Women @ work

[notstacysmum]

Name changed for this in case it becomes a bun fight. I have my hard hat on.

I am a senior manager within a public sector org- I've been in my current role for 4 month and I lead a corporate service; think HR, finance, business improvement etc. I am a massive advocate for women at work and have two daughters... BUT...

I absolutely despair at the vast majority of women at work who don't have basic digital literacy skills and have no enthusiasm for learning them. In the few months I've been in post three members of my team - all female- have failed to grasp basic excel skills needed to manipulate and present reports. They don't have any interest in doing things differently or thinking on their feet. We've implemented a new system they can't get their head around, they give advice on policies from 2 years ago because they "forgot" there was a new one. They leave on the dot every day - which isn't an issue really but they spend the last 15 minutes of every day getting ready to leave and clock watching! I feel like I'm constantly banging my head against a brick wall and I'm at a point where I'd rather replace them all with apprentices because I have to hand hold them on simple tasks. I have two men in my team who take everything in their stride and lead on every project. My department has a long standing reputation of being a bit shit that I've been tasked with turning around- their performance is part of the negative feedback.

These women aren't all menopausal (I accept some are) and this isn't just my team- I hear it from other management colleagues, from friends who don't know how to use even basic office software, I've worked for a long time and it's only ever been female colleagues who behave like this (don't get me wrong- there's been some shit men too but they tend to be over promisers!).

I feel like such a shit feminist to say this but if I could swap them for a team of men I would.

AIBU to think this is probably a gender specific problem (#notallwomen)? WIBU to raise their mediocreness with them?! They haven't done anything differently to the last 15 years and I don't think anyone has ever told them so it's not all their fault but I can't see how else they will change!?

Oh and talking of offensive stereotypes. I assume those complaining were not stereotyping men recently and objecting to people saying not all men are like that. Or equally vocal against that

Having had a bollocking this week for working longer than I should, I will now be spending the last 15 minutes of my day finishing up, inputting my hours and output, rather than working til 1700, then doing the hours/output recording.

I returned to the workplace this year after 15 years as a trailing spouse, and I had never used Excel. At 55, the last year has been a steep learning curve. I am still not where I should be on Excel, but there is no time to do a course at work, and I'm certainly not going to do one in my own time at home, when I'm paid just over £22k per annum.

I think this a public sector issue rather than a woman issue.

It's late so I have to come back to this properly tomorrow but OP, your problem is that you're a misogynist. HTH

I would probably appear to meet a few of the criteria that you have expounded on in your OP. My side of the story is based just on 1 workplace, and they don't all have to be quite the same, but is any of the following familiar? All true.

"We've implemented a new system they can't get their head around..."

(We gave them 2 hours remote training on Zoom in lockdown using a hastily-contracted external firm with no buy-in or responsible persons from the internal team to get hold of afterwards. Not everyone had any work IT at home at that time, there was no spare equipment for ages, so some were using their own with minimal success. We had to switch off the old drives and force the use of the new system within a couple of days, and then we realised how badly everyone post-training-session was fudging a filing structure so we started over with that about a month later too and took a load of permissions away.)

"They give advice on policies from 2 years ago because they "forgot" there was a new one."
(We messed about with the launch timing of the new policy and it dribbled in with a whimper rather than a bang in a period between HR managers. You can download it if you still have the link in the email from last year, but if you started after that time then it's not too easy to find. A google search still turns up a broken link and lots of other allusions on the intranet that suggest the old policy, and maybe the one before that, is still valid. Some systems can be badged as fully virtual and yet the 'old' forms are accepted and much quicker if the boss you are working for hasn't set up an account with SandboxTastic despite being there 15 years.)

"My department has a long standing reputation of being a bit shit"

(It's been restructured twice on the basis of an HR strategy that has gone through 2 directors and an interim, and some nasty backstabbing of their long standing deputy whose departure was sudden. Many other influential senior managers stayed no more than a few months and moved swiftly on. As part of the restructures, they've also moved premises twice and had to get rid of many (formerly essential and legal) resources down to envelopes and files - after all, it's all virtual and there's no storage where you're going. But as you've been here about 4x as long as most people, you can at least count yourself as a survivor, and you still care to the extent that you can.)

"(The female employees) failed to grasp basic excel skills needed to manipulate and present reports."

(There are major problems of all kinds with the data, and it is very old - depends which reports you are working with and which systems can be interrogated. Some female employees have presented annual reports for 'J' back in the day, then for 'N', then for localised records on a quarterly basis in answer to various requests from goodness knows who, but everyone wants something very different from them and has not given a full picture of the point of the report. There's some training links on the intranet, but they refer to a much older version of Excel than we use now, and are no good at all for Mac users. Yes, IT have been told about this for about 4 years - we get a lot of comments about it actually - but don't plan to do anything about this.)

