Move the Middle

A great client of mine has a strategic HR initiative to “move the middle.”  What a great saying which refers to your middle-performing employees. Every company has 15-20% of their employees who are A players, or “rockstars” as we call them. About 5-10% of your employees are lower performers who either need to be coached up or out of the company. Then you have the middle performers who make up about 60-80% of your employee population. Most of your employees fall into this middle category.

Here are a few things you should continuously do with this middle group.

First, you need to clearly identify these 3 groups. Who are your A players, middle performers and low performers? You need to actively manage each group in a different way.

With your A players, you need to focus on retaining them and challenging them, if they are not being challenged, there is a higher risk of them leaving the company. Doing regular 1:1s with them is critical to make sure they are engaged and being challenged. 

With your lower performers, you need to focus on coaching them up so they become better performers who are contributing to the overall goals of the company. You need to have a consistent and well thought out plan for coaching and progressive discipline with this group. If there is not improvement after the planned coaching period, their employment with the company should end through progressive discipline. 

Lastly, with your middle performing group. You need to focus on constantly nurturing them to increase their performance level. A good way to do this is by making sure they have a clear set of Key Performance Indicator’s (KPIs) or Goals they are accountable for achieving. You want to move the middle performers either up or possibly out. Most employees don’t want to be mediocre; therefore, you need to have a process to create accountability, sharing feedback through 1:1s, and monitoring productivity, that is a continuous cycle.    

Having a cyclical process of setting clear KPIs or Goals, holding employees accountable for achieving those KPSs, giving feedback through quarterly or monthly 1:1s, and monitoring performance is huge for any company. Having a real focus on doing this for your middle performing employee is significant to move the middle in one direction or another – either up or out. This could be a game changer for your company.