to say something to my intern

[wouldratherbebythepool]

Intern is lovely, we have never met, they are interning from their bedroom on the other side of the country due to COVID.

They have some experience and are 33 years old and living with a partner (no kids in case relevant), but recently graduated from university. I wanted to give them a chance.

I've never had anyone work for me before. I work very very fast, and it is my company so I know the ropes. I wouldn't have expected them to be as fast as me but I am very surprised at how slow they are at working in comparison to me.

They are full time, on £10 p/h yet get a quarter of the work done as I predict I would have, maybe less.

I have started wondering if they are actually working their full hours.

I try and be the best boss possible, I sent them a welcome gift, and told them their 8 hours a day are flexible as long as we have time for a daily catch up. Our catch ups are casual, fun, and I answer all their questions.

I have another job and am looking after my friends child at home (friend is single mum front line worker so I have taken in my very well behaved, immune compromised, 'niece' for 3 months.) This means I only have time for a 1 hour call a day for the intern, if that.

It's important that they feel trusted and I think as soon as someone doesn't feel trusted it can get nasty.

I am an emotional person and have anxiety so hate confrontation, but my approach of setting goals, deadlines, explaining how to reduce the time, have not improved things. They have been working on a document that would have taken me 1 week max, for four weeks and it's half done.

When I break down tasks and set deadlines my intern tells me the deadlines are unrealistic.

I check when they last edited documents and sometimes it says a couple of days ago, but before I awkwardly address this they inform me that they often work on a separate document and copy the information over, so I couldn't track the opening time.

I have no idea what to say. They are only here 12 weeks in total. I wouldn't have brought them on if I had known they would do so little work. But they also do lots of research around a subject. For example if I asked them to write a "quick description" of the company, they would create a document and spend two days researching other companies descriptions and how to write one, to write something I didn't particularly like. If your boss told you to write a "quick one paragraph description" how long would you spend on it? 16 hours?

Do I say something to my intern and what?

Are you delegating effectively? This is helpful www.impactfulcoaching.com/blog/2017/11/6/delegation
I think you should hire an agency temp. Sack the intern. Good confrontation practice.

Before you speak to her next check when document was last edited. Then whilst on the call get her to send over her copy of document. Then you can immediately compare the 2 and see exactly what she has done in 2 days or whenever last save was.

It takes 3 months to get into a role that you are experienced in its field what do you expect from a 10 an hour intern? You are being unreasonable.

Do you have written company work instructions to follow, have you verbally or in writing set a timescale and explained the ramifications of not meeting the timeline? Do they feel confident in coming to you to explain why they are taking so long?
Can you provide a template of how you want things written, the intern may not have a clue but doesn't want to ask for fear of looking stupid and you haven't followed it up so....
Unfortunately the worst leaders of companies tend to be the self appointed ones (owners of their own company) because you haven't had to work your way up. Sounds like you need to do some work in effective communication. If you're talking for 5 hours a week and still not getting done what's needed, then maybe your saying the wrong things. Ask them if they understand what you want.

I manage two very junior people remotely. They are in a different country and since the lockdown they've been working from home.

I have a list of tasks for them but I only ever give them one task at a time. When they finish, they let me know and they get the next one. I completely micromanage them but it works. I tried treating them like I treat the more senior people and it just didn't work. They were overwhelmed.

I catch up on Skype for 20 minutes at the end of their day.

I think you are giving your intern a task and she's dealing with it like a university piece of work, where the deadlines are very long. Your intern needs to understand that in industry, time is money. They are not paid to write a Nobel prize literature piece. They have to produce something, get feedback, rewrite and go!

I joined a new role in lockdown and took over managing 2 underperforming junior members of staff remotely that I've never met. It's required a completely different management style - the type of "friendly chat" boss thing just doesn't work in these circumstances.

You need to micromanage. Things aren't up for debate - if she says that she's working in a separate document and then transferring in then just tell her not to!! At the beginning of each day/week (depending on the type of work) write a list of tasks. Tell her that you expect her to contact you with any questions as soon as they come up rather than floundering and that if she can't be trusted to complete work to time then you'll take the flexibility out of the post. It's ok to tell her that you don't think it's really working as it stands. You just need to make sure you offer support and help at the same time as landing like a ton of bricks on the lack of productivity.

You are paying her for a role she can't / won't perform to your satisfaction. End the contract.

An Internship is work experience. That doesn't sound like the role she has. It does sound like she's getting short changed because your too busy/ unwilling to actually manage and guide. She shouldn't be expected to just get on with it after just a few months. I think you needed an experienced assistant but you would have had to pay more for this.

Agree with some of the other posters here that this does not sound like an internship. I’ve had interns working for me before and have pretty low expectations of their productive work output especially at first - to be honest having an intern often adds to my workload rather than reducing it as I need to invest a lot of time in them which I could have spent doing the work myself to a much higher quality. I think a remote internship under lockdown would be very challenging for both parties.

I thought she could do this in 8 hours

Did you tell her when you gave her the task she had a time allocation of 8 hours? Or did you just think it would only take her 8 hours?

If you say X and she says Y, you need to be firm and clear. You say “I appreciate your input, but for this task you need to complete it in the 8 hour time slot and stick to what I’ve outlined.”

It is important that all goals are achievable and time bound.

I told her we didn't have a lot of time as there was a lot more work that needs doing and she suggested that she cut down the task so only produce a weeks worth of instagram posts in 3 days instead. I just had no idea what to say to that.

