Imagine one of your team members, a strong performer in the past, is struggling. Her father is undergoing cancer treatment and she is the primary caregiver.
Over the last six months, her performance has dipped significantly. Other members are stepping in, however it is creating additional pressure and affecting the overall team performance.
Unfortunately, you cannot bring in additional help. So, how do you support your employee through this challenging time without impacting the overall team performance?
In my recent poll on LinkedIn, 86% respondents shared that they would appeal to the team for support.
It is a delicate situation, here’s how I have dealt with situations like this:
1. Have an empathetic conversation with the employee
- Acknowledge her strengths, contributions and current struggles.
- Encourage her to open up, including worries about impact on career
- Discuss likely solutions to ease her workload temporarily, ex: adjustable or lower work hours, role adjustments etc.
- Offer emotional health support like counselling
2. Assure your support. Times like this seem to last forever and people get flustered.
- Assure that any temporary changes in the role, or workload or hours will not have long-term impact
- Help her reassess and realign her short and long term priorities
3. Appeal to the team
- Reprioritize the tasks, some non-critical ones may be dropped or outsourced
- Reassign tasks to other members in an innovative way, say assigning work based on a person’s interest or development goals.
- Role model by personally taking over few tasks
What support have you received from your manager at difficult times? What could have been done differently?
Perspectives 