Note - this is the ninth article in a series of 12 provided by Rikka Brandon. The tenth article will be included in the August/September 24 issue of BLD Connection Magazine.

Hiring is hard. Dealing with under-performing employees is exhausting. Firing people sucks.

So, you’re often tempted to take the easy path. Perhaps giving up on finding a great team member and just hiring the best who applied. Or blaming yourself or the lack of resources for an employee who fails to deliver. Or postponing termination in the hopes that the employee will improve or out of fear you won’t find someone who can do better.

But keeping a poor performer on staff, the so-called easy path, can do more harm than good.

Here’s what a poor manager can cost you:

Staff morale.
Morale is a huge factor in business success. Happy employees typically work harder, are more innovative, and achieve better results. Unhappy employees stagnate, self-destruct, and usually leave. Fixing a morale issue is infinitely harder than preventing it in the first place.

Staff attendance.
Employees who aren’t engaged and happy tend to take more days off work. It might be because they truly need a mental health day, or they could be at interviews with your competition. Absenteeism costs you in missed opportunities, sick wages, and possibly temporary staffing costs. As a side effect, absenteeism leads to even more poor employee morale because other employees have to pick up the slack.

Customer experience.
Indirectly, bad managers affect customer service by the decisions they make, perhaps by not keeping promises or making frequent changes. They could tie employees’ hands regarding decisions or cause them to treat customers poorly. Customers can smell bad management, so don’t assume your issues are under wraps.

Growth and innovation.
Employees want to grow and learn and have career opportunities. At companies with poor management, employees stop striving for those things; if every day is a struggle just to stay at work, they don’t care about expanding their skills. And when employees stop trying, they stop innovating as well.

Business efficiency.
A good manager makes employees rise up and perform to the best of their abilities. Employees will have pride and will care about their work and the work environment. They will probably take better care of tools and equipment, keep their area clean, and have a better eye for safety. Employees who don’t feel like they are heard or appreciated become apathetic. When that happens, production and success rate drop. Employees stop caring about customers and hitting quotas and may stop caring about their office areas and the business in general.

Bottom line: Poor management causes reduced profits and increased costs. It’s imperative that you don’t let a bad manager continue unchecked until your business and employees are in ruins.

First and foremost, you need to recognize if you already have a bad manager on your team.
Pay attention to team morale. If you notice complaints, transfers, and turnover it’s time to get involved and figure out what’s happening.

Second, avoid hiring someone who might turn out to be a bad manager—or inadvertently turning an employee into one. Here are some strategies
Make sure you have clear activity and results expectations for your manager with clear points of performance to discuss if issues arrive. Good employees won’t balk at this—they’ll want to know what success looks like.
Develop internal talent. It’s always better to grow your own, but it takes care and feeding. identify the skills people need to thrive in a management role and then you can not only develop people in the role now, but also start to build the skills of high potential employees.

Avoid promoting someone who has had difficulty saying no to demanding employees or struggles to have difficult conversations.  

Know the risks of hiring someone from outside the industry with no idea about your world—it often leads to bad feelings and may drive longtime employees to leave.

Don’t abdicate your responsibilities. You need to train and develop your managers to truly set them up to succeed.

Don’t quash every idea your manager has. You hired them to bring in fresh ideas; explain why you have concerns, but recognize and implement good ideas.

Hiring and keeping poor managers can drive away good employees and even good customers, directly impacting your bottom line. Take the time to recruit and appoint leaders who understand the industry, who are open minded, are detail oriented, and have great communication. Sometimes those skills can be found inside your company; other times you’ll need to extend your reach a lot further. Either way, commit to hiring and keeping only the best leaders.


Rikka Brandon is a leading recruiting and hiring expert in the LBM industry. She’s the founder of Building Gurus, a boutique training, consulting, and executive search firm for building products manufacturers and distributors. She’s also the creator of Hire Power an on-demand training for recruiting and hiring in the building products industry. If you’re interested in working with Rikka, schedule a call at BuildingGurus.com/Discovery.