To that, you say “No, I’m sorry. The work I’ve set you is to schedule a months worth of instagram content in 8 hours. That must be completed in the given time following the outline provided”.

What is happening is that you are letting her run the show and change the course of direction and then blaming her when things are taking too long and aren’t up to scratch.

You don’t need to micromanage, you just need to manage, and it sounds like you don’t know how to do that.

You just want to be “the best boss” and think that’s about being kind and fun, but it’s not. A great boss is one who is clear, firm, sets boundaries and shows professionalism, sets achievable and time bound targets, and listens to input but isn’t afraid to not include it.

You are not giving clear direction, you are letting her run away with the projects and run all over you, and then blaming her for you letting it happen. I reiterate my point that after lockdown is lifted, a management course for you would be appropriate.

You might be better just getting a VA, they cost more per hour but sounds liked they'd be better value for money, mine is brilliant, I can just leave her to get on wth stuff without it clogging up my brain too and she's got the added value of the knowledge and experience she brings from elsewhere.

@Xenia

I just always refuse to take people on even if they offer to work for nothing as it's simpler and I work very quickly indeed. It is not worth the hassle. If your contract with her allows you to terminate on a week's notice I would just do that as it is clearly not working out.

I agree with Xenia, cut your losses, this woman isn’t ever going to cut it.

The copying and pasting on the document is BS, you know this right?

So she’s not an intern. She’s just a freelancer ?

Now you've updated, it's clear that you've taken someone on, as a temp, to do the work you don't have time to do.
Which is fine, except you're calling her an intern. This person isn't being treated as an intern.
It would, I agree, be interesting to hear her side.

Yes I think there is a big mismatch here between what you want and are paying for. If she’s produced something better and trying to do well in a low paid role (was it advertised as an intern post?) you’ve probably done reasonably well. If you are expecting someone to do a social media campaign autonomously with little Input from you for £10 an hour on a temp contract then your expectations are well off.

Now you've updated, it's clear that you've taken someone on, as a temp, to do the work you don't have time to do.Which is fine, except you're calling her an intern. This person isn't being treated as an intern. It would, I agree, be interesting to hear her side

Agreed. Also, £10ph isn't a lot. You sound a bit flaky, maybe due to taking on too much and that's not her fault.

I do a similar role to the task you’ve described. I’m a freelancer, not an intern.

If part of her background is in Social Media then I imagine she’s probably trying to make you a successful IG campaign rather than just give you a months worth of copied imaged and quotes that won’t have a positive impact on your business.

But even so you should expect more than 4 scheduled posts in three days.

The Instagram example.you give seems a lot to ask of an intern. I'd expect them to tal a week or so to do that with a lot of handholding and direction not 8 hours!!

the Instagram example is a perfect example of someone just not wanting to do the job....and from someone with a Social Media 'degree' and background - it's taking the piss.

Here's how i see it, to me 8 hours is one working day including my lunch/break times.
My task is to source 12 pictures from given criteria and add logo/info (provided) to them in IG style.
THIS is a 'copy n paste' job with a bit of typing involved.
Then i set my calendar to publish only 3 of these already completed 'works' each week.

If you break it down that's 2 pics and with a bit of writing per hour....and she can't manage that???
I wouldn't have given her any further work or money bar the 8 hours until she'd completed it....

She really needs this job so I am not thinking of letting her go.

I do know what an internship is. I asked her at the beginning what skills she wanted to develop and I have assigned her tasks based on that. Really she wanted to try everything. I gave her 2 weeks worth of training in these areas which was time consuming for the parts I did and expensive for the parts I outsourced. Ideally she would have been shadowing me but thats not possible at the moment. I have done an internship where I was told to file for 4 months, I have done my best to make this interesting and develop lots of skills for her.

Someone needing a job is not a reason to keep them on.

When she said she was working with offline documents, why didn’t you tell her no?

Where is your backbone?

@Juanmorebeer

Overall I think you are BU because how do you have an intern in a lockdown?! An intern shadows you and you show them everything and they learn the job. You cannot do this online. It's a training scheme essentially not a proper job.

I think you think you have employed an assistant, which you haven't. But you are asking them to do things on their own, of course you are quicker at doing it, you are the expert, they are a beginner.

Either you need to offer them a proper training programme where you commit to spending time with just them to get them up to speed before expecting the lone tasks.

Or end things now and employ a remote assistant to help you if there is surplus work.

I agree - it sounds more like you are after an assistant - not an intern ! From your post it sounds like you hired them to handle your social media and marketing. She is right to do her research as there is a formula that works on social media and it can either be done well or done poorly.

It sounds like you are after quantity not quality whereas she works with quality and likes to take the time to ensure what she does is perfect.

You haven’t answered any questions about whether you are clear in your tasks being time bound?

You’ll probably say you are, but unless you literally say “I expect this particular task to be done in 8 hours”, and refute any alterations on her part, you aren’t.

Are you my new boss?
She has no idea what the job involves, she admits, but keeps asking why things haven't been done, or what's taking so long.

You sound like an absolute nightmare boss. You say yourself that you are Uber quick. Not everyone is. Plus it's your business, you know it inside out, your clients inside out.

I think both YABU and YANBU. YANBU to expect more and be suspicious however it doesn't sound like you've set clear expectations and targets and deadlines. You need to set these together so the intern can work towards them. If they aren't delivering after that, with no reason why, then you can actually see the problem.