With counseling and disciplining, you are dealing with a problem employee. Good human resource management skills can help you avoid hiring problem employees, but you will most likely have to confront problem employees as a manager. How people feel determines how they behave, so emotions often lead to performance-related problems from counterproductive work behavior.

Problem employees do poor-quality work, they don’t get along with coworkers, they display negative attitudes, and they frequently don’t show up for work, or they come late. There are four types of problem employees: Some employees do not have the ability to meet the job performance standards and should be transferred or terminated.

There are employees who do not have the motivation to meet job performance standards or intentionally violate standing plans and often need discipline. There are also employees who have performed well in the past but have a job-related or personal problem negatively affecting their performance. It is not always easy to distinguish between the types of problem employees.

When most people hear the term counseling, they think of psychological counseling or psychotherapy. That type of sophisticated help should not be attempted by a noncounseling professional such as a manager. Instead, management counseling is the process of giving employees feedback so they realize that a problem is affecting their job performance and referring employees with problems to the employee assistance program.