Performance punishment is starting to become a coined term. It reflects a simple reality: people who do a good job, tend to receive more work. Those that don’t, tend to get more free time on their hands, good LIFE-work balance, even a promotion. If you’re an entrepreneur, getting more work for doing a good job is what you want, but as an employee it’s not something you’d wish for.
How does it happen?
You could be in one of two scenarios. In the first one, you’re doing a good job, as you should, and you can’t say “no”. You end up getting manipulated and work keeps getting pumped towards you. Or it may not even be a manipulation. Sometimes the person sending in more work doesn’t know how busy you are, because you never say “no” and the work always gets done, so it doesn’t look like a problem. BUT, what a manager can and should see in this case is that a disproportionate amount of activity gets solved by a single employee.
The second scenario is the serotonin and dopamine “junkie”. The overachiever, not the natural performer! The person that never puts a stand-in when is out of office and responds to work calls while on vacation. That results into fights with the partner and what better refuge if the personal life is not working, than to do more work? Wrong judgement, but common.
Toxic phrases that accompany performance punishment
- “I can’t trust this with anyone else”. Obscurity is never good. How can you not trust your own people? Fact is this phrase is just a manipulation. It was never about trust.
- “We need someone that for sure can do a good job”. Then why did you hire the rest, if they can’t? This is not the same with having different levels of experience within a team. That’s even a financial necessity. Skilled employees can do more skilled work within regular hours. Less skilled employees can still work volumes of less intelligent work within the same regular hours.
- “You’re the only one that has experience with this”. Red flag! Nothing’s going to change if the same person keeps doing that type of task. In fact, in project management, when one person has all the knowledge, it’s a huge risk.
- “Just call X, he/she never says No”. And I would add that the person is always reachable by phone, at any hour, even on vacation.
- “You never said it’s too much. You should’ve spoken up” Yes, this one might be true. If you’ve never spoken up about your workload, don’t expect others to just “see” your struggle. That’s immature. It’s the same behaviour that breaks up married couples: “he should’ve known / she should’ve seen it”. No. Speak up.
- “You know X can’t do it, he/she has to pick up the kids from school after work”. That’s not an argument. Nobody’s time is more important than another’s. We all have the same 24h in a day and more or less the same natural life span (at least at a local level).
- “I was expecting more from you” – the first time you speak up or do a sloppy job because of fatigue or burnout.
The effects
Easy to guess, the effects of performance punishment can be:
- Burnout – if the employee doesn’t know when to stop
- Attrition – if the employee does know when to stop (however the matter of lessons learned is debatable). By the way, look up what attrition actually means. Seriously, do it.
- Bad reputation (for the company / workplace) – unavoidable
- Underperforming – “do such a bad job that nobody will ever ask you again to do it”, if the employee is smart enough and wants to stay with the company, but not with the management.
- Fatigue. One step away from burnout. Performance starts to decrease as there are no more resources.
- Blocked promotions, because you’re “irreplaceable”.
Warning signals
A good employee is punished for performance, when:
- He/she works overtime just to finish the pile of work
- He/she can’t be promoted because no one else can handle the same amount of work (see the article on ensuring your succession)
- You have other employees known to be doing a sloppy job, but somehow everything gets magically resolved
- Management is pushing back on approving some vacations or the employee has to be careful when taking vacation, as to not block the activity.
How to fix it?
Where there is a will, there is a way. Even for addressing performance punishment.
- Speak up. Sometimes what is obvious to you, may not be obvious to others.
- See if there is a disproportionate amount of tasks getting solved by one person vs others. Then level it.
- One person having all the knowledge on one topic is a huge risk. Share that knowledge equally through sessions, shadowing, workshops.
- If one person is constantly working overtime, ask why and do something about it.
- Improve or automate. A lot of manual work can be removed through automation or by just reorganising the process.
Throwing more money at an overworked person is not a solution. Sure, it’s better than nothing. At least that person is getting something in return for a while, until he/she will resign. Then probably spend the extra money on recovery treatments.
Don’t punish good workers. Raise the standard for the whole team instead.
If you have enjoyed reading this or know someone who needs to hear all this, please go ahead and share it with your friends. Thank you!
