One of the greatest satisfactions for managers and supervisors in the workplace comes from overseeing employees who work well together as a team, perform their job duties as defined in their job descriptions, meet or exceed expectations, and successfully solve problems without extensive intervention, redirection or prompting from their supervisors.

However, occasionally supervisors may face the challenge of dealing with an employee’s declining or sub-standard performance. A supervisor may be uncomfortable with confronting an employee’s performance issues, but performance issues generally don’t fix themselves. Employees are valuable assets of a successful organization. Hesitation to confront performance issues early may only lead to more serious problems in the future. Following these guidelines can help ease the discomfort of addressing performance concerns with an employee, and improve the likelihood that those concerns will be resolved effectively, to the benefit of your organization as well as the employee.