Despite the active use of various improvement systems, poor performance should not be overlooked in the operation and evaluation, and it is necessary to design criteria that can be used to indicate the employees’ inability to meet organizational goals and objectives. Three methods of identifying poor performance can be discussed: customers’ complaints, failure to meet deadlines, and failure to deliver expected outcomes (the latter can be manifested in particular expected value or the number of products). First of all, customers’ complaints do not necessarily indicate that an employee failed to comply with his or her responsibilities but do indicate that customers’ expectations and perceived needs were not met. From this perspective, such complaints may indicate not only poor individual performance but also poor team performance because the team failed to identify expectations and perceived needs correctly and translate them properly into SMART individual objectives.
Similarly, failure to meet deadlines is a debatable criterion in performance evaluation, and it may or may not function as a poor performance indicator. On the one hand, employees who do not deliver expected outcomes within the time they were given disrupt the working process, and their lateness may cause customer dissatisfaction or failure to achieve objectives. On the other hand, if employees are systematically late with their work, it may indicate not their poor performance but rather poor practices of setting deadlines and assessing how much time is needed to accomplish certain tasks with an acceptable level of quality. Finally, failure to meet expected output indicates poor performance only if it is confirmed that the output of necessary quality can be delivered in given conditions and within the given time.