@Ormally - do we work at the same place 😂

Oops, probably!! A few things will sound a big klaxon if so!

Do you have any leadership experience? You sound shocking at your job. You must be blind to not see the issue is poor management.

Pugroll

...I despair at it skills in the UK. I write software in both c++ and python but am amazed at the lack of basic coding skills in the UK.

Why are you amazed? What use do you envisage a lot of jobs have for knowing a coding language?

Office jobs, where you are working with apps like Word and Excel (like the jobs OP is talking about) have a huge amount of scope for coding to increase productivity, automate the grunt work and experiment with different ways of handling and presenting data and ideas.

Management problem, not a gender problem

The person you manage clearly isn't "fine", those he/she managed are not meeting the required standard of the job, and have not been pulled up on it. For this manager to have let this go on for some time is ridiculous and reflects very poorly on their management skills, and thus your management skills in supporting them to line manage correctly.

Start from the top and work your way down. There's a middleman here getting away with a being a mediocre manager enabling the grade below to get away with doing a crap job.

@notstacysmum

Also very interesting you've jumped on me accusing them of doing a shit job by accusing me of doing a shit job

I’m not sure basic logic is ‘interesting’. You say women are crap at work, you’re a women, hence you either think women are crap at work and you just happen to be ‘speshul’, or you don’t actually think that women are crap at work and need to try and express what you think much better. I’m also good at my job and have never observed this attitude in women. These particular people don’t have the attitude you want and happen to be women. I do think better managing to clear requirements could alleviate at least 10% of your issues with them, whether you can deliver that is up to you.

Could you speak to the management about them funding IT qualifications within work? I had no IT experience when I started in the Civil Service. We were still keeping paper records for the first few years but I still managed to get NVQ levels 2 & 3 in IT & level 3 in Business Administration. I worked on the help desk for 3 years as well.

What you will probably find is that the people you label as slackers are at the top of their pay scale with no scope for promotion if they want it, minimal performance related pay & the salary is lagging behind what they would get in the private sector. They would most likely get more money stacking shelves at Aldi, I don't blame them for leaving on the dot & not pushing themselves to exceed what is expected of them, they aren't valued as employees.

I have only experienced this once in my life

It was around 1997.

One part of team was small group women who were 55+. They had more or less no skills to do with word etc.

Given their job was to use a sort of big old fashioned calculator thing attached to a daisy wheel printer.
To type in info from 100+ lines to 10,000 plus. Having manually gone through the printouts the data came on marking out which category to put them in. Then key it extremely rapidly and with NO ERRORS as if went wrong had to start again...

Watching them look at data while their fingers flew at 90mph punching it in. Knowing the level of practice skill accuracy involved, the total concentration, and the repetitive boredom of that's the job.

I was in awe. The printout they received at end was the starting point of a process that others carried out. To judge carefully how much to charge clients from £1000 up to 2 million ish.

They got paid shit money.

They should have been highly respected by all I worked with. In practice, not so much. Just women older than your mum doing a job anyone could do.

Pah.

@NumberTheory

Pugroll

...I despair at it skills in the UK. I write software in both c++ and python but am amazed at the lack of basic coding skills in the UK.

Why are you amazed? What use do you envisage a lot of jobs have for knowing a coding language?

Office jobs, where you are working with apps like Word and Excel (like the jobs OP is talking about) have a huge amount of scope for coding to increase productivity, automate the grunt work and experiment with different ways of handling and presenting data and ideas.

What coding are you doing on word? Excel forumlas also don't use coding, honestly what are you on about? .

OP

For your specific situation-

'
I absolutely despair at the vast majority of women at work who don't have basic digital literacy skills and have no enthusiasm for learning them. In the few months I've been in post three members of my team - all female- have failed to grasp basic excel skills needed to manipulate and present reports. They don't have any interest in doing things differently'.

**
Have you provided any sort of TRAINING for them? I mean just in house couple hours a day with someone good at that stuff and asked for from another team?
**
Who can/do they ask when can't do the thing in word etc?
Each other? Ask someone nice who spares quick min from own work and probably just does it for them which only helps immediate problem?
**
Have you raised this with them individually? One to ones etc? Asked if would like proper training?
**
Or offered training to whole team who wants it. And had word individual to say I want you to go I think will be really beneficial?
**
Do your ways of doing things change every 2, 3 years or ish?
After 15 years. They know loads. And if keeps changing, they will be sick of it.
Usually because original way keeps circling back.
Have you asked them what was best out of all ways been done in their experience? If you were designing, what would happen?
15 years I guarantee they know shit.
**
Are they happy? Is there likelihood of sideways moves/ involvement in other things/promotion/more responsibility? If they want... Do you know? Have you ASKED?
***

Apart from the 90s workmates.

