Most UK managers and employees believe that ‘dead wood’ - staff who consistently under-perform - is a problem in their organisations. Steve Crabb looks at how best to manage it
More evidence has emerged in the past month to illustrate how far short of the ideal UK management practices remain. One of the most intriguing was a survey commissioned by Investors in People UK, the body set up to promote and regulate the IiP standard. It found that three quarters of UK managers and four out of five of their staff believe that ‘dead wood’ - employees who consistently under-perform - is a problem in their organisations.
Nor is this a problem confined to casual or low-paid employees: 39% of the managers polled complained about colleagues not pulling their weight.
Although it seems that managers are aware of the problem of people just going through the motions, they don’t seem to be doing much about it: 40% of the employees surveyed said their employer wasn’t taking any action to address the issue.
IiP did a sectoral breakdown of the retail sector for The Grocer, which showed that 46% of retail workers deal directly with someone who isn’t pulling their weight at work, and 44% thought “laziness” was the main reason for people not doing their fair share.
Encouragingly, though, the proportion of employees who said management was turning a blind eye to the problem was only 31%, compared with the overall average of 40%.
As you might expect, the problem is worse in large businesses than in SMEs, where it’s generally harder to hide the fact that you aren’t pulling your weight - 84% of staff in firms with 1,000 or more employees said dead wood was an issue, compared with 64% in companies with 50 or fewer staff.
Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric, is still urging employers to adopt his 20:70:10 approach. In a nutshell, this means heaping rewards on the top 20% of performers in your organisation, giving the next 70% enough to get by while showing them how to reach top 20 status, and firing the bottom 10% on the grounds that they are dead wood.
Welch’s admirers say this strategy led to a 28% increase in earnings at GE between 1981 and 2001, and a few years ago HR seminars all over the country were packed with companies announcing that they too were going to get tough on unproductive employees. That was in the depths of the economic downturn, when it looked like the “war for talent” was over and employers were back in the driving seat. As if.
The reality that dawned on employers all too quickly was that near-zero unemployment was not going away and, suddenly, keeping hold of the middle 70% seemed a lot more important than getting macho with the 10% at the bottom.
I’m no fan of Welch’s approach - simply getting rid of the bottom 10%, who might be under-performing for all sorts of reasons, seems to me to be a waste of potential talent. But the kind of abdication identified in IiP’s survey is equally damaging. Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown that employees value strong leadership, with managers who manage poor punctuality, frequent absence and similar ‘dead wood’ behaviour in a consistent, fair way.
Turning a blind eye to it - or even worse, failing to explore the causes in the first place - is just going to alienate the staff who still care.
n Steve Crabb is editor of People Management
More evidence has emerged in the past month to illustrate how far short of the ideal UK management practices remain. One of the most intriguing was a survey commissioned by Investors in People UK, the body set up to promote and regulate the IiP standard. It found that three quarters of UK managers and four out of five of their staff believe that ‘dead wood’ - employees who consistently under-perform - is a problem in their organisations.
Nor is this a problem confined to casual or low-paid employees: 39% of the managers polled complained about colleagues not pulling their weight.
Although it seems that managers are aware of the problem of people just going through the motions, they don’t seem to be doing much about it: 40% of the employees surveyed said their employer wasn’t taking any action to address the issue.
IiP did a sectoral breakdown of the retail sector for The Grocer, which showed that 46% of retail workers deal directly with someone who isn’t pulling their weight at work, and 44% thought “laziness” was the main reason for people not doing their fair share.
Encouragingly, though, the proportion of employees who said management was turning a blind eye to the problem was only 31%, compared with the overall average of 40%.
As you might expect, the problem is worse in large businesses than in SMEs, where it’s generally harder to hide the fact that you aren’t pulling your weight - 84% of staff in firms with 1,000 or more employees said dead wood was an issue, compared with 64% in companies with 50 or fewer staff.
Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric, is still urging employers to adopt his 20:70:10 approach. In a nutshell, this means heaping rewards on the top 20% of performers in your organisation, giving the next 70% enough to get by while showing them how to reach top 20 status, and firing the bottom 10% on the grounds that they are dead wood.
Welch’s admirers say this strategy led to a 28% increase in earnings at GE between 1981 and 2001, and a few years ago HR seminars all over the country were packed with companies announcing that they too were going to get tough on unproductive employees. That was in the depths of the economic downturn, when it looked like the “war for talent” was over and employers were back in the driving seat. As if.
The reality that dawned on employers all too quickly was that near-zero unemployment was not going away and, suddenly, keeping hold of the middle 70% seemed a lot more important than getting macho with the 10% at the bottom.
I’m no fan of Welch’s approach - simply getting rid of the bottom 10%, who might be under-performing for all sorts of reasons, seems to me to be a waste of potential talent. But the kind of abdication identified in IiP’s survey is equally damaging. Research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown that employees value strong leadership, with managers who manage poor punctuality, frequent absence and similar ‘dead wood’ behaviour in a consistent, fair way.
Turning a blind eye to it - or even worse, failing to explore the causes in the first place - is just going to alienate the staff who still care.
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