We have all had unproductive employees — the people working with you who “work to live”, rather than your productive employees who “live to work”.  Your unproductive employees are the ones constantly late for meetings, late with assignments, the ones that your customers would rather not work with, the ones that your employees would rather not work with.  They do not provide you with a “cause” to let them go, like substance abuse or theft.  They wear you down because you are always having to deal with them or deal with someone else who is working with them.  You can calculate what they might be costing you in dollars, but the real cost to you is TIME. Time spent with them, time spent fixing the damage they have done with your customers or your employees, time that you have to take documenting how they might not be doing their job so you can build a case to discharge them.  This time is unproductive for you.

Sometimes you “convince” yourself that you are better off retaining this unproductive employee because it would take too much time to look for a new employee, onboard them, and train them.  But deep down, you know that having productive employees is better than having unproductive employees.

Obviously, the best time to deal with an unproductive employee is to not hire them in the first place.  A lot of the behaviors and traits you need to see on the job are extremely difficult to see during the interview process, especially today when candidates are so skilled and polished.  You need to know how a person thinks and learns, how they behave, and what are their occupational interests before you hire them, not after they start working for you.

What can you do to find the productive people for your company and not hire the unproductive ones… Continue reading →