Home Health & Hospice Week

Don’t delay taking action with underperforming employees.

If you’ve ever dragged your feet when you needed to reprimand or fire an underperforming or "problem" employee, you’re certainly not alone. But in the home health/hospice field, you can’t afford to allow underperformers to linger, negatively impacting patient care and team morale.

"In hindsight leaders often say, ‘I should have taken action sooner,’" says Bob Prosen, a management expert and author, in his new book Kiss Theory Good Bye.

"Leaders who fail at performance management are not respected," Prosen points out. Knowing when to fire an employee or to move him to another job -- and knowing that you’ve been fair about it -- is key.

Prosen’s four-step performance-management process, which he claims works more than 80 percent of the time, is as follows:

Step 1: Clarify and quantify what you expect from the employee. You should give the employee no more than three or four main objectives.

Step 2: Ask the employee to identify in writing a maximum of three obstacles that keep him from meeting his objectives.

Step 3: Meet with the employee to clarify the roadblocks and agree on what you both will do to minimize or remove the obstacles and who will be responsible for making it happen and by when.

Step 4: Let the employee do his job. After you’ve cleared the roadblocks, the only thing left is the employee’s ability to do his job. If he still doesn’t perform, you have been fair, and it’s time for action.