New staff member has cocked up and I suspect it's due to lack of care rather than not understanding; is my plan for tomorrow morning okay?

[Hannah1984567]

Trying to be vague but am feeling sick with nerves, please can someone let me know if this path of action is reasonable?

Staff member new to my team but not to the field of work. They have done similar tasks before. Huge project due on Friday. The first two days of this week are being spent at a trade fair. They go to this every year, it's the highlight of their year. All other competent members of the team are going. Everyone in my team has enough work to occupy them until Friday's deadline, finishing their own bits of the project. We are cross-checking each other's work and I picked this person knowing they have form for lack of attention to detail.

I have spent 8 hours this weekend looking over their work (to put into context, checking other pieces has taken two). It's riddled with errors, gaps and not spotting crucial pieces of information. At one stage they had put "????" into a spreadsheet they assured me was complete, but is in fact half empty. I have trained them in their job,they also came with a huge amount of preexisting knowledge. I am forced to conclude they've spent a goodly proportion of the last four weeks fucking about (have been keeping half an eye on this, also knowing they have form). I have corrected most of the work in draft but do not have time to put it into the final document - doing this will take a few hours and I will be working overtime myself this week to cover the work I didn't do this weekend thanks to them.

I am proposing to pull them aside before tomorrow's fair starts and say that I've concerned, having looked through the document, that we need to have a review session about their calibre of work after Friday, that I have checked everything but there is some work to do and I don't have the time to finish it and then ask them how they want to resolve it. I am not allowed to ask people to work overtime, but realistically it's overtime or they leave the fair early. I think they are going to kick off and I know they filed a grievance against a previous manager. I don't think anyone else in my team should work overtime to cover for this person.

No one in HR will be in before I see this person and I need to tell them first thing so that they have a choice to leave early if that's what they want. Is it unreasonable to insist they finish their work even if it takes them outside contracted hours, when they have had less work than everyone else and everyone else has already finished to the agreed standard? I feel so sick,I've only been managing them for two months and they came with a huge hazard warning from the previous manager. The rest of my team are a dream!

[Hannah1984567]

Thanks for all your messages. They volunteered to go back to the office early before I'd even spoken to them (announced it to the team as I arrived), although i still had a quiet word, off the back of having sent them their work with my comments all over it on Sunday night. They had told me the work was complete (and the internal deadline was last week trib, which everyone else stuck to), although they are now denying this, saying there were always going to be 'tweaks'. There were so many people about I didn't have the chance to address it fully - my immediate concern is sending out the correct documentation on Friday. Next week I will schedule some time with them.

Interesting how many people have assumed it's a man when I have been so careful not to specify gender!

[tribpot]

Yes, solve the immediate crisis before tackling the underlying issue. Although you say the deadline was end of last week, it sounds as if everyone has their hands full with final revisions this week - was that deadline to have it ready for review? I would have made the deadline another week early in that case.

Sam (I've decided to give him/her a genderless name now to go with his/her carefully concealed identity) is taking the piss with the 'tweaks' comment. A half-empty spreadsheet supposedly complete is not a 'tweak'. Is this the same kind of crap Sam pulled in the previous team? Either way you really need a strategy to manage that doesn't end up Sam becoming ever more passive and you having to micro-manage every aspect of the work. Is it appropriate to put Sam on performance monitoring, have you spoken to your boss?

[IguanaTail]

I am prepared to bet my mortgage it's a man.