Al’s a member of the Operations Team who has been working in their role since February.  You know that Al has a young family at home and, because they home-schooling their 2 small children, Al is working unusual hours compared to most of their team.

Everything seemed to go relatively smoothly for the first couple of months but then there was a serious dip in Al’s performance. You know that Al’s partner was made redundant and Al has mentioned to you that they’re experiencing some ‘personal pressure at home’.  However, they’ve also made it clear that they don’t wish to talk about this in detail.

<aside> 💡 You need to give Al a rating of “Meets Some” for both capabilities and values.

You’re also very much concerned that Al is on the way down, rather than up.

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<aside> 💡 Al did not submit their indicators or self reflection of their own performance in time.

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• Workflows and tasks often go undocumented and it is never quite clear what Al is working on at any point. They often ask for help at the last moment - sending emails to other members of the team asking them to take over tasks due to a ‘last minute emergency’.
• Work is piling up on other members of your team and putting them under increasing pressure.
• When either you or other members of the team seek to follow up on work that is incomplete, or make requests for updates and information, Al will often not reply for around a week.
• Al has missed all but 1 of your team all-hands meetings in the last 6 weeks despite regularly assuring you they understood the importance of attending.
• Al recently mis-calendared an important cross-team meeting. 6 members of the team attended on the wrong day as a result. Al became very defensive when this error was pointed out and initially (and somewhat bizarrely) suggested the team must have misread the invite.
• You have tried several times to speak to Al about their performance dip and offer support. each time they have asked if it was possible to “just have some space for a week or two”.
• Al is becoming increasingly defensive when you or colleagues follow up on missing work and will often make weak excuses about emails going to their junk folder or tasks disappearing on Notion. They’ve told a few members of the team to “get off their back” of late.