AIBU to formally tell HR I think new employee is too slow and potentially a liar?

[simbale]

I work closely with a new employee. They joined from another company and it was known that they didn’t really have the right experience for the job, but hoping they can learn fast.

This employee is a nice person, but they are just so slow. We have tight deadlines and she never wants to tell me an exact time she will finish something if I ask “when will X be done?”. She just says “hopefully by tomorrow” rather than “by 11am tomorrow”.

Recently I had to work really late to finish a work product because my boss was chasing me for it, but the new employee had sat on it because she didn’t know how to do it and was “busy”.

I recently found out that she has been telling another manager of my level that she couldn’t take on more work for him because she is super busy with my work. She told me the exact same thing the same day, that she couldn’t take on more work for me because she was super busy with his work.

I don’t know it, but it sounds like she is playing one off against the other to avoid work. AIBU to put this in formal feedback with HR?

I obviously don’t know for sure, and she seems very eager to learn when I have time to train her.

Training videos and presentations aren’t really proper training. Sorry OP.

videos and presentations are the support for actual physical 1:1 training and I’d feel pretty deflated if I’d only been given videos and presentations and 4 hours of 1:1.

much more effective training would be a solution.

you even say she’s eager to learn. Teach her! Some people need a bit more 1:1 than others. Doesn’t make them a bad employee

😂😂😂

4 hours in 3 MONTHS?

I train new recruits 4 hours a week at least. We get it techs who are on their first roles, I'm always teaching them...

YABU. Probably she just doesn’t have the experience yet to be able to predict accurately how long a job will take, and doesn’t want to give a precise time for completion that might prove wrong.

Unless she is sitting around doing nothing, I don’t think telling you or the other manager that she is too busy with the other's work to take on anything else is so terrible, or exactly a lie. She’s just trying to avoid blaming the person she’s speaking to at the time.

The key point is that you haven’t trained her yet, but are expecting her to work as if you had. (Apparently the excuse of being too busy is OK when you use it.)

The "responding within an hour" to emails is so unreasonable that I’m wondering whether your post is a reverse.

Your expectations of her replying in an hour and exact deadlines is too much.

Who is her line manager and when are appraisals normally planned? It does sound like she playing one against the other and getting away with doing very little work herself.

Cover your own arse OP, don’t let her drag you into this. I suggest you keep a diary of what is said, what work gets done, what work gets delayed or missed…..keep dates and times of all conversations.

With your appalling and unkind attitude she is likely to leave for something less stressful. Which means that you will have another person starting from scratch without even the 'benefit' of four hours per three months training. So you will be frustrated and in the same position you are now and will complain to HR - again. Way to gain a bad rep. Shape up and help this person or you are bound to repeat this cycle ad infinitum and eventually they will ask you to leave and you will be the new (slow) person at the mercy of someone else.

This. It’s for the line manager to address and give support.

I don’t understand what you mean when you say no line manager. How can you have an HR department but no line managers? Surely even a dotted line into someone. As others have said this isn’t an HR issue, it’s a line manager issue to deal with.

Really?

you come across as a bully OP. Try having more empathy and you will probably get more out of her. Her withdrawing is a tell tale sign.

haha beat me to it!!

This is ridiculous.

Also I work in HR and if you came to me with this problem I'd be telling you to fuck off tbh, it's a line management issue.

Demanding someone replies to your emails within an hour is micromanagement. I have several line reports and wouldn't dream of imposing that sort of stipulation on them.

You want her to respond to your emails in an hour? What if she is busy doing other things? You sound like a bully OP.

@simbale I don't want to add to the pile-on, but this comment struck me:

"I have spoken to her on multiple occasions about how she needs to be faster and improve her work."

I'm by no means a training/management experience, but in situations like this you can't just tell people over and over again, you need to try to understand why they aren't meeting expectations. And that often can't be done simply by asking people. You need to have a targeted conversation to try to tease it out. Only then can you put processes in place to help them improve

Coaching/mentoring/training is a two-way process. Just because she didn't "get" the processes you showed her in the four hours of training, that is not necessarily her fault. As the trainer you need to adapt your approach to suit whomever you are training. This may not be your responsibility in this situation, but it is someone's responsibility.

