Addressing & Resolving Poor Performance

Your first step always should be to convey a clear message to the employee about what your performance expectations are. Performance standards that do not relate to the job need to be rewritten so there will be no confusion between your oral instructions or written guidance and the performance standards themselves. If the new standards that you have written are substantially different from the old ones, you will need to give the employee a chance to work under the new standards before you determine whether or not the employee's performance is unacceptable. As discussed later in Step Three, you do not always need to rely on formal performance standards, depending on the legal authority under which you take action. But you run a serious risk of either having your action overturned or mitigated upon appeal if the employee can demonstrate that his or her performance expectations were not clear.