A warehouse worker started at my company about 2 months ago. His role is pick/pack and he is very slow (benchmarked to other employees). I have introduced KPIs but he is consistently not meeting them. Aside from this, he is a great culture fit and has other great qualities (initiative, independence, desire to learn, etc). He is just SO slow in his role even after trying multiple techniques to get him to improve efficiency. I’m often in on weekends to catch up his work. He is always actively working (not on his phone, not chatting) but for some reason just can’t pick up the pace. How do I politely tell him that he needs to hurry up and meet KPIs? He seems to work at one pace no matter how swamped we are with holiday orders. He is somewhat fragile and emotional so I worry that being blunt will result in hostile feelings.
Do I just let him go?
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There is a chance that he has a disability, regardless you should tackle it as coming through a way of support.
So have the conversation about them being below pace and ask how they think they could improve and then ask how you can help including showing techniques again. Also have regular follow up meetings to keep a channel of communication open.
Also if you are thinking of letting them go, tell them and give them the warning but emphasize the preferences to keep them on the team.
“I added KPI’s and they told me what I already knew” but now everyone’s being monitored. Bet they love it. Making everything a KPI no matter how trivial seems to be some trend at the moment and it’s so demoralizing to staff it’s scary. We’re always watching 👀
Fire them or find a different job for them.
Say exactly that. Why not be direct?
Hmm… Offer a bonus if the team’s KPIs improve by a certain amount? Let the team do the team-building.
You’re better off to be blunt than to fire someone who has good qualities and is a good cultural fit.
Basically, he’s 75% of the way there. You just have to kick him in the ass to pick up his pace to reach his KPIs.
I would sit him down and explain that what he’s doing, he’s doing well, but he working so slow, you’re covering his ass by coming in on weekends to complete his work and you’re not going to do that anymore.
Show him on a graph or pie chart his productivity compared to others.
(I have a feeling he won’t comprehend verbal or visual numbers.) This should speak volumes to him and you won’t have to say a word.Ask him what he thinks is holding him back from increasing his performance.(I don’t know is not acceptable.)
Put him on a 30 day written performance Improvement Plan where each day has to improve by X over the previous day. If he can increase his performance by x% or x pieces a day, you may have a winner in 30 days.
In my experience, some have worked out, some havent. It’s just one of those things.
Good luck.
If you have really clear KPIs that you can show how he is lower than the defined standard, him seeing the numbers is all that is needed. Hold up a mirror to his performance and hold him accountable or higher performing staff are going to start seeing that you tolerate mediocre work.
Fire them for not hitting their numbers get a new guy
I’ve dealt with this.
He’s been given KPIs? Has employee acknowledged they move slow and will improve? If yes? Have they improved? If no, do they understand this? Or is there always an excuse.
Some people have only one gear, and it’s slow. Now whether they’re the excuse type or the working on it type, if they understand they aren’t meeting expectations, they’ve gotta go. End of story. It won’t change. Out of 100+ employees over some years, I’ve had maybe 10-15 in this category. 0 improved ever.
I suggest implementing employee evaluations, this way you can justify giving or not giving someone a raise, and pin pointing their strengths and weaknesses without coming across as demanding or unfair
Independence, desire to learn, initiative, are hard to find. Can you find another position better fitting his skill set?
First I’d ask: Is he accurate? If he picks up the pace will he be less accurate? And which is more important, pace or accuracy?
I would probably show him his stats and say it’s pretty slow compared to others but since he’s new it’s not a huge deal, and then I would challenge him to pick up the pace by hitting a (very slightly) higher target. I would tell him you appreciate his effort and his cultural fit and you want to make it work. And I would review again after another month or so, and if he’s picked up the pace I would do the whole thing again but set a higher target.
Are there procedural issues that would make him more efficient that you can resolve? Is there a process your benchmark employees did differently? Are you offering free coffee at the shop? Is his performance a bottleneck and costing you money? Is firing him bcuz number going to leave you without anyone to pick/pack for the next few months and cost you way more than just keeping him?
My custom ethics enhanced gpt (trained with a corpus over 200,000 words) says:
Just be honest with your employee. Let them know about their efficiency issues and give them a chance to improve. Instant job loss for something improvable is too harsh.