When organisations control the working conditions, they must also examine their responsibility for the outcomes.
Sometimes failure is built into the conditions before a person is judged.
I know what it feels like to be given responsibilities I did not want, to struggle within working arrangements that lacked adequate support, and then to have my performance questioned.
I raised concerns about what was happening.
But when difficulties arose, I felt the focus shifted towards my performance rather than the management decisions and working conditions that had contributed to those difficulties.
I felt set up to fail, then blamed.
That experience left me questioning something wider.
When an organisation controls the conditions in which someone works, how much responsibility should it carry for the outcomes it later judges?
Workplaces have expectations.
Employees have responsibilities, and performance assessments can be necessary to maintain standards, identify difficulties and support improvement.
But an assessment of someone's performance should not exist separately from the conditions in which they were expected to perform.
Consider an employee who is given additional responsibilities without adequate preparation or support.
Expectations increase.
Communication becomes unclear.
Concerns are raised, but the underlying arrangements remain largely unchanged.
The employee struggles.
Eventually, their performance becomes the problem requiring formal attention.
But what about the decisions that led to that point?
Who determined the responsibilities?
Who decided what support would be available?
Who had the authority to change the arrangements when difficulties became apparent?
And were those decisions examined with the same attention given to the employee's performance?
There is a difference between holding someone accountable for their work and holding them solely responsible for conditions they did not control.
This matters particularly when employees have less influence over how their roles, workloads and support arrangements are managed.
For Deaf employees, communication access can add another dimension.
If interpreting arrangements are inconsistent, instructions are not communicated accessibly or important discussions take place without appropriate support, those conditions may affect someone's ability to do their job.
But workplace difficulties are not always about access alone.
They can also involve unclear expectations, unsuitable responsibilities, inadequate guidance, changing demands or management decisions that leave employees struggling to meet what is expected of them.
When these factors are overlooked, the resulting difficulties can become evidence of an individual's supposed shortcomings.
A lack of support becomes a performance issue.
Unclear expectations become a failure to deliver.
Repeated concerns become questions about someone's ability to cope.
And the organisation's contribution to the situation can disappear from the discussion.
That is where the balance of power matters.
Managers and organisations often have authority over job responsibilities, resources, support arrangements and performance assessments.
Employees are then evaluated within the conditions those decisions create.
Yet the people responsible for setting those conditions may not always face the same scrutiny as the person being assessed.
This does not mean every employee who struggles has been treated unfairly.
People can make mistakes, underperform or require additional guidance even within supportive environments.
Nor does every poor management decision demonstrate a deliberate intention to make someone fail.
But intention and responsibility are not the same thing.
An organisation does not have to deliberately create difficulties for its decisions to contribute to an employee's struggle.
And where those decisions have contributed, they should form part of any fair examination of what went wrong.
Before questioning someone's capability, employers should be prepared to examine whether expectations were reasonable, whether appropriate support was provided and whether concerns were taken seriously.
If problems were identified, what was done to address them?
If responsibilities changed, was the employee properly prepared?
If the working arrangements were not effective, who had the authority to improve them?
These questions should not be treated as excuses.
They are part of understanding the circumstances.
A performance process may document what an employee did or failed to do.
But documentation alone does not establish that the organisation has fairly examined its own role.
Accountability cannot be meaningful when it applies only to the person with the least control over the conditions being judged.
Organisations should be willing to examine management decisions alongside individual performance, including when doing so raises uncomfortable questions about their own practices.
Otherwise, the outcome can become a familiar pattern.
The organisation determines the conditions.
The employee struggles within them.
And the employee carries the blame.
The question is not whether employees should be accountable for their performance.
It is whether organisations are equally prepared to be accountable for the conditions they create.
Before deciding that someone failed to meet expectations, we should ask whether they were given a fair opportunity to succeed.
THE QUESTION
When an employee's performance is questioned, how often are the management decisions, working conditions and support arrangements examined alongside their individual responsibilities?
