How to deal with employee who always assumes malicious intent?

[ToClimb]

Looking for some advice. I have an employee who is very good at their job, can be relied upon and could go far in her career, however, she is becoming more and more unmanageable. She has always had a habit of being extremely detailed about things and becoming over involved. We manage contracts and sometimes it feels like she actually tries to manage the delivery of the contract. This means that she spends far too long doing simple tasks, so does half the workload of anyone else. But complains she has too much work and can't do any more.

When I try to work with her to talk about this, she gets defensive and has started to become more and more passive aggressive. It is starting to impact others. She rolls her eyes and huffs in meetings and I'm at the end of my tether with her.

Any ideas how to approach this. I am starting to dread working with her.

Is she neurodiverse and anxious as a result? You can tell her that the expectation is to get an x amount of work done by Y time and the reason she struggles is because she is checking other’s work, which is unnecessary. Does she need help to change her approach? Are there any difficulties trying to achieve change? You will have no alternative but ti put her on a PiP and if there is no improvement, she is not suited to the role

She sounds autistic to me. The attention to detail, rigid thinking, unable to see the impact on others and modify her behaviour in response. If so she could access 1:1 coaching through the access to work fund to help with this.

I think you need to be really blunt and clearly set out expectations. Follow up verbal conversations by email. Set out expectations in a clear bulleted list. “Do not check x work. This is not part of your job role. If there are mistakes they aren’t your responsibility to fix.” She needs to adjust her mindset as to what is her actual role and sounds like she isn’t there yet. Autistic people can be really rule-based. If she had an internal rule that her report shouldn’t contain any mistakes, she’ll find it really hard to overrule that. You need to explicitly say that others’ mistakes are ok.

If I were another member of your team and my work was being checked like that for no reason except to find fault with it, I'd think I was being bullied.

She has applied outside of this company. I am a very experienced manager. I have never had an employee in over 20 years who has refused to acknowledge people in a room.

This employee has openly admitted to applying for positions externally?

Yes, we encourage people to apply for roles to progress their careers

That’s rather bizarre
a “tiny” company that actively encourages employees to look for jobs outside their company, rather than channeling efforts on developing them.

how tiny is “tiny”

do you line manage others?

And you keep referring to her as “my” employee.

She isn’t. She was employed 3.5 years previous to you. By the company.

Others dread being in meetings or working with her..

how many “others” given the company is tiny?
and I am baffled that she’s been allowed to behave like this for half a decade unchecked