Performance Is Punishing

Nov 19

Hugh McLeod referenced a recent Houston Chronicle article titled Star Workers Tire of Performing While Others Loaf. Huzzah. The article encapsulates what Sarah calls “performance is punishing.” In other words, the better you do, the more you’re expected to do. And that isn’t always to your benefit. Poor HR practices and bad management can converge to make it so that the best performers get the least in terms of praise, motivation, and rewards. It’s crazy, isn’t it? But consider this:

Forty-seven percent of your most productive, most creative, most valuable workers are mailing out resumes, going on job interviews, even contemplating other offers.

Even worse, many managers are actually accelerating those departures by how they treat those employees, said Mark Murphy, chief executive of Leadership IQ and co-author of The Deadly Sins of Employee Retention: Cutting Edge Strategies for Keeping Your Best People.

“Frankly, we treat our high performers worse than any other employee,” he said.

“When a manager has a tough project upon which the whole company depends, to whom do they turn?

“Who gets the late hours and the stress? It’s not the low performers, because managers want the project done right. Instead, managers turn to their handful of high performers.

“Over and over we ask our high performers to go above and beyond, making their jobs tough and burning them out at a terrible pace. Meanwhile, low performers often get easier jobs because their bosses dread dealing with them and may avoid them altogether.”

Little wonder that “high performers hate slackers,” he said. “Eighty-seven percent of (high performers) say working with a low performer or a slacker has actually made them want to change jobs. They’re really sick of having to carry the load for everybody else.”

Next up: The McDonald’s Factor

About the Author

Frank Roche

Frank started IFRACTAL over 7 years ago with Sarah Chambers. Together, they've created HR communications and HR software for some of the world's leading companies. Frank is also studying Flamenco guitar and origami.