HOW TO TREAT AN INCOMPETENT EMPLOYEE AT THE WORKPLACE

An incompetent employee, simply, is a worker who most of the time fails to comply with the given job responsibilities. An incompetent worker in the first place fails to understand the given tasks appropriately and, therefore, his proceeding plan of action goes against the demands of the job. Such a person has no idea that his perception of how to do a given job responsibility does not match the actual demands of the job. It means that incompetency occurs due to the difference between an actual task requirement and the perception of the workers about a particular job task.

 

Being an incompetent person is not by choice, rather it’s built up on common sense and analytical capabilities along with a behavioral mindset of a person.  The particular behavior of a person is dependent on the ways a person is being brought up. Moreover, it is also the mindset of an incompetent person that acts as a permanent and constant source of failure when any kind of job responsibility is given.  

Incompetency at Its Peak

An incompetent employee at the workplace creates awkward mistakes and embarrassing situations for himself and other colleagues. They sometimes become the main factor in creating bottleneck issues in accomplishing the combined job roles. At their extremes, they are capable of unintentionally making the organizational system stuck and liable to its stakeholders.  The bigger issue with them is their stubbornness towards adapting themselves to the work environment and the job requirements.

Retaining the Incompetent

Since incompetent employees are prone to make frequent blunders and sometimes irrecoverable errors, many organizations resist retaining them. They take such harsh decisions because most of the time retaining them costs them even more than losing them. Employers and mentors feel great resistance from them whenever they try to make the incompetent employees realize their mistakes. Incompetent workers are found to be good at making excuses for their faults. They are prone to make false accusations about their colleagues for their pending or spoiled work.

 

Developing the Distinct Ones

However, for the mutual economic benefit and bringing improvement to their incompetent employees, many employers give ample chances to them before demoting or terminating them. Many mentors try to keep them in their current job positions with the same job responsibilities for an uncertain period. Nevertheless, the incompetency of the employees ultimately leads them towards elimination from their workplace.

When organizations terminate working relations with such employees, they unintentionally mark a stamp of incompetency on them which makes an ending to their careers as well as any chances of improvement. Therefore, all organizations need to devise special strategies for the development and growth of incompetent employees rather than expelling them from their firms. They need to plan distinct job roles and responsibilities for them. As in schools and colleges, students who need special attention are given extraordinary attention for their improvement rather than preferring to expel them, the incompetent workers also deserve to be treated with a sense of responsibility to gradually develop an abundant competency set within them. When organizations provide massive-budgeted training and development sessions to all of their employees, why cannot they just make extra efforts and costs to cater to the developmental needs of their incompetent employees? We have to understand our social and ethical responsibilities to snub the indolent habits and attitudes of such employees and make them better working partners for the whole working community. hence, giving resourcefulness to incompetent workers is the best socio-economic solution.