new to management - big challenge with remote worker

[mytortoisehasgonemissingnow]

I need some management help please!
I'm a lawyer 6 months into management and have a new recruit in an ultra-specialised area of the law (and I mean ultra-specialised). it's something i've been pushing for for years and if I can make it work it will be really something.

He's a nice chap in his 50s. loves meeting the clients and they like him too. But he's been on his own for several years and is unfamiliar with modern time recording and filing systems.

The problem is that I can't seem to get the penny to drop about how important these are. I filled in the first few timesheets for him, then he did some yesterday but they are not reliable. Some have got client/file names mixed up, one says 3 hours which I think means 30 minutes, that sort of thing. I can't compare them to the file because he isn't filing stuff. I think it's an adjustment to your work being visible too.

He is fully remote. My ultimate boss lives and breathes data and I report in each month needing to show whether we have met targets (including for things like client satisfaction but principally financial). Right now I'm on course for saying I can't report in because the data is unreliable. That simply won't be acceptable to my boss.

My recruit has worked for himself for several years and is of a generation where you used to have secretaries to do the legwork. Also his culture is to say to clients "that'll cost around £5k" and then bill when the right moment comes.

Any advice? He finds hard things easy and easy things hard so we may be looking at reasonable adjustments to a degree, but my ultimate boss simply will not accept not having the data that he relies on to make decisions.

But how you'd a secretary do this task?

Having to press stop start on sone recording device then say who it was for and what.

If he doesn't do this, no admin support will really help!

I had big a4 sheets of paper with every 6 mins shown,one per day. Record as you go along. It's been that way for 20-30 years so how could he have qualified without doing it in the past?

A few issues here:

• I think you need to be careful about the language your use and what you imply when talking about this man. Because the last thing you want is to be accused of ageism...people in their 50s are perfectly able to use electronic systems. I assume you are younger yourself and it is not appropriate to imply that people in their 50s and 60s are invariably going to become problematic
• Do you have an easy and quick ways/processes for people to record and submit data? because the problem could be that you are in one of these organisations that has needlessly complex processes for admin and reporting where people feel they don't have the time to focus on this if they want to do their actual job
• If this person is a new recruit, has he had formal training on how to submit the data required?
• why isn't there any secretarial support? I assume if you recruited someone who is quite senior and has very niche, sought-after specialist skills it was not for them to spend their days doing admin. Or has your boss got rid of all the admin staff and this is the result?

I think the outcome of this is likely to be that this man is never going to see endless admin as part of his role and will just move somewhere else where the support of a PA might be available.

This. You said he finds hard things easy and easy things hard. It's screaming adhd to me too. I think you will need to be very explicit about what is needed and talk through exactly how it is done.

It would be great if he would apply for access to work but it may well be that he isn't aware of any neurodivergence.

Obviously I could be completely wrong but that's my guess.

Ex big 4. My team all had their time in with no issues because I told them if it isn’t in, they aren’t going to get the recognition for hours worked.

We had targeted hours to meet a minimum of a 3 rating. If you didn’t have your time in I made clear I wasn’t rescuing anyone and they would be managed out.

The accuracy of the data is their problem,
not yours. People will eat hours all the time. I know I did just because there was no possible way for me to track accurately as I worked on multiple clients and in multiple sections of the audit. Time was lost when transitioning.

If you can’t get your time in you can’t bill your clients accordingly and profitability becomes an issue. £5k for work performed would drive me nuts. It’s not a good way to do business IMO.

It sounds like you have an issue with Founder Syndrome as much as you have an issue with his time-keeping skills!

@DeborahVance
@H3ll00

Thank you!

there are three possibilities here:

1. character flaw. I don’t think that’s it, he’s nice.


2. not realising how “core” this is to decisions. That’s part of it but…


3. neurodivergence. I have traits myself and this is like looking in a huge magnifying mirror. I strongly, strongly suspect ADHD /HFA.

So where do I go from here? Because I get the potential to humiliate etc but this has to change.
re secretaries -we don’t really have them. We centralise sales, marketing, client care, etc. So boss would only consider this if (3) was open on the table.

Boss is not the issue. Boss rocks!

I really struggle with tasks like this - keeping track of what I have been doing every minute is a nightmare and my brain swaps between tasks and things a lot. Honestly I hate it.

I used to have to keep one and it was a nightmare in weeks where I was dealing with loads of clients.

Maybe, maybe not! Don’t get into a hero worship scenario, it rarely works out well.

Thanks Augend. Are you nd?

Damn right

Just because he doesn’t possess a vagina doesn’t meant he can’t do stuff

kick it back to him, explain what he needs to provide your boss and tell him to ask if he has any issues. He needs to file his stuff! It’s fundamental otherwise he’s just making it all up and tbh at doesn’t work if a client challenges or asks for justification of fees

In terms of gender stuff, I am keeping my three more junior team members away from him/giving them very strict warning that they do not fill the void.
thankfully I am allowed to spend 50% of my time of management.

I don't know. I don't have a diagnosis, and I am very bright which means I just use brainpower to mitigate a lot of things. But I do really struggle with distraction and admin tasks. (I am also highly specialised, I do the jobs everyone else hates and finds difficult and I enjoy them).

