Realising a colleague is useless

[Rrns]

Have you ever had a moment where you realised why a colleague is having performance related issue? Recently a colleague asked me to QA some analysis they'd done in excel.

They'd done it all wrong, and not checked things through. Told them to fix it, they did it and it still wasn't perfect. One thing they'd done completely wrong and wasn't in line AT ALL with the entire project we'd done and I had no idea why they were doing it that way. It was like they'd not been involved in the project at all and were doing something else.

At this exact moment I realised why were on a Performance Improvement Plan. It finally made sense to me.

Did you ask them why they did the part that seemed completely irrelevant to the project at hand?

Do you know how much training they've had on Excel? Does it seem like they just don't know how to do certain things?

So you thought they’d been put on PIP for the fun of it?

They'd done that bit completely wrong.

And yes they'd had training. We're in a consulting/analysis role so the team hires people with numerical and data skills. They've been here for a while and it was just really poor.

They hadn't checked through things properly. Once I asked them to fix it. They did fix most of it, expect that one thing the just did wrong. For example they'd be referring to X, when in the entire project we'd been referring to and comparing to Y.

Gawd. They don't sound good at all. I can only assume they embellished their level of skill on their CV. Or they have issues with concentration and following instructions.

Either way they sound rubbish and it's not right for others to have to QC their error filled work when they've got their own to do.

I'm presuming if this is them on a PIP things aren't going to get much better and you'll be saying sayonara to them in the not too distant future.

I felt bad for thinking this as they are a nice person.

They'd had issues which were raised before but they worked to improve and met their targets. The first warning wasn't really about their work performance, it was more about time management, pace of work and communication. Not the actual work itself.

But now their work performance has slipped again and I understood why. I saw what they did and my first thought was "why did you do it like this? It's all wrong."

Just focus on your job. Sounds like they’re heading out the door soon enough

Come to my workplace, there’s several.

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