If you’re in a management role at your company, hiring and terminating employees is an integral part of the job. Clearly one of these tasks is more enjoyable than the other, but as a manager, dealing with underperforming employees is very likely a problem you’ve had to face. An employee who was doing a good job is no longer doing so. What happened to cause the change and why? This is the question you must answer, but what’s the best approach to this sensitive situation?
I recommend the direct approach for the simple reason that you can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what initiated it in the first place. Sit down and talk with your employee. Determine if he is aware that his performance has degraded. If he says no, you should compare his previous and current performance levels with him. Hopefully you have been giving him regular feedback and he knew what you considered to be good performance. If not, you must correct that issue right away. Employees have the right to know how they’re doing both when things are going well and when they are not. How else can you encourage the continuation of good performance or an adjustment away from poor performance?