Employee feels micromanaged if I give her tasks with deadlines

[calmama]

I manage a person who is generally difficult. She objects to… well everything and undermines me at every chance she gets.

When she first started working for me we sat down together and established a work plan to get our job done and keep us on track to meet deadlines. We agreed I would assign daily tasks and we would meet weekly to discuss progress on projects along with anything new we had to take on, along with any business changes, leave, etc.

Weeks down the line she exploded at me for colour coding priorities, saying the urgent (red) tasks were ‘very unfriendly and freaking her out’. I took the red out.

A few weeks later she exploded at me for ‘micromanaging and bullying her’ by sending her daily priorities, despite this being agreed upon from the very start. I asked for an alternative way of progressing projects. She had none.

Today she exploded at me for setting deadlines because they ‘stress her out’. Again, I asked her for an alternative way of doing things and she had none.

I’m at a loss. She’s doing honestly the bare minimum and can’t seem to cope. I’m having to pick up her slack because otherwise my team looks bad, yet I’m still copping the brunt of her rage and there’s no end in sight.

AIBU to throw my hands in the air and take a long vacation?

Make sure you have all the discussions written down and go to HR . They will be able to give you the starting point for issues like.this.

I couldn't be arsed with daily reminders and priorities tbh, but if she's lazy that's a whole different story. She's doing the bare minimum, do you think she has more capacity? Can you prove she's being lazy?

I think she is right, you are micro managing her. Are you new to management, because setting daily tasks, priorities and colour coding activities is going t stress a lot of people at and really is not normal. You need to trust her to get on with her job.

It definitely is micromanaging by the way

I think partly this. Is the only way she gets work done to be given daily tasks and micromanaged to this level or is this you? If the former then she needs to be put on a PIP. If the latter, then you need to change things.

I can see both sides. Why did you feel the need to establish such a close supervision schedule at the very first meeting? Surely, this is something that should have come in later if she showed poor performance. You gave her no chance to establish autonomy and, yes, I am afraid this is micromanaging.
I presume she is a professional with experience and qualifications to do the job. I would absolutely hate for someone to undermine me like that at work from the get go.
In my current job, I have complete autonomy and supervision every 6 weeks. My manager is also available ad-hock if I run into issues. All the tasks are clear and I have soft and hard deadline for the overall volume of work. But I would be baffled if my manager started sending me colour-coded daily notes. He may as well do the job himself if that was the case as I don't see how it would be a good use of his time doing in to every member of the team.

Why aren’t you dealing with her behaviour?
id be having her in for HR talks / performance reviews and letting her know her behaviour is unacceptable.
are you aware you can give warnings, written and sack someone for insubordination?

@Aprilx She isn’t privy to the information I am so I have no choice but to communicate tasks to her. She can’t get on with her job even with tasks so without them it would be hopeless.

Say I set her three tasks for the day: 1. Do an urgent social media post about x (no research or anything required, just a simple but timely post), 2. Contact a venue re potentially holding an event there next year, and 3. Look into caterers at said venue for a quote. Does this seem like something you could get done in a week?

Daily task lists seem a bit ott. Surely a meeting once a week to discuss projects and list of work that needs to be competed following week

She is right you are micro micro managing her. Even the way you write this is irritating. “She works for me, I assign her daily tasks, reminders. Who hired her ? I assume not you. Clearly they thought she was up to the job. Sometimes you have to let situations play out. The consequences will be hers if she is bad at her job. Lay off, let her be, let her come to you if she needs to. In short, being an effective manager means you will get more out of people that like you. Be her consultant not her parent.

@Catza Just to clear things up, the colour coding was not for her, but for us as a team. I realise colour coding for her alone would be awful!

She can’t get on with her job even with tasks so without them it would be hopeless

But how were you able to establish it when she first started? What baffles me about this situation is you setting this obscene process on her very first day (as you said in your original post). Sounds like you decided her to be incapable from day one and behaved accordingly.

@Hankunamatata She’s never progressing though. We had a meeting today. She’d done nothing.

