How Staffing Factors Contribute to Poor Employee Performance - Essay Example

The company has to look into the welfare of the employees to eliminate any factors that could pose a threat to the quality of their productivity. This paper discusses the major staffing factors that contribute to poor performance by employees and how one would assess whether the perceived dismal performance resulted from a training problem (DuBrin, 2009). 

Perhaps one of the major causes of dismal employee performance is the absence of clear job descriptions which causes disorganization, especially within manufacturing industries. Marchington & Wilkinson (2006) note that when job roles are unclear, communication issues are bound to arise thus setting the stage for a myriad of performance-related issues within the organization. Although an unclear understanding of the obligations of the staff may lead to confusion at work, it may also cause job overlap where one job role is assigned to more than one person. This staffing problem according to DuBrin (2009) normally manifests when employees cannot fathom what their respective employers and managers expect of them in addition to being clueless about their limits at work. This is mainly because the chance could be that some of the responsibilities that employees grapple with daily are not in their job description and thus could be causing them unnecessary burdens that could adversely affect their performance at work. The best strategies for mitigating this problem include updating job descriptions, training employees on team building, and redesigning job roles (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2006). 

Moreover, recruitment and selection issues could lead to a compromise in the quality of performance by the employees at their respective workstations. On many occasions, staffing problems begin at the time of recruitment and selection where the HR Managers could mismatch the employee and the job, or there could be job oversold for example the suggestions of nonexistent career advancement, over-qualification of the prospective workers, and the under-mention of the perceived uninteresting aspects of the job (DuBrin, 2009). This situation often leads to job alienation on the side of the employees, which often affects their overall performance within a given industry. When employees discover some aspects of the job that they were unaware of at the time of the recruitment, they feel demoralized by the perceived dishonesty on the part of their employers. Therefore, many approach their job roles from an indifferent perspective, or they could simply harbor the intention of sending a strong message to their employers by ensuring poor performance (Marchington & Wilkinson, 2006). However, there are strategies to deal with recruitment issues that tend to derail the performance objectives of the company. These may include the review of the procedures and processes of recruitment, retraining the staff involved with recruitment on the job descriptions as well as updating the job specifications and descriptions.

Promotion problems could lead to a below-par performance by employees, especially in situations where the staffs receive undeserving job offers and promotions. In occasions where the company promotes its staff to a level beyond their capabilities or the staff gets earlier than usual job promotions, such problems as the ones related to the performance of the employees are bound to arise. This may include according to an unqualified staff a technical position that requires the use of advanced technical skills. This situation can be solved by either returning the concerned employee to their previous positions or retraining them to fit in their current positions (DuBrin, 2009). 

Last but equally important is the training aspect of the employees that affect their performance if not well conducted. Training of the employees is a crucial aspect in any organization and its absence or inadequacy can adversely affect employee performance. Skills training and new-hire training are essential in most industries to give the employees the necessary skills required to perform certain tasks efficiently. When the company does not train recruits or retrain existing employees in line with the improvements in production processes and procedures, there is a likelihood of diminishing performance within the organization.

To know whether the staffing problem causes underperformance by the employees, managers ought to conduct a series of managerial assessments. The first step, in this case, would be the identification of the staff deemed to be performing poorly at their respective workstations. This is to enable the manager to have a clue about their number and production lines or departments. The next step would be the determination of the course of the poor performance before coming up with an action plan. Finally, the manager reviews the possible causes and concludes as to whether the problem is related to training or not. Normally, training problems result in avoidable errors and mild discrepancies (DuBrin, 2009).