I don't think I have an answer as I left a job with time sheets and I love not doing one.

For essential stuff, I have to set literal alarms (not just calendar reminders). That works for the filling it in part but not for the knowing what to fill out. I only worked on fixed fee things so I never worried too much about exactitudes as it was only for internal reporting. If I had to do it and my life depended on it I would have to try and fill it in once before lunch and once at the end of the day.

Would it work okay if it was an estimate of which clients he has worked on over each day or does it really really have to be each 6 minutes like lots of law firms want?

Maybe I’m wrong but I’d say training by a MAN that will explain how essential it is.p/hoe to do it etc…

There is also a question of job description here. Is the reporting clearly specified alongside all the other work he is doing?

I've worked in a profession where you have to do timesheets.
The only way to be accurate and to stop it building up in to a mountain is to do them on a daily basis, either as you go along or at the end of the day. It's the only way.
I'm not sure you should treat him any differently - I'd push again with the importance of these being done but is there an option for him to verbally record his time and then for it to be inputted? It might get him over the hump of not doing them.
They are crucial for accurate billing and planning. He has to get this point in order to get past it.
One place I was in, you couldn't log in the next morning if the time sheet hadn't been done for the previous day...

Good luck. Perhaps a check-in semi-formal conversation about how things are going and put this item on the agenda from your side. Give him the chance to discuss how it is for him too, massive change to go from self-employed to being part of a team.

As others have said how clearly are you explaining this stuff? I am public sector but an area where people would have experience in the private sector so less niche than you but I have fired 3 people in the last 18 months who came to us with fantastic experience on paper but couldn't/wouldn't time record/file properly/bill/record MI. It's basic stuff for a lawyer even if they are used to having more support to do it; whether you need more admin support is largely irrelevant as they should be capable of doing this themselves. I would be very wary about how you approach this because I have invested lots of time into people where I thought it was a matter of training and they never got any better. I've learnt my lesson now, spell it out early and get rid swiftly if it isn't improving otherwise it becomes a burden on the rest of the team. Whatever the mindset and recent experience what you are asking isn't new or unexpected.

If he is important to you and you want to make this work enough to put in the effort to help him…

If he is ADD then the key is to make what is currently unimportant to him upgrade to being extremely important. ADD allows for hyperfocus on subjects that are high priority to the person themselves.

What is important to him? What can you incentivize him with that he values…money, praise, wider recognition, more freedom ?

The second strand of ADD is routine, for those tasks that cant make the priority level to get hyperfocus the route to success is having a cast iron routine. So at 10am, noon, 2, 4 and 6 he has a buzzer to stop and write down the billing for the previous 2 hours. He fills in the same form, in the same way each time. At the emd of everyday he emails them to you. Maybe then when that is engrained as a habit he shifts to twice a day etc.

Ask him how he manages other jobs he doesnt like to do but has to, try and get him to help you work it out.

He wants to team up with a paralegal - and I can see that working. But I can’t demonstrate a business case for that if he doesn’t fill in the time sheets

SeatoSki, thank you, you sound like you know whereof your speak!
any tips on the emotional side? (Not humiliating him)

SeatoSki is there anywhere I can read more about what you just said? It sounds bang on target.

I think this can work well, I work alongside a paralegal but my paralegal only does the admin that I direct them to so I think I would still be wary of this because, for example, how would the paralegal know what to bill unless they were told? I don't know - others will hopefully have different experiences and share, I would just be a bit wary.

Also wanted to add I hadn't noted the ND point above, as someone who is ADD I think there are a couple of posts above that are helpful. My particular traits mean I absolutely love to time record and struggle on projects where we don't do it but I do have calendar reminders throughout the week to make me do the things I am less likely to do otherwise. I work with a lot of ND lawyers and we all work quite differently though so where we hit an issue I often find out a bit more about what works for them in other areas and take it from there but I tend to find experienced people understand how to make things work within the industry for them.

So sounds like I need to ask him how he has made it work for him in the past?

he is incentivised by a revenue share arrangement - surely he likes money?!

So the ADD creates an unevenness in attention preferences but we can’t be sure what those preferences will be?

I did a stint in a lawyers office many years ago - had to fill out a sheet for every 15 minutes of every day, saying which client I had worked for in that 15 minutes.
Absolutely hated it. Micro-management at its most extreme.

That was the main reason I didn't go into a career in law.

There was constant pressure not to put down time as 'office-time' which was not billable, but I was expected to do things like filing and tidying cupboards - so it was a no-win situation for me.

What if I spent 10 minutes 'thinking'. What if I spend 20 minutes tidying up a messy spreadsheet - unnecessary but satisfying - should that time be billable? A constant ethical dilemma.

The two senior partners just point blank refused, so their secretary just made up time sheets to go to head office.

Your new hire may feel the same. Ask yourself, what would be the effect on the business if he just estimated times or made it all up? Do clients really ask for proof of how many hours/minutes were spent on their job? Or do they just want a reasonable bill for a good result?

Lol beancounter.
what do you do now?