Edited for spelling.

I don't get this....neither of you has a line manager or supervisor of any kind?

Have you found out more about the "reasonable adjustments"? There is nothing more annoying than one person being told it's OK to do something one way by HR or higher management, then along comes someone else saying "that's not how you do it".

OP, your interactions on here have not put you in a good light. I get that it's frustrating when a new member of the team slows everything down, but you honestly don't sound very approachable or helpful.

And the comment about replying to your emails within one hour is ridiculous. If she is busy getting on with the task in hand, she won't necessarily see your emails. If she is now worried about missing an email from you, she won't be able to concentrate fully on the task.

I am not saying she is a perfect new employee, but you aren't coming across as a great colleague yourself.

Who is her direct manager? I had this with someone. The role involved her being in one team, but doing work for mine. Every time I asked her to do something, she'd say that her manager had her doing something else so I'd end up giving the task to someone else.
This went on for a few months until I was chatting to her manager at the coffee machine and said we probably needed to talk about how we were allocating that particular workload since 'Jane' was doing so much other stuff.
He just looked at me and said that he thought all Jane's time was spent on my tasks.
Turned out she'd been doing fuck all for months. We were in the office too, not WFH, so I have no clue what she was doing while she was sitting there.
Between us, we gave her actual work to do and she resigned about a week later absolutely furious because she was being asked to do work 'outside her role'.
It saved us going through the process of booting her.
Start with her manager and make sure she has clear lines as to what she's supposed to be doing, but it might be between the managers to decide where to go next with her

It sounds like a chaotic environment. There are no clear lines of management or accountability. The new person is being given work from more than one source and there’s no coordination. If she’s changed from chatty to withdrawn that could be because you’re giving her criticism but no productive feedback. Are you her manager or a colleague? Who’s her direct boss? They should be looking at her workload and helping her prioritise. Just saying that she’s too slow is stressing her without helping. Someone needs to monitor it all much more closely and assess whether it’s organisational or whether she’s personally finding it too difficult.

You have employed someone without the right experience. Why have you struggled to recruit someone more suitable for the job? Is it low pay or would a more experienced person not want to do it for some reason? You sound like you are bullying her and want to bully her out. Be careful what you wish for. The next person might need even more support and that is not something your company is capable of providing.

Maybe you should report to HR, their first question would be what support has she been given, and it's evident that she's had almost none, and no line manager. Is telepathy a key skill on the person spec in your Company? Because sounds as if it should be.

Jesus Christ, you sound like a nightmare to work for! Don’t worry she’s probably looking for a new job.

I would think the problem here is management not her!

I really feel for her!

When you say less than a year you actually mean three months don’t you? I wonder how good you were at the job after three months, especially if you had a Little Miss Deadline breathing down your neck and refusing to make time to offer you the training you need.

Honestly it sounds like you are ruthless and demanding. Saying faster, faster, faster when she is still getting to grips with the work. How can she be doing a task faster yet also told she has to check and respond to multiple emails several times an hour and also be getting work from multiple people/streams who don’t check how much is coming from each stream?

No wonder she is withdrawn.

Sounds like amateur hour.
Honestly, I made a huge mistake in the job I’m in, had been given a completely different impression of the oversight and the actual role.
I’ve had no induction , ‘we’d rather people learn in the job’ , and no training .

i have a contradictory manager who is also a petty micro manager but only on things that are unimportant.

he has been there for years but is not actually experienced or skilled in my work so his instructions rarely make sense so I’ve stopped asking for guidance.

and he’s dishonest, but we don’t have hr, we have an umbrella company who I believed to offer that structure and I thought they were far more involved or interested than they actually are.
if I could have walked out months ago I would have.

the job market is poor where I am and I’m searching all the time.
I actually do a very good job considering all the barriers but I am despondent and it’s affected my mental health hugely.

to cut that long story short, it sounds like the new employee is in the wrong job with minimal support and I hope she is applying for new roles as this sounds like a shit show.

I worked in a very high pressure environment, if you weren't fully up to speed and taking responsibility within a month you were out- no question, that's a reasonable timescale I think.