I met with a fairly new engineering manager (EM) recently who works outside my company and wanted advice on how to handle an underperforming employee. Human Resources (HR) partners are important to involve and are your best guides, but here are some (non-comprehensive) suggestions I made for the situation that I thought I’d share more broadly (“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but…”)
Tips on the mechanics of performance improvement
- Document expectations. It’s important to document expectations between you and your employees (true even for your top performers but essential for folks who are struggling). I always maintain a shared 1:1 doc where we can both suggest agenda items, track topics, share docs, etc. It speeds our time together (status updates can be quickly scanned or even handled async between 1:1s) so we can focus on more important discussions, and allows us to jot notes as we go so the other person can see if communications are interpreted correctly. Here, you can write up your performance expectations, and confirm that you’ve both verbally shared and documented what those are.
- Speaking of documentation… Ensure you have consistent documentation across the team. Avoid over-managing or documenting for one person and not for anyone else. This is especially true for people who are in an underrepresented category; you shouldn’t be tracking them differently regardless of their level of performance. Track data (tickets, code reviews, project delivery, meeting attendance) across the team, not just for one person, to avoid the perception of unfair treatment.
- And speaking of data… Use data driven performance measures. Tickets resolved, code reviews shipped, projects completed, meetings attended, negative or positive feedback received. Set a goal for what these need to be (ideally targeted to the average for the team). Set a timeline for checking and a clear consequence if not met.
- When data isn’t available… Increase frequency of updates. An underperforming employee may find it helpful to have increased visibility for work that is harder to track. It could help to increase from a weekly team meeting to daily standups for everyone if you don’t already have those (can be run synchronously as a short meeting, or asynchronously in chat). If standups don’t seem to capture it, you might mutually agree to have the employee send you a brief report of their work at the end of each day if it can’t be tracked by the usual methods. This can feel invasive so do proceed with caution and get agreement that it feels helpful.
- Use fair, objective language. If you cannot imagine delivering the same direct feedback to a man as you would a woman, or a BIPOC as you would a white or Asian person, then your direct feedback likely contains bias. Reconsider.
There are probably 100 more tips that could be shared, but hopefully these get you started. Remember to be curious about the individual and what could be going on to cause a change in performance (personal issues, etc.). Often these issues are temporary and can be resolved with support. Remember to express care for the individual – you should only give people feedback because you want the best for them and you think there are observations you can share that will help them grow and improve. And lastly, remember people need time to process critical feedback, and might not react well at first; this doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of reflecting, acknowledging and acting on the feedback.
Image credit: The Jopwell Collection
Kathleen Codes 