How to address poor performance with an employee: a step-by-step guide

To address poor performance, confirm the expectation was clear, work out whether the gap comes from skill, motivation or the conditions around the job, and then talk to the person privately and soon. Describe what you observed and what it affected, ask for their view, agree on one measurable target and the support you will give, and check progress every week. Write down each step. Good performance management software can hold the goals, check-in notes and records, but the conversation itself is yours.

Most cases end there. The rest move to a written improvement plan with HR involved, and occasionally to a change of role or separation. Doing the early steps well is what makes the later ones fair.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management puts it plainly in its 2025 supervisor guide: poor performance only gets worse over time and rarely corrects itself without action, and most employees want and expect to be held accountable for their work. The same guide warns that failing to act tells the rest of the team that poor performers are held to a different standard.

Waiting also hurts the person you are trying to protect. Silence reads as approval, so a problem that first surfaces in a review lands as a surprise. And many employees hear little from their manager: in Gallup research, 47% said they received feedback a few times a year or less, and 19% once a year or less. An underperformer in that situation may simply not know.

Every manager who delays has a reason that sounds sensible at the time. Here are the common ones and what to do instead.

In a 1998 Harvard Business Review article, Jean-François Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux observed that when an employee performs poorly, managers typically do not blame themselves and assume the problem is the employee's fault. Sometimes it is. Often the cause sits in the job itself: OPM lists unclear job expectations, lack of resources and ineffective leadership among the common causes, alongside skill gaps, personal issues and motivation. Expectations are also less clear than managers think. Gallup found that only about one in two employees clearly know what is expected of them at work.

So rule out the expectation first, then sort what you see into skill, will or context. Treat it as a hypothesis you will test once you hear the employee's side.

Will problems are the most tempting to label and the least useful to label. "Unmotivated" is a judgment; "the last three reports arrived after the deadline, and you used to be early" is an observation you can discuss. If motivation is the issue, our guide on how to motivate employees covers what tends to restore it. If the root is friction between colleagues, start with resolving the conflict in the workplace before treating it as one person's performance.

Personal issues such as health, caregiving or grief are a separate case. Do not probe or diagnose them. Acknowledge, point to the resources your organization offers, involve HR, and keep the work expectation clear.

1. Check the expectation. Write the standard in one sentence with a number or a clear test: "Weekly client reports go out by Friday at noon and need no factual corrections." If you cannot write that sentence, the first conversation is about clarifying it.
2. Gather evidence. Pull two or three recent, dated examples. Separate what you saw from what others told you, and verify the second.
3. Hold the conversation. Private, soon, with notice: "I'd like 30 minutes tomorrow to talk about the client reports." Describe, ask, listen.
4. Agree a target and support. One measurable goal, a date, and what you will provide, then a 15–30 minute check-in every week.
5. Close or formalize. If the gap closes, say so and return to your normal rhythm. If it does not after a fair period, bring in HR and move to a written plan.

Suppose a team lead notices that a support specialist's resolution times have doubled over two months. Checking the queue before the meeting, she finds the specialist was moved onto billing tickets without training. The conversation becomes a plan for two weeks of shadowing and a lighter queue, not a warning.

Lead with the purpose, then a specific example, then a question. For the structure of the feedback itself, the situation, behavior and impact method in our guide to giving feedback works well here too.

Expect agreement, explanation or denial. Explanation may change your diagnosis, so listen for it. With denial, return calmly to the evidence and ask what they see differently; you do not need to agree on the past to agree on the next four weeks.

An annual review is too slow to fix anything: by the time it arrives, the cause is old and the employee is defensive. Gallup cites meta-analyses showing that goal setting works better when paired with progress monitoring and feedback, and found that employees who strongly agree they discussed their goals and successes with their manager in the past six months are 2.8 times more likely to be engaged. Even for formal accountability, Gallup recommends at least two progress reviews a year rather than one, on top of ongoing conversation.

While a gap is open, tighten the rhythm. Meet weekly for 15–30 minutes on the agreed target, using real results rather than impressions. Recognize progress the day you see it. Add one line to your notes after every check-in, so the trend never depends on memory. At the end of the agreed period, make an explicit decision and share it.

Accountability is often confused with blame, and the confusion makes managers shy away from it. Blame looks backward and asks who is at fault. Accountability looks forward and asks what result is owed, by when, and what happens if it is not met. Many employees do not get even that: Gallup found only 40% of employees strongly agree their manager holds them accountable for their performance goals, and those who do are 2.5 times more likely to be engaged.

