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SOURCE: “Survey Reveals Top 5 Mistakes Companies Make When Hiring or Promoting,” Right Management (June 12, 2006).

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Those two things alone are often enough to keep motivation high. In survey after survey, employees complain that lack of feedback is one of their biggest problems on the job. According to a 2006 Employee Review by Randstad, the world’s fourth-largest staffing organization, 86 percent of surveyed workers said they needed to feel valued by their boss to stay happy—but only 37 percent report receiving positive feedback.

So, while it’s important not to let your performance management slide, take the time to learn what’s important to your new employee—especially her long-and short-term career goals and her expectations regarding her job responsibilities. Show an interest in her family and hobbies. Ask for her ideas about the business. Give her ways to earn time off, and reward her for jobs well done.

Differentiated compensation schemes—better raises—are one way to recognize top performers. At the same time, don’t lose sight of your midlevel workers, whose loyalty and effort support your company. According to Harvard Business School professor Thomas J. DeLong, in “Let’s Hear It for B Players,” Harvard Business Review (June 2003), if you ignore workers of this type long enough, they begin to see themselves as low performers. So whenever you can, dig into your corporate pockets, as Procter & Gamble did when it gave every worker a one-time bonus of two extra days of vacation (or the equivalent in cash) in the spring of 2004.

For jobs where a high turnover rate is hard to avoid, specifically repetitive, high-stress jobs such as answering phones at a call center, try to hire people temperamentally suited to the position—friendly, not easily bored by routine, and satisfied by a structured environment and the chance to help others.

Make sure that you show appreciation for these employees’ efforts. Pay a little better than you have to, and offer flexible schedules and incentives for specific performance goals. If possible, offer opportunities for advancement to those who successfully spend a predetermined amount of time in the job. Most important, understand your employees’ goals in life and do what you can to help them get there.

WHEN IT DOESN’T WORK OUT

Sometimes you can do everything right in the hiring process and still end up with someone who is not a good fit for the job. When that happens, it’s best to end the relationship as quickly as possible. Supporting an employee who doesn’t have the skills, experience, or motivation to do a job is unfair to the employees who do, plus it becomes a drain on the organization.

Because hiring is so time-consuming, however, it’s worth trying to preserve the relationship if some coaching on your part can save it. So if an employee is unaware that there is a problem, point it out without delay.

Work up a plan with the person and indicate you want to see improvement within a reasonable, but limited, time period—say, two weeks. Be very clear about the improvements you want to see. It is important to immediately document your conversations with notes and put a date on them. Keep them in the employee’s file. Careful documentation could be critical if the employee is eventually terminated and sues over the firing.

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“The most expensive employee you’ll ever hire is the one you have to fire.”

—Mel Kleinman, author of Hire Tough, Manage Easy

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If the situation does not get better, issue a final warning specifying a brief period in which the employee must improve (e.g., a week). Describe what you require again and explain how your directives have not been met. Ask if there is a problem the employee is not revealing, and offer to work together to resolve it. If the employee’s work still does not improve, you will know that you’ve done all you can.

Deliver the news of termination calmly, objectively, and in private. Because you will have been providing