Should you cut your best worker some slack due to some personal problems or will that send out the wrong message to the rest of the team? Your boss says one thing HR say another.
Your boss says ignore HR they don’t have to hit your performance targets. “ You’re new you still want to be seen as one of the good guys but if you want to pass your probationary period and stay on the management fast track programme you have got to toughen up.”
This individual is a valued member of the team so you decide you will support them through a difficult period, ease their workload and give them less demanding tasks in the short term. After all it is likely to be temporary and you don’t want to lose them. But what about the member of the team with the bad attitude and poor time keeping, the one who does the minimum they can get away with, they have told you about their difficulties at home and HR want you to do the same for them!
May be there are no bad managers just bad organisations. A recent tv drama with a message capture the pressure a new inexperienced manager was put under to hit performance targets by pushing their employees relentlessly, by taking the attitude that whatever was going on in their lives outside of work there was no excuse for not giving a hundred percent at work.
This attitude of “I’m not interested in your personal problems, just what you do at work” clearly stemmed from the organisation’s culture. An attitude instilled by middle managers, reinforced by senior managers and justified by claims that they work under the same pressure of long hours, demanding performance targets and in this case the expectations of the customer and the need to be ultra competitive.
