and repeated are root causes. We will only focus on analyzing root causes arising from the company to find proper solutions. Those belonging to employee self-issues will not be a big concern as they are much lighter factors that will be surpassed if we can solve our organizational issues.
I therefore will take these three following factors into detail analysis to figure out what, why, and how they affect adversely employee performance:
Improperly designed and implemented EPM system
Lack of good processes and procedures
Wrong delegation and/or job design