Came back off maternity leave two months ago. I'm a manager in a department of five staff who do a fairly big range of jobs. When I went on mat leave there were four, three of those are still there and two are new. I've been managing the department for about two and a half years though I've been off for the last nine months.
I asked for the job descriptions and contracts of the two new people when I came back, just so I knew exactly what it was they were meant to be doing. One of them has a very odd one. He's on the same pay as me and line managed by my boss, but it seems I'm supposed to manage him day-to-day and organise his workflow and any minor problems. Which would probably be fine if he was even vaguely competent.
I pretty much ignored my mat cover when he (mat cover) said he (new staff member) was incompetent, because I wanted to find out both new staff members abilities for myself rather than rely on someone else's judgement. Turns out that if anything he underestimated just how crap this guy is at his job. He gives the impression of always being massively busy, but is usually doing things that aren't his job or the things that are lowest down his list of priorities. He also regularly comes in upwards of two hours late and is constantly trying to tell other staff members including me how to do our jobs. We have a regular weekly department meeting where we all catch up on what each other are doing, which is important as all the roles overlap a little, and he almost seems to avoid telling us what he's done that week.
I've tried all the usual management methods of asking him how he's coping and if there's anything he's struggling with, almost micro-managing his tasks, offering training, etc, but it's reached the point where normally I'd be beginning a formal competencies process. Fine, but I can't do that because I'm not actually his line manager. His line manager and my boss says he can't see a problem (there are many issues with my boss, which are probably their own thread...) and I should deal with it however.
I'm now not sure what else I can do. It's reached the stage where I spend way more time managing him than he does doing any useful work, and then have to pick up his urgent tasks myself because if they don't get done they impact on other people's work. The other four staff are lovely, but are getting mighty pissed off with the way he's causing hassle in what was previously a really nice place to work. One of them in particular keeps having her work stolen by the problem staff member, who either does it so badly she has to fix it or just hovers over her complaining about how she's doing it constantly.
I have no idea what else I can do.