You have an amazing and talented employee. You know they are a rockstar (at least – they used to be), but for some reason, recently, they don’t seem to care about their responsibilities and have become difficult to work with. Because everyone is different, there is no perfect solution for any situation. However, here are some steps you can take to manage these difficult, yet talented, employees.

1. Provide assignments that fit the employee’s interest.

This may not always be possible. Try to find out about your employee’s interests as generally, people are more motivated when they enjoy what they’re doing. Work with them to find a challenging assignment that stretches your talented employee’s skills. It may engage them and motivate them to bring out their best work.

2. Be clear about feedback to the employee.

Make sure to provide clear feedback to your employee if there are challenges. Communicate what the issues are and work with them to change the problem behaviour to agreed upon performance objectives. Make sure to provide feedback when things are going well but also to provide feedback and guidance when things are not going smoothly.

3. Help the employee set achievable goals. 

These goals should have a set time frame and have clear outcomes on which you and the employee both agree on. Check in on the progress of the goals.

4. Partner with your HR team.

Your HR team has a wealth of knowledge in dealing with employee issues. Team up with them to come up with a game plan to help motivate your talented employee. Your HR team will also need to be involved if there needs to be a termination in the future so keep them in the loop of what is going on.

5. Document clearly.

Make sure to document regularly to provide fact-based evaluations to assess whether goals are achieved or not. Documentation is also necessary if you need to build a case for termination.

6. Know when to let go.

 Every situation is different, and sometimes it doesn’t work. If a termination is deserved, a manager will likely be respected for doing what needs to be done. Allowing a difficult employee who does not care to continue working will inevitably affect the rest of the team’s morale (and that takes even more time to fix). Make sure to follow all proper termination procedures and help this employee on to their next opportunity.

The beauty of working with people is every situation is never exactly the same. With all the costs in hiring and training a new person, it is usually best to try to make a situation work. Communication and feedback is key to improving performance. However, notice that in this article, we emphasized on difficult but talented employees. If your employee is just plain difficult without any talent, then they probably need to be managed out of the company.

Surge makes HR simple. For more information on our Managed HR Services, please contact us for a free consultation.