Handling Difficult People & Employees | Tips for Performance Reviews

As a small business owner, you wear many "different hats" from strategic planner to bookkeeper. However one area may owners aren't prepared for is managing people. Although employees allow you to get more work done, they create a whole new series of problems from hiring issues to worker's compensation. And there is no way to tell if the people you hire today are going to be a good fit for your company. At a certain point, you might find you need a crash course in handling difficult people.

Many conflicts can arise between small business owners and their workers. These problems can range from salary disagreements to performance problems. A conflict with one of your employees, for example, can cost you a valuable client because he or she is misrepresenting you and your company. On the other hand, one of your workers may have attendance issues or may refuse to perform certain necessary tasks.

Whatever the issue, difficult employees all have one thing in common. They will negatively impact your business. So as a business owner, you must accept the realities of handling difficult people. Here are a few tips that will help you deal with such individuals.

Handling difficult employees? Here's what you must do before they destroy your business.

If you employ people in your business, you're going to be faced with a number of tricky management issues - dealing with tardiness, sick leave, and keeping your staff motivated.

Performance reviews can be useful for motivating employees, but only if they are accurate. An inaccurate review, which fails to recognize the employee's value to the organization, can be worse than no review at all.

If a performance review fails to take note of an employee's shortcomings, it won't be taken seriously.

If an employee consistently performs poorly, it's vital to document this, as well as any corrective action that is taken.

Your staff may be genuinely unaware that their performance in some areas is poor (or exceptional!), unless you tell them.

Most employers conduct performance reviews annually, in order to decide on salary increases and bonuses. Since performance reviews should build on previous reviews, it's better to conduct them more regularly - every 4 months is a good frequency.

Employees thrive on feedback, and regular performance reviews provide a consistent framework for providing positive reinforcement.

Under-performing employees can also benefit. Regular reviews can identify weak performance areas, and allow you to set clear goals and expectations, and to coach and mentor the employee to improve their performance.

Objectivity is vital. You need to concentrate on measuring performance, and not on quirks of personality.

The performance review should relate directly to the employee's job profile - your employees do have job profiles, or job descriptions, don't they? The job profile should identify the Key Performance Areas for the job. For instance, some Key Performance Areas for a receptionist might be:

* answer incoming calls within 3 rings
* take messages accurately and pass them on quickly
* type at a rate of 25 words a minute

The more measurable a Key Performance Area, the better.

Some other measurable Key Performance Areas include:

* number of sick days
* number of absent days
* number of instances of tardiness
* number of customer complaints
* number of customer compliments
* number of co-worker complaints

Of course, you would have to keep accurate records of all of these, in the employee's personal file.

You should prepare a performance review form for each employee, which lists the Key Performance Areas for the job, and provides a matrix for you to record the performance in each area.

For example, you might rate the employee's performance in each Key Performance Area against a scale of
'Poor, Satisfactory, Good, Very Good, Excellent'

Performance reviews should be a collaborative process - as far as possible, the employee should agree with your assessment.

About the author:
Scott Morris's personal site on performance management course and enterprise performance management for more information, you can visit

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