The Four Reasons an Employee Won’t Do His Work

Before you let an employee go, ask yourself these important questions: Why is my employee not working up to standard? What can I do to help him? Ever ask yourself those questions? Well, if you’d like to know the answers – read on. You see, it all boils down to asking 3 simple questions, and depending on the answers, you’ll know what to do.

First – does my employee know what to do? Seems like a really basic question, but often an employee, and especially a new person, simply doesn’t know all the duties for which he is responsible. The solution of course, begins with a job description – preferably in writing. Oftentimes supervisors assume that the staff person knows what he is responsible for. While it’s true that he may know some or most of the duties for which he’s been hired, the staff person may not know the entire list of duties. Don’t fool yourself either. Even if you hire someone with experience, there are those nuances that make each person’s job different from practice to practice.

Second – does the employee know how to do each of the tasks for which he is responsible? Once again, even an experienced person might not know how to perform every task. Or he may perform it differently than you do the task in your practice. Therefore, before you let that person loose to start doing the things you’ve hired him for, make sure he knows how to do everything and do it in accordance with your policies and procedures.

Third – does the employee have enough time to get it done? Remember that a new staff person will require additional time when first performing new tasks. In addition, even your veteran staff will be slow to perform new tasks assigned to them. Furthermore, if your practice is anything like mine, the temptation is to give new assignments to staff that are tried and true. However we all need to remember that at some point, if we keep delegating to the same people, sooner or later the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back will occur. Plus, we’ve lost another opportunity to develop someone else’s skills.

I guess by now it might have occurred to you that most of the time, if you have an underachieving employee, it is the supervisor, and not the employee that is more than likely responsible for the poor performance.

If the employee knows what to do, how to do it, and has enough time to get it done then, simply put, the only other reason for not doing his job is that the employee won’t do it. Sure, there can be a multitude of excuses offered by the employee, but it all boils down to this: he doesn’t or won’t do it. The appropriate action for you to take when this happens is progressive disciplinary action. The reason I say “progressive” is simply because you more than likely have an investment in that employee, and terminating him immediately will cancel any return on that investment. Remember, the goal of disciplinary action should not be to punish, but rather to hold up a mirror to the employee to show him that his performance is lacking and that it is his responsibility, not yours, to improve his performance.

To summarize then: there are only four reasons why an employee doesn’t do his job. He either doesn’t know he’s responsible for certain tasks, he doesn’t know how to perform all his tasks, he doesn’t have enough time to get them all done, or he won’t do his job. Diagnose the poor performance correctly and you are on the road to resolving the problem.