Being mediocre is costly
Groundbreaking companies cannot be built on the efforts of mediocre employees. It is absolutely shocking the number of firms that languish while they put off eliminating underperforming employees. Even worse, those employees who just tread water, who stay out of trouble, meet their quotas, complete their assignments but never use their imagination – never go above and beyond, employees who are not inspired can clog up a company and hold it back for years, decades even – and they frequently go unnoticed.
Bad employees are a problem but they are usually easy to get rid of. Uninspired employees are a much bigger problem. Uninspired employees are stagnant, and their stagnation breeds a kind of safety-minded mediocrity that can rot a company from the inside out. We challenge you to take a good hard look at your staff and consider the many ways it can hurt your business when your people are just treading water, and ways to either turn them on or get them out.
The costs that come with letting medium performers stay comfortable come in both solid financial terms and in less easily quantifiable terms. They include:
Draining management time and energy– Employees who cannot or will not think for themselves need extra guidance from your management staff, if not directly from you.
Training time and expense – When one staff member does her or his job incorrectly, often times others will follow suit, especially if the person has any seniority. This leads to a critical mass of poor practices that can cause you to have to hold massive team training sessions. These sessions take away from production time, they cost money, and there’s no guarantee that what your staff learns will be adhered to.
Increased errors, and lower customer satisfaction – Unmotivated employees have lower customer satisfaction rates. This causes your customers to seek service elsewhere. Damage of this kind is generally irreparable.
Missed opportunities – Positions that are filled with low-quality workers prevent you from hiring a better performer.
Lower team morale – Employees who are unhappy with their work can spread their attitude amongst your entire team, lowering their energy, bleeding productivity, and increasing all kinds of losses.
Bad public relations – When members of the public encounter an uninspired representative of your organization, they will also be uninspired by your organization. This is bad advertising, and you have every right to stop it.
Higher disciplinary costs – The longer an inferior hire stays on, the more a company will have to spend disciplining this person’s poor behavior.
Regardless of the costs, the question is how can we avoid being brought to this position of living with mediocrity. One answer is using tools like PI which will help employers understand what truly drives individuals and fit them in a position where they can excel.
By diagnosing the human strategy for the company, designing the work and then hiring to that design will allow companies to end up with an opportunity for engaged employees who will be inspired.
For more information on PI or a Free Demo please contact us
Written by Elsbeth McSorley
