Business English Certificate (BEC) Higher Level C1 / Reading / Part 3

PART THREE

Questions 15 – 20

    Read the following extract from an article about incompetent employees, and the questions on the opposite page.
    For each question 15 – 20, mark one letter A, B, C or D on your Answer Sheet, for the answer you choose.

 

Every organisation has its share of employees-from-hell: the lazy, deluded, hypochondriac under- performers. They are difficult to manage and miserable to work with. Their productivity is low and their ability to poison staff morale high. They are, alas, always well-entrenched and management-resistant. Interestingly, their numbers in any organisation have more to do with management’s refusal to deal with the situation rather than with poor selection. That is, their existence in the organisation is nearly always due to a long line of weak managers who have declined to tackle the problem.

Traditionally, there are three classic ineffective ways of dealing with the incompetent. The first is to ignore the problem, hoping that it will go away. Rather than confront laziness or serious absenteeism, the manager gives the employee less work to do. This inevitably leads to frustration on the part of the good hardworking staff who see the problem employee getting away with it.
The second approach, which has traditionally been the most favoured, is to pass them on. There is usually a part of any business where people believe the poor performer can do no damage. Alternatively, poor performers can be moved to another branch in the dreariest part of town, or to another town, or even to another country. A clever variant of this tactic is to herd all the incompetent employees into one part of the company that is then sold off or privatised.

There is a third approach which is to promote the incompetent. This sounds bizarre and exceedingly stupid but is not infrequently adopted. The idea is that, although these posts are quite senior and well-paid, the actual jobs are fairly pointless ones in which incompetent people can hide without doing any serious damage. The employee is thus confirmed in his or her delusions of competence.

All three of these strategies are the result of not dealing with the problem early on. Many managers find dealing with incompetence very difficult. The scenario that all managers hate is as follows: show a subordinate a low mark on their appraisal form. The employee first wants the behaviour defined; then wants an example of when this behaviour occurred; then argues about how this incident occurred and how typical it was. The net result is a row about the past and frustration on the part of both.

A different and more successful method is the problem-solving approach. This insists that one still shows the low score but, rather than attempting to explain it, one describes what needs to be done differently to achieve a higher score. The emphasis is on the future not the past; on a clear description of the desirable behaviour, not the incompetent behaviour. The touchy or sensitive employee normally responds to this reasonably well. Nevertheless, there are those who cannot, or will not, respond to good management. They may be unable to do the job due to not having the ability to learn ever-changing tasks fast enough. They may be distracted by problems at home or more likely they have been managed very poorly in the past.

There is really only a very limited number of things that can be done with the really incompetent. Buy them out, which may be the best solution for all concerned; raise the game by making sure they are given ever higher but reachable targets. A final strategy is to insist that they have an annual psychological test where a disinterested outside consultant does a motivation analysis and has the power to recommend that they be let go – not encouraged to go to another part of the organisation, but into the bracing waters of the job market.

 

[start-test type=10 col=1]

[question text="What criticism does the writer make of managers in the first paragraph? " answers="They lose interest in the issue of incompetent employees. #*They fail to take a firm line with inefficient employees. #They have little idea of what is really required of their staff.#They often make bad decisions when choosing new staff. "]

[question text="What is the effect of the first of the methods suggested for dealing with incompetent staff? " answers="It has only a short term effect on the problem.#It means that better workers will not have to work so hard.#It makes good workers aware that problems are being dealt with.#*It sends a negative message to those who do their job well. "]

[question text="In both the second and third ineffective methods of dealing with incompetent employees, the managers’ aim is to " answers="have all of the incompetent staff working in the same part of the company.#improve the attitude of the incompetent staff to work by giving them promotion.#*put the incompetent staff in a situation where they can do as little harm as possible.#make the work so unattractive that the incompetent staff want to leave. "]

[question text="The writer says in the fifth paragraph that employees who are given a low mark on their appraisal form will " answers="*demand a detailed explanation of what they have done wrong.#claim that special circumstances have had an effect on their work.#deny that their work has been in any way unsatisfactory.#argue that they find the work they have had to do frustrating. "]

[question text="In the sixth paragraph the writer says that when talking to an incompetent employee a manager should " answers="make no reference to the most recent appraisal mark.#compare the work of the employee with that of more efficient workers.#make clear what will happen if performance does not approve.#*explain to the employee how he or she can gain a better appraisal mark. "]

[question text="What does the writer suggest as a way to deal with incompetent employees who fail to respond even to a problem-solving approach?" answers="Set them targets which it would be impossible to attain.#Give them a test designed to identify their strengths.#*Pay them a sum of money to leave the company.#Get an outside consultant to find them another job. "]

[end-test]