Why can’t she just be copied into the email communications to begin with (from clients?). Then you can say in the email replies to clients, “Sarah will get in touch with the venue and get back to with the dates”, then see if she does.

I couldn’t cope with being micromanaged like this, it’s insane.

Your hardly doing top secret work where the relevant people at your company can’t just be copied in.

Well you are micro-managing her. Whether that's appropriate I guess depends on the nature of the job and what her specific role is.

I've been micromanaged like that before and it's horrible. I felt both untrusted and disrespected, and also that the manager only saw one way of doing things (their way!) and saw me as a useless, skill-less grunt just there to put into place the decisions he had made. It used to make me cry but I could also understand people getting angry because of it. It also drastically impacts job performance. You may think you are being supportive but clearly for her this is the opposite of support.

Either way it's clear this isn't working for either of you. I think you need to stop with micro-managing and show her some trust - I assume she had the job for a reason. I think you also need to recognise that she may not do the job exactly the way you would do it, and that's probably OK. If she isn't doing it up to an appropriate standard then you need to discuss that with her.

But some people who aren't managed in this way will just do the absolute minimum, or not stick to deadlines, and then it falls to the rest of team to pick up the slack which isn't fair.
Is she within her probation period OP?

Hold up, @Catza. I never once said this was on the first day. We met a couple of weeks after I started as I said it would help for me get the lay of the land before we established weekly meetings. She did nothing in those two weeks despite me checking in with her. We fell behind. In that first meeting we discussed how we could handle the growing workload. She wholeheartedly agreed to daily tasks. This didn’t seem to be an issue until I caught her lying about having done a very simple, but very important task. And no, I didn’t call her out on it. But she knows I know.

You’re micromanaging her because she’s not doing any work by the sounds of things. Did you hire her? How long has she been there now?

You don’t have to, and shouldn’t, tolerate her “exploding”. She sounds unwilling or unable to do the job or manage appropriate behaviour in a professional environment.

How do you manage your other team members? Tbh if you have 10 min meetings every morning where you divvy out tasks for all of them then she doesn't really have anything to complain about. If she's the only one you do that for then you are singling her out to be micro-managed.

So treat her like everyone else - divvy out tasks to everyone together including deadlines.

Then you'll have evidence of what she hasn't done, be able to evidence that her workload is equitable to everyone else's, and that she is being treated the same as everyone else. And then put her on a formal improvement plan.

Nobody could work like this OP.

And if you are having to manage to that level, she's bringing nothing to your working life anyway.

She needs a wider role, tasks discussed fortnightly or so, and then email her as / when other tasks arise.

If she's not able to do her work to the required standard, you need to start performance management.

Yes, exactly.

I work with someone like this, but do not manage her and it's absolutely fucking annoying and causes resentment because they do sod all while I'm drowning in work.

RAG rating makes sense with multiple projects on the go. I'd start performance managing her, assign tasks, and then ask why they weren't completed, and focus on the why. But be clear of your expectations

How are you communicating the tasks to her?

If you aren't already maybe use Planner, or a Team One Note with a page for each team member where the tasks can be written and she can see she is not the only one.

My line manager has a Priorities call once a week with three team members at a time to discuss work, a weekly team progress meeting so we know what's going on with the wider team and then individual 1:1s once a fortnight to discuss wellbeing, training, project work and anything else.

It sounds like you might need a tea meeting to discuss Better Ways of Working and to trial new methods.

At no point should your employee be exploding at you, that behaviour needs dealing with

I guess it depends on the person. I am not lazy, and am capable of working off my own initiative. But.... I'd actually prefer the way do things 😅 I do have ADHD though, my mind can wonder a hell of a lot, and I can be quite scatty. I have to list my jobs on paper in front of me but I also panic that I've forgotten one off the list, I panic that I'm maybe doing them in the wrong priority....if my manager listed them, that would remove any panic and allow me to get on with the work without any worry or overthinking and I could get through my day without having anxiety through the roof.
I guess I can see how that could irritate the hell out of others who don't have the same issues as myself though

How has she ended up working for you? Did you take leadership of a team she was already in, was she transferred to you?

Importantly has she been there 2 years?