---

Who isn't hacking it?
If someone you work with is not up to the job, how should you deal with them, asks Virginia Matthews

Monday November 3, 2003
The Guardian

If body odour was once seen as one of those problems that are simply too difficult to talk about, today's equivalent is professional incompetence. For despite the bravado that pervades every workplace in the country, the chances are that the person slurping their coffee and wrinkling their brow at the desk next door is not just having an off day, but is chronically bad at doing what he or she is paid for.

According to the results of a major new survey of 40,000 workers in 35 countries, more than 80% of employees are unable to do at least one major part of their job properly and a sizeable number may already be in danger of doing anything from mis-selling complex insurance or mortgages to putting lives at risk. Not pulling your weight at work, or in pompous HR-speak, "failing to reach the performance benchmark set by employers," is endemic in everything from pharmaceuticals and farming to food manufacture and funerals. ...

...Professor Nigel Nicholson, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, believes that organisations are too quick to adopt a blame culture: "When firms feel their backs are against the wall, it is too easy to lurch from crisis to crisis and to expect from employees more than they can give. Hence ridiculous expressions like 'giving 110%,' which is a nonsense.

"There is incompetence in workplaces, of course, but there are also hopeless managements, grandiose and unrealistic expectations of staff and often, badly designed jobs that no human being should be asked to fill. Anyone who detects incompetence around them should consider whether someone has been put in the wrong job, or been insufficiently trained, before pointing the finger."...