How do you say this "professionally"?

[thinkingcapon]

I have a pretty sensitive employee whose simply
Just not getting through their work fast enough . Very slow, very distracted etc and I feel others in their team are showing her up and they know that but she doesn't seem to Pick up on it!

How best to word this conversation with them please as my direct approach often doesn't help!?

Don't you show her some data? Team results whatever. Discuss where she is compared to the others and ask if she needs any support.

Is it that this colleague is actually too slow and not doing enough work, or is it that other colleagues are especially efficient or are working additional hours to get through work?

I'm asking because someone I know insists that their colleagues are lazy and do enough, but actually they're always working through their lunch and seem to thrive in a slightly competitive environment. I feel sorry for their colleagues.

Could you book in some time to catch up and review their workload? Go in with some concrete examples of where colleague hasn't got through the required workload and ask them for their insights why. I tend to find trying to do some root cause analysis is a good thing to do. For example, is it a training need, is it they need to speed up, is it that they spend a lot of time looking for files and information on a shared drive that's difficult to navigate, is it that nobody's sat and prioritised their workload, is it that they're taking too many breaks, is it that they're getting dragged into other small tasks that aren't really their job, is the team workload fairly allocated or are they getting dumped on?

You will have to be absolutely factual about this. How do you know, for definite, that she is not getting through work quickly enough? Can you quantify that for her?

Surely being direct is necessary here, if she isn't noticing that she is significantly slower than her team mates, or has noticed but isn't making any changes?

Is there a reason she’s not getting the same amount of work done, is distracted etc? I’d start from there, asking her how she thinks she’s doing, telling her you’ve noticed her not being as productive - she may not have noticed, I know I’m usually paying attention to what I’m doing rather than comparing myself to others. Is her work more complex, is she newer at the job, has she a lot going on personally that’s making it hard for her to focus, does she not realise in a workplace you need to focus, does she need support with time management?

Unless you’ve looked at all of that and think she’s just slacking, I’d start looking at why she’s not performing as you expect.

I agree that you need to gather more data before you say anything. In addition to the very good questions @LolaSmiles asks, a few more occurred to me:

Are they picking up harder tasks that take longer that no one else wants to do? Is work shared out fairly?
Are they more/less experienced than the rest of the team?
Are they helping others with their work and then not getting through what they need to do?
Do you have clearly communicated targets for responsiveness/output?
Do they have family/caring responsibilities which means they can't work overtime and are they being compared against people who work late/through breaks?

We really appreciate your work for the [workplace]. Thanks for [one or two small achievements] we really wouldn’t have been able to achieve success without you. However we are a little bit worried that you might be working at below the speed at which you are capable, and we are a workplace that demands performance on schedule. [one or two small examples of that]. Is there anything we can do to help you achieve your potential, or could we support you in your transition to a lower-pressure workplace?

I know someone like that but she was more conscientous and was more thorough than others who got more done but quality was less good, some people find noise distracting. So the fast ones did more jobs but she was doing less but better quality. Agree on quantifying her performance fairly against the team and asking if she needs support or adjustments or training to bring her up to speed.

Do you have specific targets that they're not meeting? If so, it's fine to bring it up. Just say it looks like they're struggling to hit targets and ask if there's anything you can do to support them.

Thanks all

I don't want to give more details away but she has to make stuff and is just much more slow at doing it . I hadn't really realised this until we grew and more people joined the team

How long has she been there?
Is she considerably slower?
Do you have minimum targets?
If so is she hitting these targets?

You will always have someone in the team who is the slowest, even if every single person in the team is hitting or exceeding expectations.

I agree with the query does she have clear targets for productivity that are within her control eg. 10 widgets completed every day, that kind of thing. If she's meeting the 10 widget target, then just because a new person joined who is making 12 widgets doesn't mean her standards have slipped.