An employee can often be an excellent investment for your company. They work hard, and you reap the rewards in the form of productivity and profit. But when is it time to move that employee on? It’s not always clear-cut, but there are some signs that you should write up an employee the next chance you get.

Top Reasons for Employee Write Ups

An employee can often be an excellent investment for your company. They work hard, and you reap the rewards in the form of productivity and profit. But when is it time to move that employee on? It’s not always clear-cut, but there are some signs that you should write up an employee the next chance you get.

This article has some tips for writing up an employee (if you don’t already). Here are the top four signs that your employee might be ready to be moved on:

1. Unfruitful work

If you see a pattern of unexciting work that doesn’t fill the needs of the business, it could be best time to write up an employee. While it’s not good to move two-thirds of your population at any one time, if no one seems excited about their work or if they’re mainly working on things that won’t lead to a significant profit, you might want to look into doing some reorganization.

2. Chronic underperformance

Employees that are rarely on top of their game and consistently don’t give you the quality output you’ve come to expect should be written up. This can run the gamut from someone with a busy schedule to someone who refuses to work hard enough at their tasks, and you’re getting the same output no matter what you’re asking of them.

3. Lack of initiative

If an employee is only interested in sitting back and doing nothing at their desk, it’s time to write them up. There will be a time when that employee will need to step up and take the initiative for the company for whatever reason (e.g., if they have experience or expertise on a particular project). When that happens, and you have to step in to do the work because no one else is doing it, you’re going to feel like you’ve wasted time and money on them.

4. Failing performance reviews

If employees make a name for themselves by consistently failing review periods and never receiving good evaluations, their manager should write them up for poor performance. This allows the higher-ups to reevaluate the situation and help that employee improve their work.

In addition to those top four write up reasons above, you can do other things as an employer to make sure your employees are working hard enough for your company.

Employee Motivation for the Company

The most important thing you can do for your employees is to make sure that you have a good team culture. This means having good communication with them, giving them a good work environment, and ensuring they know exactly what’s expected of them. If a new employee walks into an already productive workplace, it will be challenging to adapt to the new coworkers and get used to their unique working habits.

Suppose there’s not a good team culture in your office or at least some tension between different groups within the company. In that case, it can be difficult for employees to get motivated when they first start learning about the company.

Another thing to consider is how motivated the manager and high-level employees are for the company’s success. If you’re not putting as much effort into day-to-day operations as you could be, it will show in your employees’ work performance. If your CEO or chief executive officer passes on the responsibility of daily tasks to lower-level employees.

At the same time, they take long lunches or getaways on business trips. That’s undoubtedly one indication that something is wrong. Therefore, common work protocols emphasize scrutinizing the necessary reasons to write up an employee before beginning the process, then be sure the scrutiny is worth it.

Making Your Employees Happy with Their Work

When you’re allowing someone to work so hard as an employee that they don’t have time to enjoy life, it can make it challenging to do their best work. Before you go into a new position and write up an employee, try to give your employees as many perks as you can. If there’s an open communication channel between your employee and the rest of the team that’s important for the company’s success, make sure it’s available. If there’s a social aspect of the job that should be emphasized, make sure you do that.

Even if you’re not able to do everything together (e.g., if you’re in different locations), having some common ground for employees to come together for can go a long way toward keeping them motivated and devoted to their jobs.

Final Thought

When it comes down to it, you’ll know when the time is right to write up an employee when you realize that the quality of their work isn’t what it used to be. Suppose there’s no give or take in the relationship between you and your employees (e.g., they’re having trouble communicating with you). In that case, you might want to start looking for ways to improve your team’s communication at the office and home.

Another thing you can do to get the ball rolling for a possible promotion or firing is to put together a list of all of an employee’s negative and positive performance. This list might help you decide what kind of performance review is appropriate for that employee when dealing with review periods.