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?

I think that pretty much any job has some kind of schedule for directions for work - If you’re a nurse, for example you are told which patients you are mainly responsible for, what treatments they’re on and when they need giving etc. If you’re a baker you’re told or know what to make, how much, whether to restock in the day etc.
In this case it sounds as if the employee would be even worse if she were given tasks less frequently or not at all. The colour coding is a red herring.
I agree with those who say that HR should be involved, that if she hasn’t been there two years she should be out and, if she’s still in a probationary period, she clearly hasn’t passed it on grounds of productivity or cultural fit.

@ImCamembertTheBigCheese Yes, there is a pattern. She blows up at me, repents and asks for a clean slate, then calls in sick, returns several days later and acts like nothing happened. Rinse and repeat.

NB the unconditional positive regard thing is not forever, you give them every opportunity, they then go on a performance management plan where you still give unconditional positive regard but with clearly defined expectations for behaviour/performance, and if they then don't perform that's when you go down the warnings/dismissal route. Just realised I made it sound like you were always hoping for the best forever :-D

really?! 😁

marking tasks in red is fresh hell?! What planet are people living on that they really believe this? Fresh hell in a workplace is a description of those in enforced slavery doing manual labour for no money, or to pay a taskmaster the 'loan' they owe them - in terrible conditions where mainly children and women are exploited so that someone else makes a fortune. Fresh hell is not an accurate description for asking someone to actually do the work they are contracted to do and for which they are paid, to get up off their backside and put some effort in, and using a simple colour-coded system to show deadlines and mark tasks that are overdue... Presumably no tasks would ever end up red if she actually did them within the deadline!

you trust people or you don't - meaningless fluff...
what basis does the OP have to trust this person - all they have done is proved that they don't do any work! You are right that it needs addressing - the member of staff needs to start doing some work...

let me guess - all those on here who support the lazy member of staff are people who don't manage others / who would like to be paid to do no work / who are entitled enough to believe that they are owed a salary without having to work for it - and with no common sense to realise that life doesn't work like that, no society can afford to have people doing no work but drawing a salary... we have an endemic issue currently of lazy entitled people who want everything done for them and paid for by someone else - folks need to be reminded that you actually have to put some effort in to be paid!

and those on here supporting the OP (who is being far nicer and more tolerant than she should be) are people with experience of managing others and delivering the work the business pays the staff to do - or people working in teams who have a sense of honesty and a good work ethic and who deliver for their managers...

it is micromanaging, but I can see how you get into that if she is lazy/unable to prioritise own tasks - but sounds like it must be taking up way too much of your time for the benefit of what she actually does.

When setting deadlines, I usually let team understand where it falls in the bigger picture.

Involve HR, maybe a conversation about how she expects to be managed - and what you expect her to achieve - and an honest conversation about how the situation has deteriorated to where it has.

I feel your pain - once 'inherited' an assistant who routinely delayed what should have been daily tasks for three months.

How does this person cope with life if they can't manage basic tasks and get upset by the colour red...?

At this stage, I think get everything documented, make sure you have evidence of the performance concerns and go to HR for advice on performance management.

You are micro managing her. Being micro managed is incredibly stressful and people rarely [perform well under this kind of pressure.
She is right, you are bullying her.

How can you possibly be doing your work if you are spending so much time monitoring hers?

Why not monitor her less and do a bit of her work in the time you have freed up.

If she really can't cope with the job then that is the issue that needs to be tackled.

Id be insisting when you meet with her 1-1 that HR or your manager are present to safeguard your own wellbeing. Shouting at you is unacceptable

She keeps asking for a clean slate each time she abuses me and backtracks.

Irrespective of the rights and wrongs of your micro-management style (which is obviously what you're doing), why on earth are you tolerating this behaviour?

She's doing hee-haw and is repeatedly exploding at you. If next time she lamps you with the office stapler, are you going to let THAT slide too?

In her 1:1 give her targets and actions. Then you can measure this in the next 1:1. If she cannot do what the role requires then you need to start evidencing this in a plan. She can then also say why she has been unable to do them.

Are you glad you got all that off your chest? 😂

You're seriously saying that a manager expecting her reportee to do her job is 'bullying'?

