I believe management has to fight to maintain standards every day.  If a standard is not qualifiable (what you are supposed to do), quantifiable (when or how often you are supposed to do it), and verifiable (management can check to make sure it was done), it is not a standard.  What are yours?  And how are you communicating them?  If employees don't know what you want and expect, they aren't going to deliver.  I say it again: If standards are not being met, do not blame your employees or the economy.  Blame management.

- Jon Taffer, Raise the Bar

Now that you've delivered all the good news - the ways in which your employee has shone in the past year, the positive expectations you have established together for the coming year, the road map you have outlined for fulfilling those goals - the timing is opportune to raise any and all problematic issues you need to address.  The key is to lay our your case in language that is straightforward yet not withering.

1. Emphasize the positive within the negative
2. Couch your criticism in terms of the shared greater good
3. Enlist your employee as an ally
4. Offer the employee flexible options in resolving the shortcoming

- Beverly Ballaro, Dealing with Difficult People

We can all agree that training is an essential step in keeping your associates well educated in their jobs, as well as for performing to the needs and expectations of the company.  Companies have high hopes that the associates they invested in will arrive back at their positions with all sorts of new and improved long-term behaviors as a result of the training.  These visions are often inaccurate.  Know that I am not knocking training; I agree and support the need to continually challenge and educate your associates.  Where I believe there is a big disconnect is in this disillusion that, say, just one training class will encourage sustained improvements through the duration of the employees' employment.  What about providing the tools and expectations to your associates to maintain and grow the new training skills?