Question

Maria: Oh, this is so exciting – at my performance review today I’m going to ask for more responsibility. I’m a little nervous, but I’m sure Tom just loves my work! I would love to learn about the inventory process and grow with the company. I never was trained on the cash register, but I’m starting to figure it out. I’m loving the flexibility of the environment here, there’s no official start time for my shift. It feels like ‘sink or swim’ learning on the job, but I don’t mind! I’m focused on customer service like it said in my job description and am getting to know our regular shoppers.

Tom: I’m just not sure things are working out as I had hoped with Maria. She can’t seem to get to work on time—she was late three days last week and two days the week before. And what about the mistakes she makes ringing up a sale? It’s not just the prices that are wrong but the quantities and the item codes, too—now our inventory is messed up and accounting is on my back. And besides all that, she spends more time chatting with customers than she does folding and keeping the store organized. I just don’t think she’s taking this seriously.

Whats gone wrong here? What should Tom do now?

Answer 1

- There is something that went wrong here including the lack of proper guidelines, training, and understanding on the part of Maria. She was happy as the work is flexible and no-one even notices till date which must be the job of HR. Another thing that went wrong here on the part of the reviewing process is that Maria was not trained on the cash register and Tom analyzed her performance on the basis of that directly.

Before hiring the employee for a particular job, it is important to see in what area she is good at and what are the areas that requires training. I would say, the wrong part was done by the company as they neither gave her training nor inspected and informed her that she comes late till the reviewing day.

- There are somethings that Tom should do now:

• Make it clear with the HR manager regarding the criteria of hiring.
• A proper training must be given to Maria and other employees like her before evaluating the performance in one go.
• The rules must be enforced strictly and whoever breakes them, must be communicated immediately on daily basis.