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?

You sound just like my old manager. I ended up being off sick with stress and then left. Yes you are micromanaging and you know it. You sound like the worse kind of boss.

Have you actually bothered to read all of the OP's posts?

The employee is lazy, shouts at her boss and doesn't complete the tasks she has been asked to do.

Click on See All on the OP's first post and you can read just why she has to "micromanage" this employee.

Did you also accomplish exactly zero work every single day in that job? If so maybe this is you. The woman the op is managing can barely send an email. Sometimes she lies she has, but she never did. She literally does no work at all.

She had responsibility to manage her work for a couple of weeks when she first started working for OP, and she did nothing. What exactly do you imagine would have changed if OP had continued to leave her with the responsibility for managing her own work?

I would set her weekly tasks - not colour coded, and you manage the results of her work maybe 4 weekly. This would give her a chance to show you how she has prioritised and completed tasks.
And remember to praise her work, attitude when called for and at your monthly meeting.
Positive reinforcement works well in motivating people at work.

Good luck.

If the job requires something to be ordered for a presentation in, say, two weeks' time, then four weekly management would be disastrous. This person had every chance to show OP how she had prioritised and completed tasks and basically she did fuck all. If you don't like being told exactly what to do, the way to deal with it is to do your work very efficiently to show you can be trusted - not to ignore instructions and lie about it when asked.

That is dangerously close to how you treat a toddler though isn't it? There has to be a limit to how people facilitate bedding in. Sometimes, employees are just hopeless. This particular person sounds v difficult anyway, with the explosions.

Do you have a manager to support you with this? If the suggestions don't work I'd start dismissal process. You can't be getting yelled at for doing your job.

But she should be trying her best to get the tasks done whatever the style of management. She clearly isn’t doing that.

OMG she would be GONE if she was my employee. She isn’t doing her job even with A LOT of support from you (far more than any grown adult should require). She needs to go.

Personally I wouldn't mind being managed like this as it's clear what you want doing and when. However if I strongly disagreed with your priorities I would resent the interference. For example, I'm a housekeeper on a dementia unit and my boss insisted I spent the whole day deep cleaning 15 rooms, despite this leaving the rooms, and in particular the beds, of incontinent residents. As she was with me I couldn't adapt the day so left work feeling very irritated. So, are you sure she doesn't just have different opinions. That said, we do have people on our team who would really benefit from that level of supervision!

@thatsnotmywean. I'd hate to have you as an employee if you think work avoidance, insubordination, lying, having raging outbursts and then asking for a clean slate, using zero initiative and putting no effort in is an acceptable way to draw a salary. This employee is getting money for nothing.

@Direstraightsagain. You haven't read all of OPs posts have you? The colours were for each project and everyone used them and its daily tasks, as work arises and not daily reminders. The colours have since been abandoned. The employee has been asked about task progress and has been found on more than one occasion to have lied. Exploding at your manager, then asking for a clean slate and going off sick for days afterwards is not acceptable behaviour.

RAG (Red, Amber, Green) is a very common tool used to rank tasks and projects.

It is micro managing. My boss does this and if I don’t get tasks done on her timeframe, despite trying to do my job she just does them their self. I do try and negotiate a realistic timeframe, but everything is a priority to her. So you get a vicious circle that I do what I can and assume she will do the rest. I also can’t do it to her standards apparently. You just give up as you can’t please people.

it’s not how I want to be at work, but its how it has to be till I can leave. It’s the whole team she does this to. We do what we can and accept she thinks we are all crap.

the manager before us had a weekly meeting and we had a work plan with realistic timelines and priorities and responsibilities. It worked. We were successful and a high performing team. Now we are not as there is so much micromanaging and meeting about meetings we have no time to do anything.

she tried to manage the teams performance. Big bosses realised it was my manager causing the problem and is getting g performance managed. So we are under more micro managing. The unhappy circle continued.

My manager asked me to organise the team recently as she said no one listens to her. So work plan came back with weekly task allocations and work stream responsibilities. It worked till she didn’t follow the plan and micromanaging resumed.

op you way is not working. Or you need to formally manage performance. Or relax and set her a weekly work plan.

Hello fellow Business Analyst 🖐.
Can't imagine saying to my PM stop giving me deadlines you're stressing me out, I'd be managed out the door, maybe even micro managed out the door 😁

It's really not. It's a legit way of removing people who are not up the job.

I strongly advise you to remove this post. It could get you in an awful lot of trouble. I’m a senior HR professional in a large corporate and this could hit you hard if the person you’re complaining about brought this to us. As a manager you need to follow the company processes, including performance management. This is gaslighting.

@Pherianis this person a business analyst? There are many different roles in a business, as you’ll know. Different skill sets and personality types are required for each.

the BA and BD role requires a lot of resilience. Not everyone has this. It’s also well compensated compared to other roles.

Nowhere in this conversation has OP outlined the role or the skills experience required to do it or if she was responsible for hiring. There could be a miss match. There is certainly a conflict. It’s highly unprofessional of the OP to come to Mumsnet. Companies have processes for cases such as this. This is not one of them.

Read the OP's updates @topgirlalways

If this ever happens, you can make a constructive dismissal claim against the business.

Have you asked her what she needs to help her achieve these results? This isn’t handholding. It’s a manager’s way of establishing the root cause of the issue eg confidence vs lazy or lazy vs confidence. You can then work with HR to put an official performance management process in place. That fact you’ve come to Mumsnet leaves me with the gut feel you’re doing a lot of backstabbing in the workplace. If this is do, this could backfire on you. This MN approach is very girl-gang.

You’d have to prove it first. Good luck with that.

Have you escalated this to your manager? What is their advice?

If it hasn’t reached two years yet I’d get rid and get a new one in who isn’t so work shy. People wonder why the productivity in this country is so low they should see this thread as to why