Workplace: Dealing with Mediocre Employees<

by: Shelly K. Schwartz

Let them ride and they'll pull your entire practice down. Here's how to get out in front of this common problem.

If every employee fit the description of superstar or slacker, managing human resources would hardly be work at all. The top performers would get rewarded with opportunity and better pay. Their deadweight peers would be readily dismissed. Yet, all too often, physician practice leaders are forced to contend with members of the staff who fall somewhere in between - those who contribute little to the team but give no overt reason to let them go. Indeed, mediocre workers present a challenge all their own.

"It's more difficult when you're dealing with average employees because you keep thinking there's potential for them to be greater," says Judy Capko, owner of medical practice consulting firm Capko & Co. in Thousand Oaks, Calif. "It's in your best interest and part of the psychology of a manager to want to save that situation."

Second-rate employees come in many shapes and sizes. Some start off with a poor work ethic. Others lose their motivation along the way. And still others are unable to keep pace with their coworkers no matter how hard they try. Whatever the underlying cause, each requires disproportionate supervision, which costs your practice money.

Indeed, business consultants have long linked substandard employees with higher rates of absenteeism and tardiness, greater use of healthcare benefits, and lower productivity.

Good work adds up

A 2006/2007 WorkUSA Survey Report by Watson Wyatt global consulting firm in Washington, D.C., shows employee engagement (commitment to the company's success) is associated with a 1.9 percent increase in revenue per employee. The typical employee in the study worked at a firm where productivity equaled roughly $250,000 per employee, meaning that a significant improvement in engagement was associated with an increase in revenue (productivity) of $4,674. For a typical S&P 500 organization, which employs about 20,000 people, that represents an increase in revenue of $93.5 million.

Physician practices are playing with smaller numbers, of course, but because there are fewer employees the impact of a single bad hire has an even greater relative effect on productivity, says John Sullivan, head of the Human Resource Management College of Business for San Francisco State University and author of "Increasing Productivity, The World-Class Way."

"In a small business with 10 employees, each employee represents 10 percent of productivity," he says. "Bad or mediocre employees are more visible. They can really hurt you."

There is also, of course, the cost of lost opportunities to consider. Underperforming employees require more handholding, taking time away from otherwise productive activities like implementing cost control programs. A bad hire also means that a more qualified worker who would produce a higher return on investment cannot fill that position. Then there's the multiplier effect. "Substandard employees penetrate throughout the organization, setting a tone for mediocrity that extends beyond one employee," says Capko. "It's very, very contagious."

Who is accountable?

In some cases, physician owners and administrators can improve internal processes or provide new tools to help such workers elevate their game. But Tim Connor, a motivational speaker in Charlotte, N.C., and author of "81 Management Challenges Smart Managers Face," says employers should first look to themselves to determine whether they may be partly to blame. "The first thing a manager needs to do is look in the mirror and ask themselves what in their attitudes or management styles could be contributing to this behavior," he says. "A lot of the behavior problems employees have are because of direct or indirect reward systems in place that encourage or tolerate<

For Healthcare Professionals