Originally Posted by fiestynurse
Counseling employees about bad behavior and poor performance is hard, no matter how long you have been a manager. Don't for a minute think that these nurses were not aware of their issues prior to this evaluation. Other nurse managers in the past have probably spoken to them before. Even if you did not engage in any formal counseling prior, that doesn't mean that they were surprised by the poor performance eval. You describe these individuals as manipulative and passive-aggressive. These types of employees are good at attempting to make you feel bad or guilty. Don't be played! It sounds like you gave them an honest review of their performance. You owe it to the team to do this, otherwise the whole performance evaluation process becomes a farce. It's a cop-out when managers give employees a glowing review, when there are obvious issues. And it can lead to legal problems later when you have to terminate them. You can't be afraid of confrontation. Now you need to follow through. The action plan was a great idea. If things don't improve begin progressive discipline. They need to know you mean business. You are not trying to be liked here - you are being fair and earning respect.
Also, I think it is a good idea to speak with your employee relations person or your boss or managment peers about this.
this advice is absolutely head on (just like that stupid commercial)
I had a nurse assistant who was the EXACT same way as the person you described. Classical passive-aggressive, very manipulative and bossy on top of all that! I inherited this person and was very put off from her when we were co-workers. I saw how she interacted with other staff and patients and she made me cringe. The whole time she was an employee
no one had taken the time to give her honest feedback and stick with it until I came along. Whenever they tried, she would turn on the waterworks, cry her eyes out, promise to change and the
very next day she continued the same patterns. Instead of enforcing the CAP, they tried to be her friend, which only made things worse. You're not there to be friends, but to manage...and it's lonely at the top!
Before I became a manager I had worked with people like this before and I never understood why management kept them around. They damage morale, they create a hostile work environment, therefore creating high turnover rates. Work is hard enough without having co-workers and employees making things more difficult.
Nobody likes being the ogre, but somebody has to do it. If you don't, this poison will spread throughout your team. Kudos to you and don't feel bad! You did the right thing. The sucky part is that you had to do it, and it should have been done years ago.
Would you like to comment?
To feistynurse, thanks for your advice; it's very helpful. I don't want to be played, which I think has been their agenda and I could sort of see that while we met. Both of them said they'd never received such a bad evaluation in the past and that if they'd known any of this it would have given them a chance to improve instead of just hearing this at this annual review. What's disappointing is that one of these nurses is my day charge nurse, they are both stellar with patient care but how they treat others in the department is the sad part. I hate feeling like a parent or that situation like an 8th grade girl's gym class. I don't want to sound like Judge Roy Bean but their attitudes and behaviors are incidious and undermining which are affecting the operation of our department. This has to stop if I'm going to be able to lead and make our department respected and my nurses well thought of. With everyone's evaluation I gave them all a copy of the hospital's Code of Conduct policy as groundwork and explained my expectation of all employees in the department was to follow this. I felt it was important to set the tone that I was serious and it wasn't excluding one person over the other. 98% of my staff took this and was glad I'm addressing this with everyone (they all know who the bad players are) so I didn't really have to expand on my reasons further. With this policy as common knowledge from me, I feel it will be easier to move toward discipline with those who choose not to comply. 
Have you thought about an interim evaluation? Since they both "said" they were surprised, how about doing an "informal" evaluation at 3 or 6 months? That way you can show that you are staying on top of the situation as a manager and they can't claim they didn't know how they were progressing when next years eval rolls around?
