Colleague lying

[Bettyscakes]

Help! I supervise 2 admins at work. One of them (been here a year) is not very competent and makes lots of mistakes despite lots of training.

They still appear to have no clear understanding of the job even though we have explained it so many times and the manager has spoken to her numerous times.

I can literally give her something & explain and she writes it down but she then forgets to do it, gets it wrong and blames her laptop.

It is exasperating.

Manager is now being cc’d in everything so she can see level of errors.

Today I gave her a task around 9.30am. At 2.45 I realised I’d seen no evidence of it being done (I check it). It was to be posted & the mailroom deadline is 3pm.

Long story short I asked & could tell by the response it hadn’t been done and suddenly a letter appeared in the folder which had obviously just been typed. I assume she must have spoken to the mailroom and could send it late. I asked a few times if the other admin had checked it but was ignored.

I know I have been lied to and she forgot and instead of owning it she then got the other admin involved and fair enough got it done. I know it’s because she is worry about us seeing another error from her.

I just can’t get over being lied to.

My AIBU is should I tell my manager? She said in a meeting this week she needs to know all errors. But she did sort it. It’s the lying…

I would raise it. It is another issue that has come up.

If it was a one off - but even then I'd expect an apology.
As it's consistent and your manager is aware, I think you need to have a conversation with your manager about starting a capability process.

If you think this employee will never meet what the job requires, the law allows you to dismiss so long as you’re compliant with disability and other discrimination laws etc when they have under 2 years service. Dismissal of an employee on capability to do the job grounds is a much bigger and longer process approaching and over 2 years service.

Yep raise it.

But this woman needs to be managed out, surely. Tell your manager to pull her finger out.

It’s a government body, it’s very very hard to just dismiss someone:(

You keep telling her?

perhaps make it a readable document policy rather then ‘verbally saying’ as we all have different learning styles. I love seeing things written down as opposed to someone trying to tell.

Also is the work being distributed fairly between two admins? Sorry to ask I started with another temp who actively avoids doing pretty much any work in the office so at times it can feel very overwhelming as the load is not shared.

?

@Guttedme all tasks are sent by email but she is then free to ask for any clarification.

Because of the issues she is never allocated more than 2-3 tasks at a time.

The other admin does twice the amount of tasks if not more.

Can you explain what you mean?

Tell your manager but you also need to be providing good and bad feedback to her as you go. Or have a chat with her to give feedback and then she has an opportunity to raise any issues too.

I hate to be “that guy” but being in the office with them regularly would probably be helpful.

I can imagine what that comment might mean and my imaginings aren't very nice.

I have no doubt it takes more effort to do it as their internal policies will potentially be more skewed towards avoiding capability dismissals wherever possible than the law requires - in order to maximise protecting their reputation. Larger organisations can afford to carry some “just below par” employees more easily and doing that protects their reputation. They can afford to fear getting it wrong more than needing to get it done, but it is still just as possible to do. Choosing not to do it because it would be harder is a valid choice but in my experience needs to be recognised as the choice maybe even subconsciously taken because otherwise your frustration risks make your own working life so miserable.

As a senior manager I’d be pretty upset if a supervisor only checked at 2:45 for a 3pm deadline for an employee with known performance issues. In this case it’s better for you to let it slide but next time you need to check before she takes her lunch. I suggest doing the following:

1. Explain you weren’t happy with how close to the deadline she submitted that last piece of work and that it was obvious she forgot and that you’d have appreciated a heads up. Be straight forward and speak up. Ask her how you can support her to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Then demand daily progress check-ins and that make it clear that work with same day deadlines must be submitted to you by 1:30pm to allow you to check her work. If you can’t check it it won’t be submitted - maybe remove her access to the mail room folder so she’s forced to send it to you first? Make this a final written warning and make it clear if it doesn’t reach you by 1:30 and there isn’t a reason it will be marked as an error / failure to complete.
2. Make her open her email diary (and her email inbox) to you so important work isn’t missed.
3. Stop assigning her important work. I’d review what the other productive admin is doing and interested in and give her first choice of all the admin work she wants to do. The underperforming admin then gets to the unimportant / mundane work.
4. Give her a performance plan and add improve communication / prioritisation to it. Make it clear what you want her to do.
5. Do not give her any face time with important people like your manager or even your contemporaries. If she lies this will only reflect badly on you. Make it clear to them that the other admin is the one to go to for anything.

