Case Study:

Ajay is an employee whose performance was more than satisfactory for over 2 years. His work assignments were completed on time and accurately done. However, for the last3 months, Ajay’s work has been consistently late and incomplete. His work also has contained an increased number of mistakes. He does not seem to be concentrating on his work very well and often gives vague and incomplete answers when his manager needs information from him. Ajay’s performance problems started about the time a new computer system was introduced in the company. His manager has provided regular feedback and counselling to Ajay on the problems with his assignments. During one of the counselling sessions Ajay  mentioned problem using the new software. Ajay and his manager jointly agreed that he should take advantage of the 2 day training session offered. After the training session the trainer informed the manager that Ajay barely participated in the training session and that he acted very nonchalant during the entire 2 days. Ajay’s performance is still not improving. He has a backlog of work which means his assignments are often late and is impacting the work of others. The manager has asked other employees to step in and help complete the backlog. In addition the manager is spending a lot of time reviewing his submissions and has found three serious errors in the past 2 weeks.

The manager is now seriously thinking of counselling Ajay in the next 3-4 weeks time.

(a) Is Ajay’s performance an example of poor or marginal performance ? Are 3or 4 weeks an appropriate amount of time to wait if the manager decides to counsel Ajay ?

(b) Does this situation meet the criteria for counselling ? Why explain in detail ?