When someone is underperforming at work, managers often rush to brand it as a capability problem and address it as such. Instead, workplaces should foster the conditions where workers have the capacity to cope, says Claire Libby.

Mental ill health costs UK employers billions every year. Yet despite growing awareness of workplace wellbeing, many organisations are still responding to problems far later than they need to.

One of the reasons for this may be that we are looking for performance problems when we should be looking more closely at the conditions that produce performance in the first place.

I have shared the sometimes-unpopular opinion that I don’t believe there is such a thing as work-life balance, for the simple reason that we spend a disproportionate amount of our lives at work.

Whatever we have going on in our personal lives ripples into our work lives and vice versa. I am also not a fan of the word “wellbeing”.

For me it doesn’t pack the punch it needs to because the consequences of poor wellbeing are life changing. The term wellbeing feels a bit fluffy and optional rather than optimal.

Yet in many organisations, performance and wellbeing are still treated as separate conversations.

False assumptions

When performance begins to decline, the assumption is often straightforward: additional training, development, support, or performance management may be needed. But increasingly, research suggests the picture is more complex.

Most of us have experienced periods where we are technically capable of doing something, yet for a variety of reasons we no longer have the internal capacity to sustain it.

We find it harder to concentrate. Our decision-making becomes more difficult and tasks that were once manageable begin to feel overwhelming. We don’t have the patience we once did and we can’t pinpoint the reason why. We start to become less resilient to everyday pressures.

The challenge is that these experiences are often interpreted as capability problems when they may be the early warning signs of reduced capacity.

What we don’t see

One of the things I notice most in organisations is how often stress goes unnoticed until it has already become embedded in everyday functioning.

Think about the image of a swan on a lake. On the surface, the swan appears calm and composed, yet beneath the water its legs are working furiously to stay afloat.

For many employees, this is exactly what is happening. Everything appears fine from the outside. Targets are still being met. Meetings are still being attended. Responsibilities are still being fulfilled.

Yet beneath the surface, sleep may be suffering, stress may be accumulating, recovery may be limited, and emotional reserves may be gradually becoming depleted. People start to become a more diluted version of their brilliant selves.

The thing about stress is that it rarely announces itself dramatically. More often, it builds quietly over weeks, months, and sometimes years before becoming visible.

By the time organisations notice it, the underlying causes have often been present for far longer than anyone realised.

At this point it can become so much harder to support the employee. That sense of overwhelm has gathered momentum.

Creating the conditions

One of the emerging themes in my research is that performance may be better understood as a state shaped by multiple wellbeing systems rather than a fixed measure of ability.

Sleep, recovery, stress regulation, nutrition, movement, social connection and psychological safety all influence how people think, feel, communicate and perform.

These are not simply wellbeing factors. They are the conditions that influence how people think, feel, communicate, make decisions and perform every day.

If we take sleep as an example, research has consistently shown that poor sleep can impair attention, decision-making and emotional regulation.

Chronic stress can narrow cognitive focus and reduce flexibility in thinking. Over time, these effects accumulate.

Yet many of these factors remain largely invisible in workplace performance conversations despite their very real influence on how people function day to day. We tend to focus on outputs rather than the conditions that produce them.

This can result in employees being perceived as disengaged, underperforming or lacking capability, when they may actually be experiencing fatigue, burnout or reduced cognitive capacity.

The cause often remains undiscovered while the symptoms become increasingly visible often resulting in employees being “managed out” of the business.

Awareness is not enough

Many organisations have made significant progress in recognising the importance of wellbeing, and that progress should be acknowledged. However, awareness alone is rarely enough.

A wellbeing day, awareness campaign or annual initiative can play an important role in starting conversations, but meaningful change rarely comes from a single moment or action. We don’t expect to have clean and healthy teeth if we brush them once in our lifetime.

Meaningful change comes from the environment people move through each and every day. Culture is often shaped less by what organisations say and more by what people see.

The behaviours leaders model, the boundaries they respect and the expectations they reinforce often become the unwritten rules that shape everyday experience.

Awareness matters, but sustainable change requires conditions that support wellbeing consistently rather than occasionally.

A preventative approach

Perhaps one of the biggest opportunities for organisations is to shift from correction to prevention.

If we think about elite sport, performance is rarely viewed in isolation from the conditions that support it.

Sleep, recovery, nutrition, stress management and mindset are all recognised as essential components of performance. Without them, performance inevitably suffers.

Yet workplaces often expect people to perform at a consistently high level without paying the same attention to these foundational factors.

A preventative approach starts by helping people better understand themselves before they reach a point of crisis.

It involves creating environments where people can recognise the early signs of stress, understand what may be contributing to them, and feel supported in taking action. Our bodies are in constant communication with us, but due to overload we are either missing the signs or simply not paying attention to them.

Prevention also recognises that responsibility is shared.

Employees have a vital role in making choices that support their wellbeing, but organisations have an equally important role in creating environments where those choices are realistic, encouraged and supported.

From capability to capacity

If we begin to view performance through the lens of capacity as well as capability, the conversation changes.

Rather than asking only: “How do we improve performance?” We might also ask: “What is affecting this person’s capacity to perform right now?”.

That shift moves the conversation from correction to understanding and, ultimately, to prevention. Because performance is often treated as something we do, but increasingly, it looks more like something we enable.

Sustainable performance requires sustainable people. So the next time you feel as though someone’s capability is dipping, consider if what you are witnessing is actually a capability problem or might it actually be a capacity problem.

 

 

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