Are there bad employees ?

Yes

End of thread.......

You sound a bit like me. Working the whole long weekend (eejit that I am).

But I have a good boss and when things calm down I'll tell them I'm taking the next two days off. All give and take with me.

All you can do is be seen to get your hands dirty when going gets tough and if the lads need you, be there.

As above 10% is good.

Forget the books and articles, they are of no value to you. And certainly pay no attention to absolute bullsh1t notions about quiet quitting. Hasn't anyone heard of noisy firing?

You already know what is needed.

If you are in a Semi-State, I'm right in assuming you have a mandatory performance management system.

Your responsibility, which I'm sure you've already done, is to prepare a Departmental work plan for the year that directly relates to whatever Corporate Business Plan exists.

In turn, it is your responsibility to set ambitious but realistic goals down the line to your supervisors and staff, which feed back into the high level goals. They need to be clearly communicated and coached and introduced in a constructive approach.

Most of your staff will meet and exceed these and will be constructive in how their work can contribute in a better way to the high level goals. No problem, no bother, give them ownership and let them work away.

As for the ones who fail to adequately engage, or fail to hit these reasonable targets, they need clear warning and ultimately sanction, whether thats loss of increments, loss of working hour flexibility, job sharing, flexi-time, study support etc etc.

The issue is not the 10%. The issue is demonstrating clearly to the 90% that they are not in fact mugs for working diligently. Have faith that they are on your side and brief your own managers up the line so that they will support your process too.

Honesty doesn't pay apparently.

At op. Exude the virtues of the good ones. Try and sideline the crap ones, where they can do least harm(we got you a Netflix subscription) ...in a smart way.

Yes, some employees are coasters and you will find that within every group. I'd hazard that even within the portion of your team that is performing? That the old Pareto chestnut of 80% of your "best" work is performed by 20% of your team.

In private enterprise, 15% of your direct reports are expected to be below expected targets. It's borne out in copious management, HR and psychology reports and research.

There isn't a whole lot you can do about that and from reading your OP? You have tried everything reasonable. There comes a point with employees such as the ones you are having issue with, would in private enterprise at least. Be managed out of the organisation. Be that via PIP and disciplinary intervention or other means. Likely not paths available to you in a semi-state.

It is an awkward situation and one that if not handled well? Can quickly lead to resentment among your better staff, when the high performers are subject to the same rewards and lack of incentive as the low performers.

I don't agree that there is such a strict delineation between semi-state/state and the private sector in this respect.

Many for-profit corporations are inefficient, bloated entities that wouldn't be out of place in the Soviet Union and anyway they must bend to reams of government regulation. In many cases they are like carbon copies of some government department.

If you think people aren't coasting by in these "competitive" businesses you've been had. In the case of some corporations 99% of their "business" consists of government contracts and the whole operation is like a disguised dole.

A guy I worked with in one private corporation could barely read or write but was considered a 'good' employee, and personally praised by the CEO, because he made an effort and stayed out of trouble.

Private sector. The above refers to a range of positions......admin, finance, sales, service technicians, manufacturing staff, warehouse

There's always a few who do very little. If you are unable to reward people with remuneration, you can certainly reward them other flexibility, like wft or time in lieu at the managers discretion.

How are people measuring KPIs especially as related to PMDS or similar. Because you can have two similar projects and call one a success and the other on a failure with very effort.

Was looking at one bit work recently where people were complaining a person was taking ages to do some task. But when their manager was monitoring it went much faster. The implication was the worker was slacking off. In fact the manager had to complete some steps of the task, but when he wasn't around the work stopped. It was the manager that was the roadblock not the worker.

Oh yes. It was was communicated ad nauseum.

yes there are. But only one person can actively enable a bad employee… A bad manager.

I was going to say sometimes you have people being pushing into roles they don't suite. Like a square peg into a round hole. Then the square peg get blamed.

That said the OP certainly sounded like they tried to make things work. But sometimes (rare enough I would say) some people just don't work out.

So true.

I don't know if this counts as 'quiet quitting' but I have changed the way I work in the last eighteen months. It's possible that my superior now considers me part of the 10% of dead wood but that doesn't bother me at all. I don't at all think this makes me a bad employee.

I like my work - my actual work, the work for which my degree etc. prepared me. I don't particularly like my job. I have no interest in ascending the hallowed ladder to join management, partly because if I did that I would spend much less time doing the work I enjoy. I'm reasonably well paid, not particularly motivated by money.

I used to do all the extras, all the things that aren't part of the job description but are considered part of the job. Lots of unpaid overtime, or getting involved in somebody's madcap initiatives, or attending grim social occasions.

I had a revelation about six years ago, but it took me a while to see how I should apply it. There was a task I used to do that required late evenings and full weekends for about nine weeks. This used to come up every five years but started occurring every two years. I threw myself into it cheerfully enough, thinking my contribution was valued and it had to be done to a high standard and I couldn't let anybody down. Then I had an injury that was going to require surgery so I let them know well in advance that that year they'd need to find somebody else. That was fine, they asked around. Nobody else had the skills or experience or willingness to do what was required so they hired somebody.

He was paid thousands. He was paid slightly more than eight weeks of my salary, to do a job I used to do in nine weeks after work and at weekends for free. When the whole thing was over he got a special mention and voucher for a dinner somewhere fancy. I had only ever received quiet thanks from my superior. It's not that I want a round of applause and a posh dinner, but it was suddenly very clear that because I appeared to value my time and skills so cheaply, my superiors didn't value them at all. The chap they hired put a price on his time so his contribution was seen differently.

The next time the whole thing happened I was approached about getting on board. It took a lot of guts but I said no. No reasons, no excuses, no complaining, just no.

It had taken a while but I had realised that I had developed a pattern of prioritising the job. I had juggled family around, let friends down, all the usual symptoms that things are out of balance.

So I stopped. I do my actual work, probably better than I have done it in years, but that's it. A few occasions have occurred when it was gently pointed out to me that I must have forgotten to attend a 'voluntary' committee meeting, the sort of things I had thrown myself into in the past. When I said I just wasn't doing that sort of thing any more the reactions were varied. Some were genuinely put out, believing that my absence meant more work for them. Some were very supportive, subtly probing to see if I'm having any personal difficulties. My response was usually along the lines of "I know for certain that none of us will lie on our deathbed thankful that we never missed a 'pointless-vanity-project-run-by-somebody-I-don't-like' committee meeting."

Now my evenings are usually free because I've stopped bringing work home. I get more exercise, I get to see people, I get to bed earlier. My life is just better.