It is important to first figure out the cause of the under performance of the employee. It would be ideal to set up a meeting with the employee to figure out if there is something going on personally that is causing their lacking performance. If that is the case, they should be given the appropriate time off. it is also important to see if there is anything in the workplace that is causing them to underperform.  However if that is not the case, the employee should be properly trained and be reminded of their responsibilities and tasks and what their expectations are. By doing so, the employee is made aware of their lacking performance and what goals they should be achieving as an integral part of the company.   

Underperformance can be linked to many things - many of times being extrinsic issues (toxic work environment, distracting personal issues, etc.) rather than an intrinsic want to just "skate by" at work. It's important for a manager to assess what is causing this underperformance through a performance evaluation meeting. It's critical that the manager comes off compassionate and caring to the employee and come up with a plan to better their performance. Setting goals, finding resources, and inspiring the employee are three of many ways a manager can frame the conversation. Additionally, it is important to schedule follow up meetings that you can continue the dialogue with the employee and assess progress. After some time it would give the manager a better understanding of whether they can continue having the employee on the team or to let them go.

Firing low-performing employees should not always be solution for managing underperformance. There are methods to improve employee performance and firing employees can lower morale. Some strategies that I've seen companies do include performance evaluations to assess employee strength and weaknesses. They set goals for them and provide feedback on areas for improvement. Another strategy is training and development. Work experience may be limited in improving the employee's skillset, so a company may offer training and development programs to help employees acquire new skills, knowledge and capabilities. These may help them perform their job better but also will allow the company to be flexible with the employee. Perhaps the employee if trained in a different position would actually excel. This might be a cheaper alternative than rehiring an employee. An undervalued strategy is counseling and support. Project managers often need to be empathetic to raise the morale of the team and enhance productivity. If an employee feels they are constantly treated with disrespect and disregard for their circumstances, they may feel disposable or mistreated and therefore would likely perform worse. It's best to treatment employees like humans who can provide quality work if they are motivated to.

Companies usually have a record for any mishaps or mistakes that employees make. In a biotechnology company for medical purposes, there will indeed be a record of any mistakes an employee makes, let it be a small mistake or a big mistake. With smaller mistakes and underperformance, there would more likely be verbal warnings. Transitioning to bigger mistakes and performance affecting the entirety of the project and tasks, the supervisor will probably give them verbal warnings as well. After the first few verbal warnings and the mistake happens again, then the supervisor will give them a written write-up. That would be a written warning about what the employee did wrong and the supervisor would sit down, talk to them about what was done wrong, and what should be done in the future to prevent this from happening again. The supervisor would sign it for going over the information with the affected employee and distributing the written warning. The employee would sign it by acknowledging that they did make that mistake and had the sitdown.

Usually, at some companies, there are three written warnings and you are out. There are cases where if underperforming employees keep messing up, they will be placed on an employment improvement plan. This is basically telling them what they need to work on and improve. This is generally the last step before getting fired. If they keep messing up, underperform, or do not improve even through all of the warnings, they will probably get fired.

Before intervening, good managers diagnose why someone is underperforming because the solution depends entirely on the cause. Is it a skills gap where the person lacks technical capability? Is it unclear expectations where they don't actually know what success looks like? Is it lack of motivation or engagement where they're capable but not trying? Is it personal issues like health problems or family stress affecting focus? Is it a poor fit between their strengths and their assigned role? Is it inadequate resources or support preventing them from succeeding despite effort? Each of these requires completely different interventions, and treating a skills gap like a motivation problem (or vice versa) makes things worse.

System-level accountability is essential, and it covers aspects that involve a larger group of individuals who are underperforming along with individuals. At times, underperformance is less about the individual and more about how success is measured or supported in the business. For example, there can be instances where there are unclear KPIs, inefficient workflows, or unrealistic deadlines that quietly set up individuals to fail, although they are receiving training and mentorship. Through multiple cases, if there is a continuous focus on fixing the employee, it can actually overlook structural inefficiencies that are affecting multiple people with different impacts. Implementing periodic role audits or evaluations alongside individual performance reviews can showcase if an issue is personal or embedded in the system. In your experience, how often do companies truly step back and question the structure and not only their employees when it comes to underperformance?

I believe that it sets a bad precedent when companies immediately fire somebody that is underperforming and or is not immediately meeting their standards. When companies showcase that they do not put any value in their employees as people and decided to let go of people without any discussion or attempt for the person to better themselves, it diminishes any of the morale that the rest of the employees have. It is vital for the companies to approach their workers at a human level to get to the root cause on why they are not performing up to the standard that the company set. It is always best to start a discussion, if there are roadblocks in the project that the employee doesn't know how to get past or if there is something in their personal life that is splitting their attention a discussion is the best way to understand where to move forward. Establishing a connection with your employee as an employer helps make sure that the project is treated with care, so having regular conversations with the employees will happen create that connection. 

I agree it’s not always better to terminate an employee for consistently poor performance. Many times, a company will want to determine why an employee is performing poorly before they decide what actions to take. For example, maybe the expectations were not clearly communicated to the employee. Maybe the employee lacked some basic skills, but was never trained in those areas. Maybe something outside of work has been going on that is impacting their ability to perform at all levels.

Typically, managers begin by talking with the underperforming employee. Then, they establish new and specific objectives which are regularly reviewed so the employee knows if they are meeting these objectives. I believe it is very important to have this type of process as it supports the employee while motivating the rest of the employees within the organization. Additionally, if possible, having a more experienced coworker assist the employee with developing their skills through training or mentoring may significantly increase productivity.