Staff performance

The last two and a half years have been very busy and difficult for all practices; change has been constant, you have faced locked downs and restrictions on practising, as well as new ways of delivering services. On top of that, the way we live and interact with family and friends has been turned upside down in many cases. We are hearing in our conversations with subscribers how tired they and their staff are. And we are seeing an increase in calls to our HealthyPractice team that describe exhaustion and lack of resilience in team members.

Many practices now have the time to deal with staff performance issues that they haven’t had the capacity to deal with during the past two years.  Staff are employed to undertake the work they are expected to do in a timely fashion and to a level that you expect but given the current world situation, you may need to take all the environmental factors into account when dealing with staff performance concerns.

Consider whether there are justifiable causes for an employee’s underperformance, for example:

• A lack of knowledge or skill and insufficient, inappropriate or no training
• A shortage of resources that are required to perform well
• A lack of motivation for any reason
• Issues in their personal life that are impacting their work performance

Few people are wilful under performers. Once you have identified issues, use a basic coach approach to improve performance by:

• Agreeing on goals – meeting their preferences AND achieving your requirements
• Listening to your staff
• Developing an action plan and support structure
• Reviewing progress and providing feedback
• Celebrating success
• Creating opportunities for social interaction

As with all employment matters, following the correct process is crucial. In general, when you observe poor performance or behaviour, they should be discussed as they occur.  Issues that have happened over the past two years can’t be bundled up and dealt with at the same time. The discussion should be in private, and your expectations of the role clarified.  This informal discussion should still be documented and can be followed up with a letter that outlines the discussion and the expectations that were set.

Other situations require a more formal approach, where you invite the employee in writing, to a meeting. The letter would include all your recent concerns, where the meeting will be held and the potential outcome of the meeting. If this is your first formal performance management process meeting, then the likely outcome will be a performance improvement plan that details the required performance and the follow up process, but you can’t decide on the outcome until you have listened to and considered the employee’s responses. You can read more about the detail of this process in our HealthyPractice content Managing underperformance (healthypractice.co.nz)

If you follow this process and don’t see the required improvement you can raise the performance issues to a disciplinary level, with the possibility of a warning.

If you receive a resignation at any stage during your process, please give us a ring before accepting it.

Non-government vaccine mandate

With the lifting of some of the Government mandates that relate to vaccination, if your practice implemented a non-government vaccine mandate for staff, the latest advice we have received is that it may now be difficult to meet the required risk standards to maintain the mandate. Remember to undertake further health and safety risk assessments and ensure that your policy is reviewed and updated as necessary, and a further review date decided.

Employment NZ provides more information at this link Vaccines and the workplace » Employment New Zealand