Blame has a cost beyond the individual. Amy Edmondson's 1999 study of 51 work teams found that psychological safety, the shared belief that it is safe to take interpersonal risks, was associated with learning behavior, which in turn mediated the link to team performance. A team that watches a colleague get shamed may learn to hide mistakes, and hidden mistakes do not get fixed.

In practice, accountability without blame means:

• Same standard, every person. The bar is the same for everyone; the support differs.
• Results and behaviors, never labels. "Missed three deadlines" is accountable; "lazy" is blame.
• Consequences stated in advance, so people can choose with full information.
• The manager owns their part. If the expectation was unclear or the tools were missing, say so first.

A performance improvement plan is a written document stating the gap, the required standard, the support, the check-in schedule, the time frame and the consequence if the standard is not met. It comes after informal coaching has had a fair chance, not before.

Be honest about what a PIP is: a genuine last opportunity and a formal record. It can also be the step before separation, and employees know that. Calling it "a structured chance to get back on track, with clear consequences" is accurate; pretending it is routine damages trust.

A fair PIP contains six parts:

1. The specific gap, with dated examples, tied to a core part of the role.
2. The measurable standard. OPM's guide says each PIP must identify the expected performance and how it will be measured.
3. Support: training, tools, a named person who meets with the employee, and any workload changes.
4. Check-in schedule, usually weekly, with written notes after each one.
5. Time frame long enough for the work to show change. For federal employees, OPM says a PIP will normally span 30 business days. Private employers set their own length; cover several full cycles of the work being measured.
6. Consequences, stated plainly, with a note that the plan does not change the terms of employment.

The outcome should not surprise anyone. OPM's guide says it should not be a surprise to the employee whether they completed the plan successfully.

A PIP is the wrong tool when the cause is context (fix the context), when the issue is misconduct rather than performance (follow your disciplinary policy), or when the outcome is already decided. A plan written to fail is a paper trail, not a plan.

Good documentation protects the employee as much as the employer, because it keeps the record factual and complete:

• Same-day and dated. A short note after each conversation.
• Observable. What happened, when, and what it affected. No adjectives about character.
• Two-sided. Record the employee's explanations and requests, too.
• Shared. A brief recap after each meeting invites correction and removes surprises.
• Consistent and stored properly. The same kinds of issues documented for everyone, kept in your HR system, not a personal notebook or chat thread.

Tell HR informally as soon as you expect more than one conversation. Involve them formally before:

• Writing a PIP, a written warning or any document that mentions consequences.
• Any change in pay, role, schedule or reporting line linked to performance.
• Responding when the employee raises a health condition, disability, pregnancy, caregiving need, or a complaint of discrimination, harassment or unfair treatment.
• Acting while the employee is on, or recently back from, protected leave.
• Considering separation.

Health and disability need particular care. According to the EEOC, when an employee asks for an accommodation in response to a performance discussion, the employer may continue the discussion but should also start the interactive accommodation process. The EEOC also says that an accommodation requested only after a performance problem has occurred does not require the employer to excuse that past performance. The practical lesson: do not argue, do not promise, and call HR the same day.

On the legal background, without legal advice: at-will employment is the default US standard, meaning either side can end it at any time and for almost any reason. But at-will status does not protect termination for every reason, and the exceptions vary by state. Anti-discrimination and anti-retaliation laws, union agreements, contracts and your own written policies can all add requirements. That is why consistency and documentation matter more than any single meeting.

• The surprise review. Raising a problem for the first time months after it started.
• Vague feedback. "Step it up" gives the person nothing to change.
• Talking to peers first. Discussing someone's performance with colleagues before talking to them.
• Moving the target midway through an improvement period, or setting five targets at once.
• Quietly rerouting work to others, which hides the problem and burdens the team.
• Forgetting to close. When performance recovers, say so in writing. People remember the warning; make sure they hear the recovery.

Decide at the start what "fixed" looks like, and use the employee's real work output wherever possible.

End each check-in with two questions: "On a scale of one to five, how clear is what I'm expecting from you?" and "What is the one thing I could do this week that would help most?" A low clarity score is yours to fix.

Software cannot have the conversation or judge the cause, but it keeps the facts in order: a performance management platform holds the agreed goals, check-in agendas and dated meeting notes, so nobody relies on memory. If your team sets OKRs, an OKR tool makes expectations visible before any gap appears. When a case becomes formal, employee relations case management software lets HR log documents, track plan milestones and apply the same process across managers. If you are comparing options, start with the top-ranked performance management platform and check how it handles check-ins, private notes and access to sensitive records.