We advised the shareholder in a business who used to run the business himself. Upon his retirement, he appointed a Managing Director. The MD was out of control - the shareholder was obliged to pump money into the business to keep it afloat and the senior staff were threatening to leave. The shareholder had frequent meetings with the MD to express his concern. The MD blamed everyone and everything apart from himself and refused to accept any responsibility. Ultimately, the shareholder was obliged to dismiss the MD. We guided the shareholder and the company from start to finish. A replacement was appointed - the business is now successful and the senior staff are happy and motivated.
We advised a professional partnership where one of its senior employees was consistently failing to hit his targets. The work he was doing for clients was good and the clients were happy with him. The problem was just that he was not achieving target. We advised the Managing Partner to take a look at the employee's internet use (there was a clause in the firm's Handbook allowing the employer to do this). It turned out that the employee was spending much of his day on news, shopping and dating websites. Once the employee was rumbled, his behaviour changed and, unsurprisingly, he has consistently hit target ever since.
We were asked to advise a company that was about to take one of its sales staff through a performance improvement plan. When looking at the employee's performance figures, it was only in recent times that her performance had dipped. In previous years, her performance was excellent. It turned out that a new manager had recently been appointed to her team. There was an obvious clash of personalities between her and the manager. Rather than invoking a formal performance improvement plan, we advised the company to invite the employees to embark on workplace mediation with both employees agreeing to this. Their relationship has since improved and the sales employee is now back to her best.