Employees are always looking for ways to increase their income.   One of the ways is to get a raise or a promotion within the company.   Another way is to take on another job after they complete the day with you.   Or maybe they have always wanted to be an entrepreneur so after working all day, they work on their own business on the side.   Does your company have a policy on this?

The policy is important as it provides you with protection in case an employee moonlights with a competitor or decides to start a business that is in direct competition to you.   Even if it is purely economics that is motivating the employee, what happens when they come to work tired from working additional hours elsewhere?

Managers and employees know when a company is in economic trouble.  Employees start hearing more customer complaints or the orders are slower, all part of the early warning system that the company is in trouble.   So how do you manage employees in stressful economic times?

“How Managers Can Handle Stess in Times of Economic Crisis” by Diane Brady on Businessweek.com.

The first thing to remember is that you alone cannot save the company. It’s important that you don’t stay at work beyond your personal limits— you must sleep, eat and exercise. Deprivation causes more stress, a sense of a lack of control and difficulty concentrating.

If employees are not performing, it’s up to the manager to change it.    Yes employees are responsible for producing quality work, yet if they are not, then you as the manager need to find out why.    The bottom line is that you are responsible for employee’s performance.

Managing employees could be the hardest part of your responsibilities as a manager.   If you are not producing results with your team, start at the beginning and identify what team members are not performing to their best.    Then you need to ask yourself, have you given them clear direction and follow up to insure they understood the goal and what is expected of them.    Are your coaching them as they take on new responsibilities.

Managers can be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work and skills required under their umbrella.   Sometimes, rather than coach an employee, a manager will elect to just hope their performance gets better.  Other times, the thought of having to hire a replacement and train them, it seems better to keep the known one and accept mediocre performance.  Or maybe just uncomfortable confronting an employee and wait until the performance or behavior becomes a major problem?

You have a big deliverable and are dependent on several people to do their part and on time.  Yet, you have one team member that is late with their portion of the work.   If it’s a one time performance issue, then you can check in to understand what caused the delay.  If it’s a chronic issue, you need to handle this issue with the employee immediately.

I worked for a tech company that employed a database expert who was always behind on his deliverable dates.  He was really good so the project manager included the anticipated delay into the project plan.   When he delivered his portion of the project, the quality and consistency was excellent.   Managers work hard to keep high quality performance employees.