This may result in significant improvements as her work objectives are clearer but it also allows you to dismiss if it doesn’t

@JustAMinutePleass thank you. You have given me a different outlook on this. Yes I should have checked before 2.45 you are right. My excuse - juggling so much work.

1. Point 1 makes sense re checking in. I can’t take away access to the mailroom but I can ask to be cc’d.
2. already have access to emails , however this was a printing task.
3. It was a mundane task but time sensitive. The other admin was working on something complicated.
4. To go on a pip would be decided by my managers manager - it’s public body so hard to get to but that is why we are now taking lots of notes/cc ing manager.
5. No control over this I’m afraid.

I will though implement the checking in as that will help a lot thank you.

I work in HR in the public sector and it isn't very very hard to get rid of bad performers. It's a bit of a ball-ache longer procedure than I've used in the private sector, true. The actual problem though is some managers who don't want to do the less pleasant parts of people management. They'd rather do nothing and be stuck with these people for years, all the whole wondering why their other staff get pissed off and leave.

This could be dealt with if their manager could be bothered.

Yep, Manager is far too soft. However she has said after 2 weeks she will review things (now she is cc’d into everything).

Should I tell her re the lying?

To be honest you seem to be going about this in a really passive way. Are you her manager? Is her performance your responsibility? If so, step up. If not, why are you posting here?

if you’re her manager, in your 1 to 1s you need to say something like I asked you to complete X task by 3pm and noticed it wasn’t done at 2:45pm, can you tell me how you approached this task and what your thought process was? When did you start working on this? I appreciate you did it before the deadline, however the deadline isn’t the goal etc and it can be stressful leaving things to last minute. Can I help you prioritise your workload? What other work were you doing at the same time? In future I expect this to task to be completed by 1pm or I expect you to give me an update on your progress by 1pm etc

If it is a government body you would know the procedures in place to deal with underperformance.

You and the manager need to follow them. You'll be able to read the procedures.

There should already be documented conversations asking what is going, what support is needed, any explanation for issues - yes? If not, that is a management failure.

Your manager has asked to be informed. So inform her. Do not use the word 'lying' or any other opinion. Just state factually X was asked do this, this happened...

I’m her work supervisor, not her manager and have no management responsibilities for her so I can’t do much except flag to manager as requested.

she is only given 2-3 tasks at a time. Yesterday this was the only time sensitive one. I prioritise her tasks already for her. My issue is she forgot & then lied about it.

I know now I must check on priority tasks earlier in the day.

Because of her incompetence I am drowning in work so it’s not hard to see why I missed checking.

I don’t think I’d mention the lying unless you’ve got cold hard proof of it.

Im unsure of your work dynamic but unless it is your responsibility to train and manage this colleague then your manager needs to step up and pull their finger out.

I have proof the letter was only generated 5 minutes after I checked on it so I’m pretty sure it had not been done previously.

Does she only get 2 or 3 tasks a day and forgot one?

Is she actually incapable or just lazy?

Totally incapable and very very slow. She only completed one of the other tasks which would normally take an hour and apparently helped the other admin with something. The one thing she completed was wrong.

I was at home, they were in office. Normally there is another supervisor and/or manager in but couldn’t be helped yesterday. The other admin completed all her tasks.

I think you should mention this to her manager op, but you don't have to use the word lying, just he factually as follows:

• at xx am I emailed colleague asking her to do xyz. In my email I explained that this was time sensitive and needed to be completed before 3pm the same day.
• colleague had 2 other tasks to compete that day. These were:

Xxx and yyy

• at 2:45 pm I spoke to colleague to check she had completed the time sensitive task. She told me she had complete this, however when I checked the electronic folder at xx pm I could not see anything to confirm she had completed the task.
• I checked the electronic folder again at xx pm (after I spoke to colleague) and could see that she had prepared the letter and saved it to the file at xx pm ie after I spoke to her.
• of the other two tasks that she had that day, one was not completed and one was completed incorrectly with the following errors:

Xxx, yyy etc

Colleague's performance is having a negative impact on my own work as I cannot rely on her to complete tasks adequately and to reasonable timescales.