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?

RTFT. The colleague is lying about whether simple tasks have been done. Giving her more responsibility and less supervision is quite obviously not going to help.

Useless employee need to be fired.

OP I totally sympathise. I had an almost exact scenario with a junior on our team. Failing to do even the most basic of tasks and accusing my head of dept of micro managing her.

In the end she was put on a performance improvement plan after disappearing for 4hrs on the day of a very important deadline.

She handed her notice in almost immediately and when we finally managed to get access to her laptop she'd been dicking about for hours online shopping and essential doing fuck all work.

Luckily the person who has replaced her is amazing. This won't get any better. Get rid as soon as you can.

I'd hate to have you as my manager!

Regardless of whether or not you are micro managing her or setting unrealistic deadlines her behaviour is unacceptable. I think you need to address that before dealing with the work management side of things. I would document the behaviours which need addressing with specific examples and have a meeting to discuss. I would try and get her to think about her reactions and whether she thought it was reasonable. As others have already said document everything. The difficulty is as soon as you start trying to performance manager her she will play the bullying card so you need to have the evidence watertight, good luck.

Read the OP's posts.

It doesn’t sound as if she could be any worse. What’s wasting @calmama‘s time is doing the work that her useless employee is failing to accomplish and then lying about.

Most of which the OP is doing if you’ve read her updates. The reason this employee isn’t looking for another job is because she knows she’s a lazy arse and is getting away with murder while gaslighting the OP.

Try reading the OP’s updates. How much leeway do you give a lazy employee before you say enough is enough ?

Read all of the OP's updates. The employee is clearly not pulling her weight.

I have read the OP's updates, and further upthread have recommended that this matter is referred to HR with a view to letting the employee go.

Does your employee have a contact that stipulates wfh. If not I would ask they were in the office every day.

if you do not give her tasks, how would she know what work to do? If no work is allocated, do they assume they have no work to do or is it a case they have other things they know to do?

I would involve your own manager and HR at this stage.

if they are frequently off work, what is work absence policy? I would ensure it is followed. In my job three absences in a rolling 12month period triggers absence procedure.

I am twisting myself into a pretzel trying to find ways to work with her yet according to several posters on the thread I’m a monster

Just be thankful you aren't managing some of them then! You actually sound lovely, but you cannot allow her to run the situation anymore.

"Red triggers her" so you stopped using it???

For goodness sake. Get using red again and ignore her stupidity.

Protected characteristics such as a health condition or disability do not come into play unless the employee has declared either before or subsequent to employment that they have such a health condition. And employers are not allowed to ask prospective or existing employees about this. It’s up to the employee - if they declare, and the disability/condition qualifies under the Equality Act 2010 they can then ask for reasonable adjustment under the Act. If they don’t know there is a health issue, the employer can’t offer support.

Why? Are you as lazy as the colleague then? Or easily "triggered"? 🙄

record everything. Every meeting take notes/ write a plan and get her to sign them after. Then at the next meeting record her excuses again get her to sign them as well. Keep building your case and fire her. She’s eventually going to formally accuse you of bullying etc so make sure you’re keeping bosses etc in the loop. Even worth asking their advice just to make them aware of the situation.

Realistically there are jobs that do require a lot of constant updates/ changing priorities etc so it’s providing your job is one of them I personally don’t see the issue detailing her tasks daily. Especially as it seems she’s obviously incompetent. How do you manage everyone else? Is it similar? It does sound like you’ve been trying everything you can to accommodate her. I can understand people struggling and I have always tried to help them when asked but people like her are just lazy and don’t want to work but will always play the victim 🤷‍♀️

Sounds like the problem is (a) that you are struggling not to react yourself to her being really reactive and full of drama and (b) that you are stuck on how to help her improve. It may be the case that she can't or won't improve and she can't or won't do the job. So what you actually need is to move to performance management and if need be, to managing her out.

This is very stressful and time-consuming to do, but worth it for somebody who is not actually able to do the job, for whatever reason.

You need buy-in from your own management and HR, you need to have crossed every i, and dotted every t, and everybody needs to be on the same page about how it will proceed. Once you have all this set up, the key thing is to stay calm through her various reactions to everything, cut meetings short when you need to if she is no longer able to participate constructively, log EVERYTHING, and keep your managers/HR up to date with where things are.

Companies should have processes in place for this. I don't know if you've ever gone through a similar process with somebody else, but once you're in the process, and have a roadmap for what to do, it usually gets a bit easier.

There is no suggestion that this employee is ND, and legally the OP can’t ask about any kind of health issue even if she suspects it. Why should she undergo this kind of training just to be able to deal with an employee who sounds more a pain in the arse than ND. This is a really offensive post.

Soul destroying!

The OP hasn’t actually shared this information so what’s your point ?

I had the impression from the OP’s updates that she’s micromanaging because the employee can’t be trusted to get on with the job and do everything allocated to her. How can you come at an employee from a position of trust, when they have proved over and over again that they simply can’t be trusted ?

shes so useless it won’t take long to performance manage her out but it really won’t be nice (speaking from experience). Grit your teeth, be prepared to be on the wrong end of a nonsense grievance, get your line manager fully briefed and on board and just crack on with the performance plan. She’ll be gone in a few months given she’s got less than two years service. Or go via the misconduct route with her unprofessional outbursts.

Being managed out and constructive dismissal are two different things. Most companies have a ‘managing out’ strategy for unsuitable employees. It’s performance based and perfectly legal. It definitely doesn’t involve making the employees’ life so difficult that they leave - which is what constructive dismissal means.

@Nowherenew how is this offensive? I’m neurodivergent and this sounds exactly like I was until prescribed Elvanse. Now I’m struggling to get Elvanse, I’m sliding back to this. The worse thing for me is being micromanaged and being dictated how to work. My executive function shuts down. Please feel free to chat with me, not tell me what I am or am not.

I worked with a woman like this once. She was awful - did no work, utterly corrosive in the team, shouted at me frequently and would then accuse me of shouting, lied constantly about having done stuff even when presented with evidence she hadn’t done it, complained about micromanaging if I asked her to do her job, if I left her to it, complained I didn’t support her enough - god she was awful. I put her on a support plan. She left. I did a happy jig!