To think my colleague is BU r.e. 'working from home'?

[TheOtherSideOfNo]

I really need some sort of perspective with this.

This past year my workplace has introduced very flexible working for my particular team. In that we can work remotely or from home or basically wherever there is an internet connection.

This means that sometimes a couple of colleagues will set of to a coffee shop to work or stay at home, indeed, it means some colleagues arrive around 10ish but will leave later etc. This move was not easily given to us, we had to state our case for this sort of arrangement and indeed it has proven to be very effective so much so that management are considering applying the same to another team.

Now my AIBU. In my team there are 5 of us. All the same level and grade and do similar things that are complementary to each other's work. One of the team will e-mail in the morning saying she's "working from home" this is fine but she's never there if you call her on her work phone or e-mail her in business hours. I don't expect a response to an e-mail immediately but she really is taking the piss. She hasn't updated accounts or done her role at all. We're all picking up the slack. She will respond to an e-mail very late in the day and considering our work is very deadline focused we can't afford to have her 'chillaxing' on the job.

As I said, I'm the same level as her so can't really pull her up on this and I don't want to go running to management as the snitch iyswim but she's jeopardising certain projects and targets.

So she's making all those errors, which are directly attributable to her, and you have documented evidence - including errors which clients notice - and you haven't said anything to management yet?

Letting one thing go is okay, as it could be a one-off on a bad day. This clearly isn't the case.

If someone came to me with that list of things, one of the first things I'do be wondering about was what is so bad about my management style that they didn't feel they could flag it up a lot sooner - and also, what else haven't they been telling me?

FreeWorker1 You might very well be right in your thoughts. It's not unheard of for people to go freelance or set up their own agency in my field. But if that's the case then why doesn't she just come clean and say so? There's no shame in it, in fact I intend to go freelance once I have more years experience in my role.

EBearhug Nothing is wrong with management per se and we are indeed effectively self-policing, like I said upthread, if we were confined to the office I'd have shopped her in ages ago. My fear is losing this flexi time. Theoretically it would be easier to scrap it entirely than it would be to fire her. We're still on trial and she's worked here for a few years now. I think she's now got enough rope to fire her with but again, we'd need to set the ball in motion wrt asking accounts for their e-mails chasing her or asking IT to check her online statuses. One other thing we thought of doing is asking accounts for details of our time sheets because if she said she spent 6 hours working for client X and I also claimed I'd spent 6 hours working for client X, then my manager would question why it took 12 hours to do something that should have taken 6 hours. As a team we could provide enough proof of that because 12 hours would be seen as waste and ineffectual. The rest of us are very clear with our time sheets give or take but the time sheets would definitely prove that we are covering for her. No idea what the legalities of obtaining the time sheers would involve as none of us have access to each others' time sheets.

*ineffective.

"But if that's the case then why doesn't she just come clean and say so? "

She wants to guarantee a salary while she is setting it up.

Its fairly common for people to have a full time job while in the early stages of setting up a business. In her head she probably just sees your current employer as just one off her clients.

Given all the errors, is this really a laziness issue or was she perhaps leaning heavily on other colleagues while in the office? I have colleagues at work who need significant help and guidance, but the difference is they are junior / still training. It'd be a bit different a peer was always needing rework, rather than peer review and constructive comment, regardless of WFH.

I also wonder what your agreement is? I WFH regularly and that might mean a haircut at 4.30pm having started much earlier than if commuting, eyebrows at lunch or a run etc. The difference is that my role doesn't need to be strictly 9-5pm (it's not customer facing) and there's flex on both sides (e.g. early starts for travel, longer days if needed).

It's not unheard of for people to go freelance or set up their own agency in my field. But if that's the case then why doesn't she just come clean and say so?

Because poaching clients, getting them onside and generally setting a stable business up can take time? I worked in recruitment, eventually running my own company, and I've seen it done only too often

I understand you're anxious to keep the WFH agreement and believe me I'm not trying to be unhelpful, but it's hard to understand why you're all wilfully putting yourselves at risk by allowing this to continue. Exactly how do you think this is going to look when it comes to light you've been covering for sheer dishonesty?

My fear is losing this flexi time.

I read this somewhere and it has always stuck with me: FEAR is False Evidence Appearing Real.

So feel the fear and do it anyway. The proof of who is pulling their weight and who isn't is very transparent. you may feel that you all you will lose WFH option - but i feel that management would rather get rid of the dead wood. WFM is working out with everybody else - just not her.

the longer you leave telling management the deeper you all are digging your own holes.

It is horrible to have to do this BUT by not acting, you're putting yourself in a risky situation!

