The 80-20 Rule With Employees
Welcome to the #culturedrop. Every Tuesday, Galen Emanuele emails tools to advance leadership skills, team culture, and personal growth. No spam, just great content. Sign up now to get it in your inbox.
Your highest-paid employees are actually your worst performers
At first glance, that headline sounds backwards. But stick with me, because there's real logic and math behind it.
“Leaders spend probably 80% of their time, energy, and effort dealing with the bottom 20% of their team.”
The 80-20 rule with employees.
Here's the pattern that plays out in companies everywhere. Leaders spend probably 80% of their time, energy, and effort dealing with the bottom 20% of their team. The employees causing drama, the ones with constant issues. AKA the lowest performers and the worst behaved that eat up a ton of the bandwidth leaders have for their people.
Meanwhile, and as a result, the best behaving, highest performing people actually driving the business forward and contributing to a productive and positive workplace culture get way less attention.
This isn't a call to round up your worst employees and fire them. Although, companies absolutely need to coach people up to a higher standard, or make the hard call to remove the bad actors. But that's not the real point here.
Don't forget your best people.
The real issue is what happens when almost every ounce of leadership energy goes toward accountability conversations and performance fixes for difficult employees.
The people who are productive, intentional, positive, and dedicated can get overlooked. Not because anyone intends to ignore them, but because leaders are wasting so much time greasing the few squeaky wheels.
Flip that. Spend the majority of your time and energy lighting up, lifting up, celebrating, and recognizing the people who are doing great work.
“Spend the majority of your time and energy lighting up, lifting up, celebrating, and recognizing the people who are doing great work.”
The real cost of low performers.
It is true that your highest-paid employees are your lowest-performing, worst-behaved ones. Here's why.
Think about who's sitting in meetings talking about the latest drama, the newest problem, or dealing with the customer issue someone created.
Usually it's more senior, more expensive employees. Add up the salaries and hours spent managing those situations, and the real cost of bad employees goes way beyond their paycheck. It includes every coworker and senior leader's time spent problem-solving, navigating drama, and cleaning up after them.
And that's just the visible cost. Poor performers also produce worse work, make more mistakes, and create worse customer experiences. A single bad interaction can cost you a customer entirely. Low performers and poor behaving employees are expensive in ways that don't directly show up on a spreadsheet.
Where the energy should go.
None of this means ignoring issues and accountability. It’s a call to make sure your best people get the positive attention they deserve. Recognize them, reward them, promote them, take care of them and keep them.
“Don’t be here for the haters. Spending excessive energy on the employees who will never be happy or choose to do better is wasteful.”
Make sure the energy you're putting into your team is going toward the people who are dedicated, accountable, and making your company and workplace culture successful.
Don’t be here for the haters. Spending excessive energy on the employees who will never be happy or choose to do better is wasteful. Some people will never come to the table or carry water, don’t make them the priority of your focus and energy.
“Keep your sights on your best people. Keep them at all costs, even when that means having the courage to let go of the people who are holding everyone else back.”
Closing thoughts.
Keep your sights on your best people. Keep them at all costs, even when that means having the courage to let go of the people who are holding everyone else back.
Leading is hard. Running a business is hard. Dealing with people is genuinely difficult. Some employees are great, some aren't. Some leaders are great, many aren't. Some companies get this right, plenty don't.
Make sure yours is one of the ones that does.
Related Blogs:
Want more?
This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
MORE
