Jamie started the day taking in the first session titled:

‘How to Manage Up’, delivered by Jon Wilkes, CEO at the IHSCM.

Jon explained how a key part of managing up is ‘effective feedback’ through explaining why a person has delivered positive performance or negative. This would need to be broken down into:

• Examples of specific behaviour
• The effect the behaviour had on others
• Silence when the employee is talking, enabling you to listen to their opinion
• Change and/or continue the performance
  

If the employee disagrees with the behaviour observed and brought to their attention, then you must ask them ‘why they are acting like this and what feeling is making them feel they need to disagree with what has been observed’.

The employee can then explain to their manager that they ‘need the behaviour to change if we are to work as productively as we can’ and set out a framework of reevaluating the conversation within a short period of time, such as 6 weeks.

The second session Jamie then attended was titled:

Compassionate Leadership, delivered by Jon Wilkes, CEO, once again.

Jon analysed the four key points to compassionate leadership, being:

• Attending – ensuring you are in a room with that person and act present to listen to their concerns
• Understanding – You make a concerted effort to listen and understand where they are comping from
• Empathise – you can feel how they are feeling and see the situation where they are coming from, while understanding how you can support them in this moment, displaying emotional intelligence.
• Help – you recognise how you can help this employee to ensure they are happier in their role and life.

These points show your employee that you have ‘a genuine concern for the people you lead and their wellbeing’.

 After lunch, Jamie then attended a third session, titled:

‘Addressing Underperformance’, delivered by Sonia Rai, Nectar HR.

Sonia took the viewers through a step-by-step process to go through with an employee when you are approaching them about underperformance.

This was:

1. Don’t jump to conclusions
2. Don’t jump to a conclusion that this is necessarily a performance issue
3. Plan an informal conversation first with the employee and make sure this is in a confidential space.
4. Plan the conversation you will have with the employee beforehand. Including dates and times of the observed underperformance.
5. The plan for the conversation should look like this:

• Ask how they are?
• State the concerns you would like to discuss informally at this stage.
• Present each concern with evidence – if they deny, then you can use witness statements to confirm.
• Ask them what happened in each case – listen to their response and make sure your body language shows that you are engaged and listening.
• Talk them through what behaviour is expected in the business
• Discuss a plan to work through the steps to improve the performance together
• Discuss the need for support including any training needs/flexible working issues or any other issues.
• Advise if doesn’t improve, then you may have to make the issue formal.
• Agree regular review periods throughout the space of 6-8 weeks (or a 3month probation extension)
• Check for full understanding from the employee and summarise meeting.
• Write up full conversation and send to the employee to sign off (if they don’t agree with notes, then ask them for their version – and if you don’t agree, then agree to have 2 versions on record).

It is also important to ensure that before starting this process, you assess whether this is performance issues or misconduct.

A good way of being clear with this is to consider if their behaviour is deliberate and whether they can’t do something (performance issue) or won’t do something (misconduct).

IHSCM Membership

If you would like to join the IHSCM and are a member of West Midlands Care Association, you can join for FREE.

Please contact enquiries@wmca.care for further details on accessing this membership benefit.