This is why I always CC the managers when asking colleagues for something when working remotely. That way they're in the loop and it falls to them if things go sour, since they knew what was going on.

Can you start now?

Inform your manager what's going on, and then CC him in every time you email her from home. That way she knows she's being monitored (and watched people are productive people), and manager knows what's going on.

I had a colleague a lot like this. In fact, I thought it might have been one and the same person until I saw your reference to the type of work you do (client-led).

My colleague and I worked in an office with maybe 30 people. We weren't on the same team, but we were at the same bank of desks for about 18 months. We were both professional women in our early 30s. I liked her well enough but I couldn't say I really knew her because she was never there.

My colleague was supposed to be at her desk 8/8:30 - 6/ 6:30 Mon-Fri. Her work would've taken her out of the office from time to time, but typically only for a breakfast meeting here or an two hour meeting there. Occasionally, there would be something that would take you out for nearly the whole day. Typically, the other people, in our office and across the industry, doing a similar job would be in the office most of the time.

My colleague, however, would come into the office sometime in the morning, stay for maybe an hour. Then maybe reappear for another hour or two in the afternoon, but usually she didn't. She was always hurrying - running in clutching her briefcase, and running back out again because she was late for a meeting.

We often didn't see her for two or three days in a row. TBH we got used to her chair being empty so much so that we'd occasionally have conversations about when she was last spotted and we'd speculate that maybe she'd been on holiday or something.

Her line manager worked in a different city which is probably how she got away with it.

Someone from another company we did business with told me one day that everyone talked about her. There was a lot of speculation that she had two jobs and every time she wrote a new research report she just circulated to two companies.

What sticks in my mind though is one conversation I had with her. It was a Friday and she was at her desk all morning (unusual). She saw an email referencing a major IT system change and she asked why this was the first we were hearing of it. I told her that there had been a big presentation to the whole staff on Tuesday. She said that she was in the office on Tuesday, so how could she have missed it? I explained that everyone in the office had huddled into a conference room for an hour to hear it, and maybe she was out at that time? (I was thinking to myself that she hadn't been in at all on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday). She started to get angry, hotly insisting that she'd been in all day Tuesday. Moreover, she was almost always in the office. Everyone else was looking at her with their jaws hanging open. I still don't know if she was lying to herself or trying to brainwash us.

In the end, she got made redundant in the sort of redundancy round where they are getting rid of people whose faces no longer fit, rather than whose job function is no longer required. So, the senior management team must have known after all.

Thinking about your situation OP, I would put yourself in your line manager's and the board of directors shoes. You say they were reluctant and needed much persuasion to allow such flexible working practices.

They were probably thinking:
CONS

• what are the risks that the projects will not be done to a high standard and in a timely manner?
• difficulties in managing individuals
• loss of collaborative opportunities
• loss of informal support and business orientation for new hires

PROS

• employee satisfaction and loyalty (they won't want to move to a new employer and give this up)
• increased personal responsibility regarding deadlines and time management

Think what will happen if they find out what has been going on? The big positive (employee satisfaction) will be seriously undermined and one of the cons will have come true.

I think you should all tell your line manager together. That way, you'll be demonstrating that you all taking responsibility for making this work. If you don't, and he/she finds out in another way, or even just heavily suspects, it will confirm the company's fears about why it might not work.

I wouldn't give your colleague another chance, nor warn her about what you are going to do. People like that will try to get their word in first (maybe she will accuse you all of bullying her or undermining her). That's also why you all need to say the same thing.

You could also add how much you appreciate having the opportunity to work this way but you need to bring your colleague's behaviour and contribution to the company's notice. Then make a plea for the ultra-flexi hours to be allowed to continue.

Its a risk, but I can't see any other way out of it that gives you a chance of keeping this arrangement in the long-term.

You could also point out that you can all manage without someone in her role for a while without impacting the work being delivered. It sounds as though between you, you do almost all her work and spend time monitoring everything she does, so if you just did her work it would actually be less overall than you currently do?

I have to say as a manger I would only take your flexibility away as a very last resort as it seems to be working so well for the rest of you. The fact you'd spoken to me about her would give me the confidence you could self police

If you say that they might be introducing it in other teams why not suggest that although it is working well for most people it would be good to have a few more checks and guidelines that everyone is available when they say they are. Maybe your team could pilot a few different approaches to develop some more monitoring before rolled out further. Your colleague will either need to improve or be found out in the audit.

I'm amazed that her manager seems to be entirely oblivious to her lack of presence, and to the fact that she's not doing anywhere close to good enough of a job.

Her manager is not doing a good job, either.

I once worked with a team who absolutely took the piss when it came to WFH. They weren't managed very well and where given way too much trust to get the job done.

