An Investors in People survey found 75% of bosses and 80% of staff thought some colleagues were “dead wood” – and the main reason was thought to be laziness; Chris Syder Head of Employment at Clarkslegal LLP looks at the issues.

Nearly half of employees added they worked closely with someone who they thought was lazy and not up to the job.

However, four out of ten workers said that their managers did nothing about colleagues not pulling their weight.

According to Investors in People, the problem of employees not doing their jobs properly seemed to be more prevalent in larger organisations.

The survey found that 84% of workers in organisations with more than 1,000 employees thought they had an underperforming colleague, compared with 50% in firms with fewer than 50 staff.

The survey identified the tell-tale signs of people not pulling their weight, according to both employers and employees, including:

• Prioritising personal life over work.




• Refusing extra responsibility.




• Passing off colleagues’ work as their own.

Both employers and employees agreed that the major reason for someone failing in their job was sheer laziness.

“Dead wood” employees can have a stark effect on their colleagues’ physical and mental well-being, the survey found.

Employees reported that they had to work longer hours to cover for shirking colleagues and felt undervalued as a result.

Ultimately, working alongside a lazy colleague could prompt workers to look for a new job the survey found.

“It can be too easy to brand a colleague lazy, they may have genuine personal problems or are being asked to do a job that they have not been given the training to do.

“The employer must look out for the warning signs of a worker becoming de-motivated – hold regular conversations and appraisals with staff.”

However, ultimately lazy employees may have to be dismissed.

Lack of capability is a potentially fair reason for dismissal. As well as incapacity owing to ill health, this can include incompetence, or poor performance.

Incompetence means a lack of “skill, aptitude or any other mental quality” on the part of an employee. It will occur if a new employee does not measure up to the required job, or a person is promoted to a job that requires new skills that they may not have.

Although it is possible to dismiss fairly for poor performance, this can only be done after a full, fair and reasonable performance management procedure has been carried out.

It is recommended that all employers have a capability procedure, which can be used to deal with poor performance. Although your capability procedure can be part of the disciplinary procedure, it is preferable for it to be separate, as the issues in performance matters can be different to those for misconduct.

If you use the disciplinary policy for capability issues, it should be written to include “incompetence”. However, remember that there are other considerations and actions that an employer must take, such as further training, coaching and redeployment, which would not normally apply in misconduct situations.

Whatever, procedure you use, it should be well publicised to all employees.

Chris Syder, Head of Employment (London) can be contacted at csyder@clarkslegal.com