This is madness, how do you react when she 'blows up'? Are you documenting these instances, I've had a lot of jobs and I can't imagine being allowed to get away with this behaviour at any of them. You aren't her verbal punching bag because she's useless at her job.

@akkakk I have lots of experience of managing people. I have also been micro managed.
If I was the employee I would have gone to HR about bullying. I have used colour coded project management tools, but having a manager do this for daily tasks is incredible overkill.
I also wonder how much work OP actually has to do if she can spend time micro managing to this ridiculous degree.
Management is a skill. You can't blame staff if your management is incredibly poor.

Clearly this employee has a volatile nature. This puts your company at risk of her going down the legal route if things don't go her way. As such, I would put everything in writing via email (or letters from HR) on topics related to with how you manage her and what her role and responsibilities are. That's just covering your own arse.

Next time she blows up at you, pull her to one side and explain that her behaviour was unprofessional and that it wasn't the first time this happened. Ignore the reason for her blowing up but do handle the behavioural aspect. Log this outburst in a spreadsheet along with how you handled it. Continue to do this.

Explain to her that these outbursts are not acceptable in the workplace and that as her Manager, you have a responsibility to ensure that your team behaves with the utmost of professionalism at all times. Any further abusive outbursts will result in a report to HR. Again, do this in writing.

Do escalate to HR regarding her behaviour and give them access to your spreadsheet log.

Start holding a Daily Standup meeting with the whole team, where everyone talks about what they did yesterday and what they'll be doing today (I may be wrong, but it looked like you're doing this already on an individual basis). This is a standard practice in a lot of businesses and is a good way of keeping in touch with everybody, especially when working from home. Use this time to hand out tasks. If your troublesome colleague hasn't done any work, it will be obvious here.

Weekly RAG status meetings are good, and can be a team-wide meeting.

In terms of work not being completed, this will be highlighted in the team-wide RAG status documents. You'll be able to convert each of these spreadsheets into charts that show tasks completed for each team member per week. This is effectively creating evidence of underperformance and overperformance when you look at individual outliers against everyone else in the team.

As others have said, keep holding this team member accountable, but use all the tools at your disposal to build a very watertight case in order to go to HR and get this employee on to a Performance Improvement Plan.

Daily priorities from you sounds horrific. I don't think that's how most teams operate but quite happy to be proved wrong. The only time this might happen would be if an employee was exceptionally lazy or incompetent or both. But sounds like the person could be both. Do other people you manage need this level of supervision?

You need to do some sort of PDR with her as if she's not doing her job or completing her tasks then she is not performing.

I think it's worth sitting her down, explaining to her why you're doing what you're doing, that you both/all as a team agreed on the structure of task allocation from the start and that she isn't performing simple tasks being set for her so you're having to do them. Explain to her that the "blowing up" stuff is totally unacceptable and this pattern of behaviour has to stop, what can we do to resolve it and make it so that I can communicate with you in a way that is acceptable to you.

You could either do it in a one-to-one "friendly but firm" way or call in HR and make it an official meeting, but I think the first option would be the way to go first.

She sounds absolutely shit. She is either not capable or unwilling to do the job. Get HR involved and sack her.

You might need to allow a disaster to occur.

If you keep picking up the pieces then no one will see an issue

@PTSDBarbiegirl This is exactly what I’m doing now. The colour coding (which I reiterate was for the projects, not individual team members) has long gone.

These are three simple dot points. Yet she accuses me of bullying. In the first point she “decided we didn’t need to post this”. On the second, she “couldn’t find the number”, then later “I’ve emailed many times and they won’t reply” (I got a reply myself within an hour). On the third, “I don’t know where to start.”

I'd hate to be managed like this - are there areas of responsibility you can give her that she needs to get done and top up with a few tasks as needed, easier if much of what she does is routine.

Oh and if you feel like taking punitive measures, you can always book her onto courses around professional behaviours, growth mindsets, getting organised etc.

Punish her with training! lol

That is not what was said. Not listening and misquoting people are also tactics that bullying managers use.

What was said was that micro managing people is bullying them. It was not said that expecting people to do their jobs (assuming the tasks and targets are reasonable) is bullying.

Time to start managing her out. It’s time consuming and painful but no more than having to deal with her current behaviour.