All of them WFH at least two or three times a week, and like the OP said, most of the time you couldn't get hold of them and they didn't respond to emails or phone calls. It meant the rest of us had to pick up their work.

Eventually they got a new manager but even then the manager wasn't in the same office or even city as them, but he was far more aware of them WFH so much.

He actually caught one of them out as they had been WFH most of a week and had been uploading photos of themselves on Facebook doing DIY around their newly purchased house and clearly hadn't noticed they had the new manager as a friend! That person for banned from WFH (although they then just became "sick" fairly often.)

That entire team was made redundant, but luckily I wasn't part of it anymore.

The time sheets you mentioned ring an alarm bell. Did you say that she was falsifying time sheets? If she is that is fraud and you HAVE to blow the whistle. I have been a manager in an organisation that uses time sheets. If is very easy to see a lot of detail of exactly what your team are doing as you get regular time summaries. Also you need to see the time sheets to approve the bills. I really don't see how the manager can have missed this.

I'm not at all convinced that OP's job will be on the line if she doesn't mention to her manager that a peer is skiving. It's the managers job to manage the team not hers. I also think it quite likely that management will stop wfh when they find out about the situation because I've seen that happen on more than one occasion.
OP and her colleagues may in the end have complain to the management about the colleague but I think that should happen after all attempts to make the colleague to her share have failed.

Once one other member of my team sent her a document for her to approve. She e-mailed back saying "Yes, brilliant, go for it", thing is, colleague had purposefully drafted the document wrongly i.e not adhering to house style guidelines and she totally missed it. Colleague has kept their correspondence as proof

This doesn't look great on the rest of the team in my opinion - as a manager I wouldn't be too impressed to hear that my team were wasting time and energy deliberately doing something like that to catch someone out and would potentially give her a case to claim 'bullying'... You have a strong enough case as it is.

When talking to the manager, stress how much the flexibility has improved morale and job satisfaction amongst the rest of the team - you've all been meeting your deadlines and performing well so it would be very difficult for the manager to try to take that back from the rest of you.

I've worked in a role where I was doing 2 people's work (including my own) but this was noticed and the other person was "made redundant". It was a PA/secretary role and the coworker was giving me her tapes to do, a lot!

In the same company the marketing person took the piss to an unbelievable extent including "extended sick leave for her back", then long "client lunches" (she told me they were interviews...) and she rolled into work once just gone midday due to a hangover. She was in her 30s and was made redundant.

A friend of mine works from home 1 day a week and likes it but she's NHS/social work (an OHW) - their work is monitored - don't know if they have set hour but they have to be there and be productive. Eg sign in etc.

I know an excolleague of mine a legal sec/admin assistant who worked part time 3 days a week but wanted to do 2 days a week WFH. But she had 2 kids, a demanding life and would have done audio typing at home and not sure how it'd be policed. Her main issue was easier for her and no commute. Don't know if she got her WFH as I left.

In your situation I'd see it as an in-office scenario too, why should you and the others pick up the slack for someone else abusing the WFH and doing the job badly? Have you had appraisals recently? But report nonetheless. Maybe you could mention how much you ALL (eg not just the slacker) like and appreciate the WFH set up.

Totally agree with what laurie says too, don't get into anything gives slacker a reason to play the bullying card....

And see laurie's final para a bit like mine. You want to get across how much WFH has benefitted the team etc....

It's the managers job to manage the team not hers.

Yes but if the team have got together and decided to share out this person's work, it undermines the manage and hides the bad work that the person is not doing.

Yet more thorough common sense on here this morning - I especially share in the advice not to get involved in anything which could be construed as bullying. The team have tried to "have a word" and predictably it's not worked; now it's time for the next step

When this eventually comes to light - and it will - the piss-taker will try to paint herself as somehow the victim; they always do. This is exactly why the problem should be referred to those paid to deal with it, though I do agree about emphasising the morale-boosting effect of WFH on the rest of the team

With your update OP this is not a WFH issue, this is a competency issue and someone needs to report it now otherwise it won't just be your WFH which is at jeopardy but your actual jobs.

If I was the Line Manager I would be furious if I discovered that everyone else in the office knew that someone was making fundamental errors to the point where a trap by a junior member of staff had been set for them, but no one had bothered to inform me. What happens to the companies professional reputation if that incident had happened for real?

I wouldn't mention how much you all benefit from WFH at this point, just do what you should have done a long time ago and flag up the fact that your colleague is not performing her duties and don't mention the trap that was set for her.

When you talk to your manager, be sure to mention that this isn't an issue that has suddenly appeared now you are wfh. Say it has recently got worse but it has been a problem since long before the new flexible working policy.

But do tell your manager.