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agsr

As a manager, should you focus most of your energy trying to get your bottom quartile employees to shape up or your best employees to do even better?

islander507

Focus on the best. That's what gives you 10x improvement. You should continue to clean house with the bottom performers though as they drag down team morale 

averyapro

I think that there should be a good balance but with employees not doing their work and such I think that the foot needs to be put down and the manager needs to talk to them and tell them to shape up. However, if you want to make your company better I think that you should also tell your best employees just to put a little extra effort into it because then there is a balance but I think it could go either way. 

MajoMILSdlGMGV

I think you need to focus on all your employees. If you see that one of your employees is not working according to the standards your company has then there is something wrong there so you it's your responsibility as an employer to figure out why this person is not working. Meanwhile you keep rewarding your best employees to encourage them to keep doing their best job. There is also something else that could work. You ask for your best employees to offer help to your worst employees or to offer them some tips and things to help so that those that don't work as expected can improve with the help of their co-workers. 

Vaulk

It really all depends on what kind of business you're running.  If you're talking about the fast food industry...well the employee standards are pathetically low...so I'd focus on my better performers and just cut the low quality employees out of the equation...then hire new ones. 

In other businesses, it might be more beneficial to work with your low performing employees to improve their overall work ethics, especially if you NEED them to remain employed with you.  Some businesses simply cannot afford to lose employees and this would be the scenario where putting in more time with your poor performers would net you better results.

In any case, from an ethical standpoint, you should always put in more time and effort for your better employees.  Your quality workers are going to inevitably make you more money, be more reliable and dependable, and will net you a better business model overall.

Keep in mind this isn't junior high or high school, it's the real world where if you don't perform well in your job...you can't blame everyone else and take a 70 for makeup work.

AlfredChan

@agsr
I believe there has to be a balance, regardless of your approach. 
Deciding to spend less time on either party (best or worst employees) will equate to neglecting one or the other to some extent.

It is in my opinion however, that it will likely be more beneficial to start off spending more time on the worst employees. This is with the intention of correcting/guiding their work attitude, resulting in a shift in the balance between "best" and "worst" employees. Eventually, once the imbalance between "best" and "worst" employees becomes too great: significantly more "best" than "worst", more time can then be spent with developing the "best" employees into better than "best". 

agsr

@AlfredChan, I guess it's based on industry. In general, I believe that focus on top employees gives the biggest boost. 20% of people do 80% of work. If I can get my top employees to be more productive that will make a much larger difference than whatever marginal improvement we can get from the bottom employees 

someone234

Fire the losers but beware of the winners.

The mediocre employees aren't trying to take your job, the best are.

AlfredChan

@agsr
@someone234

Thank you, both of you have shared very interesting ideas.
I suppose, the best thing to do would be to retain a good sense of flexibility in our judgement because there hardly ever is a "one size fits all" solution.

BonitaVanhooser

First of all, I would like to clear you a good boss is also known as a leader. Yes, a manager should try to perform his/her duties as a leader. Do you think a leader should give less importance to its weak followers or should pay more attention towards strong ones? In HR management, we don't categorize our employees into worst or the best ones. Actually, we emphasize the theory of the right man for the right job. Yes, by following this theory you can easily demolish the discrimination of bad or good employees.

On the contrary, suppose you give more attention to your weak employees then it could be good but you can't increase their level of efficiency. Actually, it is employee engagement or retention that can lead to the improvement in employees' work. Now, you can apply different strategies to improve employees' engagement in the workplace and giving them attention could be one good strategy. However, you can't apply this strategy in all cases without critically handling all internal and external factors.  

MayCaesar

Here is how I, someone who has never run a business, see it.

In general, your employees' performance will have a Gaussian-like distribution: the vast majority will be mediocre performers, with two minorities being worst and best performers.
- The worst performers drain the company's resources and should be fired.
- The mediocre performers are what keeps the company going, and it is important to maintain and develop their skills for the overall company's performance to increase.
- The best performers set the direction of the company, they are the ones who innovate and do the most sophisticated projects necessary for the company to prevail in the face of harsh market competition.

I would say that you should make sure your mediocre workers maintain their skill level, or increase it as the company grows to keep up with the demand - but your best workers are who you should really invest in, as they are who creates the growth in the first place.

It is similar to how it is in sciences. The vast majority of scientists contribute very little to science as a whole, but combined, they create the base holding everything. Then you have the left end of the spectrum, the scientists which should change their field, as science simply is not their forte. And finally, you have the best of the best, people like Einstein or Hawking, who take this base and launch it forward in order to learn something principally new about the Universe. It is important to invest in all scientists barring the least competent of them - but you really do not want to throw millions at a random guy in a small college in the middle of nowhere, and funding Einstein will give more return than equally funding 100 mediocre scientists.