I have NEVER come across this.

The range of ability interest etc in these things varies...
But NOT by sex.

I have had plenty of jobs where men on team ask ME how to do this and that. One finger typing etc.

And OP...
This is really going to be a shock.
I'm a woman with children.
I'm nearly 50 and yes I'm peri menopause.

And I have often been the one to ask if probs excel word ppt etc. Or when we changed from one IM thing to another and that was apparently a huge deal to plenty men AND women. Generally over 50s. Sure. Women only? Erm nope.

pugroll she's on about.

You may have heard of 'macros' in Excel?

You can essentially make Excel do all sorts of automatic whizzy stuff with things that are always in same format and take time and are common enough to be a pita.

Eg

Spreadsheet monthly structured always same.
Need to I dunno.

1. Delete all rows with ID 432.
2. Split out rows ID 65, 34, 76, 468, 54U ETC onto separate worksheets.
3. Sort them all alphabetically and total each one column H.

You can 'record' what you do and see it in code and tinker as desired.
Or you can code it straight in.

Monthly 10000 row spreadsheet arrives.

Press go.

Boom. Half day or more now done in secs. Chance of human error removed.

Brilliant!

@CheeseMmmm

pugroll she's on about.

You may have heard of 'macros' in Excel?

Yes, and excel VBA is more than sufficient for most jobs and what they need to achieve with excel. Excel showboaters who make things overly complex to show how great they are just as bad to work with as someone who doesn't know there way around it. Nothing worse than working on a spreadsheet someone has done ridiculous stuff with for the sake of it, for most keeping it simple and using the standard forumlas for the application is more than enough. Still waiting on its use in word.

I'm in the private sector, finance. Most women I meet are conscientious, creative, committed. They are used to spinning lots of plates - they cope with keeping the basic functions running whilst handling mergers, system changes and challenges in their personal lives. Sometimes they resist change, mainly because they've been shat on from a great height by new senior managers a few times who come in with "a brilliant plan to cut costs" whose ideas generally have no relationship with reality.

Excel skills in my team are high intermediate (we discourage use of VBA so I can't say advanced).

Your problem is that people have been allowed to get comfy. You need to inspire and motivate them if you want things to change. You need to tell your direct report that the team needs a wake up call and a massive shake up. You need them all to be set change targets then if/when they fail, you manage the poor performance until they improve or are managed out of their jobs.

It's not women, it is successive bad managers. You sound really clueless to be honest, I'm surprised to hear a senior manager stereotyping and showing so little insight and leadership. You've been given a problem to solve, it is your job to solve it.

It is also rather sickening to hear you just think you're not being a good feminist. In fact you are illegally biased against a group of people based on sex. It's actually pretty disgusting. Do you hold views on the workplace capabilities of other groups, like black people or older people?

You need to give yourself a slap and start thinking like a senior manager without a bagful of prejudice.

'amazed at the lack of basic coding skills in the UK.'

Agree. I know because was interested. My coding skills are shite though.

'huge amount of scope for coding to increase productivity, automate the grunt work and experiment with different ways of handling and presenting data and ideas'.

Agree. Due to most have no idea even is possible. And if so are asked to pick up in any spells where got a bit of time. And then, like me. Hacking around with internet help. Loads of opportunities missed to improve speed accuracy, get rid of terrible hated recurring tasks etc.

@CheeseMmmm

You can essentially make Excel do all sorts of automatic whizzy stuff with things that are always in same format and take time and are common enough to be a pita.

Eg

Spreadsheet monthly structured always same.
Need to I dunno.

1. Delete all rows with ID 432.
2. Split out rows ID 65, 34, 76, 468, 54U ETC onto separate worksheets.
3. Sort them all alphabetically and total each one column H.

You can 'record' what you do and see it in code and tinker as desired.
Or you can code it straight in.

Monthly 10000 row spreadsheet arrives.

Press go.

Boom. Half day or more now done in secs. Chance of human error removed.

Brilliant!

You can do all of that without knowing python or c++ as the poster was on about.

Eh?

Sorry have I missed something, admittedly only read last few pages.

Well you can do that without knowing C++ etc because they are different languages

VBA is a language you can learn without knowing other languages.

Why did you mention formulas in Excel when you knew she was talking about something else? I don't understand that.

I have no idea what can do in word to automate past mail merge which everyone knows

I will check Google though for example. (Why need that poster to give?).

How do you do that without utilising VBA?

I didn't know there was another way.

As mentioned though I've only found about about Excel thing because saw someone do at work years ago and said oooh what's that??!!