Awkward direct report

[Ywnaged]

I have a chap in my team who has been with the company for over a decade. My contract ends at Xmas.

Our r’ship started off very friendly but I was warned by others that he was very boundary-d about working hours i.e. never works past 5pm etc. No problem, I have a lot of respect for people who manage their time and have families - like me!

In the past six months he’s taken a load of sick leave. All illnesses are unrelated fwiw but it does appear like him being checked out. We are fully remote so it’s not like we’re all having to commute to an office. This combined with a bit of a lacustre attitude has given me pause.

Following a large project going wrong whilst he was on another sick day, I had to pull him up - nicely - on what could have gone better. I’m now getting really clipped and rude emails in response to my questions about his other projects. I’ve given this person plenty of chances to ask for support when 1on1 and always get the same response ‘I’m fine. Everything’s ok’. I am forever asking about him on a personal level to gain some warmth but get the same stock responses.

Today I find out he’s raised a grievance against me! My boss is firmly on my side and has told me to rise above it/that it’s definitely on my direct report but this has really shaken me.

Question is, with 5 months left, what do I do? Confront? Ignore? Continue to play nice? Roll out our policy?

Grateful for the wisdom of mumsnetters.

I'd start by 'kidnapping' his budgie and demand a ransome of grievance withdrawal and £150 quid or the bird gets it! 😉

I'd counter grievance his lack of committment.

What is the substance of his grievance against you? It's difficult because the working relationship you have has clearly soured, and he's not doing anything to get it back on track. He likely knows you are going, and is counting down until you leave rather than make the effort to fix things.

With the sickness absence, do you have a company policy on this, and have you been following it? With the project going wrong, is that something he did, or could have been avoided by him doing something? Again, do you have a company policy on performance, and are you following it?

Tone and stock responses are annoying but you can't make someone be nicer I guess, so I wouldn't prioritise that as an issue at the moment. What I would say is it shouldn't matter whether you have one month, five months or five years left, you need to manage this person within the rules your company sets out in their policies. Ultimately someone else is going to have to step in and manage this person when you leave, I assume, and whatever you do now can set a precedent that the next manager will then have to deal with/undo if you don't manage this person correctly now. Make sure your boss is on side with whatever strategy you want to implement, and make sure you have read your company's employment policies carefully.

Personally I would probably want to get him on the phone and have a decent chat. Make it clear I'm not out to get him, but I'm concerned about the absence and the performance over this project, and that I'm not getting enough feedback from him on where he is with other projects. Frame it in a way to say 'how do we solve this, and move forward' and give him the chance to contribute to that discussion, before you move to anything more formal. Document the conversation and any agreed plans afterwards, and make sure your boss gets a copy too. Follow up on whatever actions you agree. if that doesn't work, you can look towards your performance policy to see where to go next.

Depending on the nature of the grievance I would gather together evidence of his performance and the steps you were taking in order to improve it. Document where the projects went wrong and how you supported him to rectify them. Also look at whether his sickness days off would be considered under company policy (check with HR). The thing to remember is that HR is there to protect the company, not the employees. If a grievance is raised they have to investigate it, so make sure you demonstrate that everything you did was within company policy. I wouldn’t want to leave a company with a grievance hanging over me.

Thanks for your replies!

So his repeat sickness has triggered a warning on the HR system for an informal discussion. However things became tricky between us in the interim so I haven’t yet approached the absence issue. It’s made worse by the fact his two previous managers clearly didn’t address the absence either (I’ve gone back and can see repeat sickness instances going back to 2017-18). No paper trail to suggest any actions were taken.

His grievance was that I’m ‘aggressive’ which isn’t a behaviour me or my boss recognise. He intended to take it further but I think my boss persuaded him against it. He actually dropped me an email to ask if I’d be open to meeting for a coffee which looked like an olive branch of sorts.

i think he’s been there for so long that he has bent every rule in the book and people - including me! - are now a little afraid of redressing it. Plus he has a tendency to cite ambiguous family health problems which is another contributing factor to his absences… ie 3 days off the other week because of a family emergency

@katmarie everything you have said makes
total sense. The project was salvaged and we had what I thought was a constructive conversation about what could work better next time. I was led to think we had moved on from that.

The issue I now have is the attitude he has displayed towards me since, his recurring absence and the lack of conscientiousness that has led to me not tasking him with anything in fear of being whinged at. But clearly he’s aggrieved enough by me already!