NHS Band 4 new recruit very disappointing. Feeling cheated.

[punnetofstrawberries]

I'm an NHS manager of a Band 4 member of staff. She's been in post for almost 6 months and I'm at my wits end!
She came from a long-standing Band 4 role within same Trust and was excellent at interview. Went over and above with the answers given, also very professional in image. References fine too.
I'm really struggling with her now that she's in post. Issues include:
Doesn't have a clue about Excel formulas
Needs help setting her out of office
Takes too long to action tasks marked urgent
Can't get to grips with the Trust's reporting software
Messes up interpreter bookings (gets dates/times/languages mixed up)
Struggles with simple IT issues
Makes a mess of simple stationary orders
Needs help with invoicing
Her desk is so badly organised, piles of paperwork everywhere in no order.
After 6 months in post I would have expected any initial training needs to be sorted. I've sent her to complete as much training as is available. She's always keen and enthusiastic about training and developing but this all seems to be hot air tbh. In practice she's scatty, disorganised and not really of the professional calibre I'd expect for a Band 4 member of staff.
She's the sole Admin person (Admin Lead) for my small team. The rest of us are all clinical staff but unfortunately a lot of my time is spent rectifying her mistakes and incompetence.
In personal terms she's lovely, very polite and cheerful. It's just that in terms of professional experience and skills she's not quite at the Band 4 expected standards.
No probation period in the Trust, so once someone is "in" then it can be extremely hard to get them "out".
I just can't help feeling cheated by this lady. She was superb at interview and flew me and the other interviewer away. Now that we see the "real" her I'm worried. Some of her mistakes have cost a lot of money from our budget (ie: wrong interpreter bookings and printing the wrong posters/leaflets) and so on.
What can I do?

Sorry, I meant she came from a longstanding Band 3 role (NOT band 4).

Performance review I would have thought.

Do you have regular 1:1s? Does she have specific objectives to work towards? Does she know she needs to get better at her job essentially?

Never heard of not having a probation period before! I think you’ll need to go through the official performance management procedure if she’s not performing in so many areas. It should be supportive and allow her to access training, some of those things could be fixed reasonably easily. How are the interpreter bookings given to her? Could that process be made more straightforward?

You need to have a 1:1 with her, and get an admin manager involved.

I'd be very tempted to tell her she's scatty disorganised and not the calibre you were expecting from her interview. Then list the errors made so far and see if she's prepared to get a grip or not.

Have you told her all this? What are you doing to support her in being more organised/performing better. Are you giving her clear instructions?

As my line manager was told when she was moaning at a management meeting about how crap all her team were (nice!) - “you interviewed them, you employed them, you need to sort it”

I've been doing my best to support her. It's at the informal action plan stage. We meet every couple of weeks to "tick off" things she says she now feels confident in. Painfully simple things though. Feels like spoon feeding a baby tbh. We also have a lot of informal chats about her role.
Feels like I'm dealing with school-leaver who is learning all about Admin duties and tasks for the first time rather than a mature lady in her 40s who has worked in other admin roles previously. She was in NHS Band 3 role for about 4 years before joining my team. I've even contacted her previous manager to see whether there's anything going on behind the scenes with this lady but previous manager not aware of anything. They never had any issues with her performance.

I’m glad to hear that - in my situation, we all just got bitched about all over the company but they never actually spoke directly to us and said ‘I’m unhappy with x, y and z - I need you to do 1, 2 and 3 instead to sort things’ . So we were just left walking on eggshells the whole time and even more prone to making mistakes. It was awful.

I would have wanted clear directions on where I was going wrong, a clear plan to identify gaps in my knowledge and how to solve that. Can you link her up with an equivalent in another team that could be a mentor? I’d have also really welcomed an opportunity to say if there was anything I would find helpful in how the work was being delivered to me (better instructions, written down processes to refer to) and an offer for refresher training.

(Disclaimer - I’ve never worked in the NHS so don’t know how practical these suggestions would be)

The problems she's making are just basic things any admin officer should be able to do, especially as,she already held a similar role. I guess the nhs has processes to handle this but after all the training and chances you've given her, in reality she's not going to improve, is she? I'd put her on the route to being sacked for not being competent.

I've just looked up the salary for NHS Band 4. It's £22k. That's a basic, entry level salary which is not a huge amount more than minimum wage. If the NHS want to attract a higher calibre of staff, they'll need to pay more money!!!

Speak to HR for advice and support and follow the Trust's managing poor performance/ capability policy (or whatever they call it in the nhs!).

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The thing is, it’s notoriously difficult to get rid of staff in the NHS. They tend to be moved from job to job. So is it a case of being moved on, or is there something new affecting her such as menopause symptoms or elderly relatives/teens ?

I’ve been in the same place with band 4 staff this year
the first one was good at interview but then performed poorly, played the victim when pulled up. Extended her probation and she resigned when she knew the writing was on the wall. This week I’m terminating her replacement who is fortunately a locum.
Do you have a capacity and capability policy to guide you OP?
i feel your pain, it’s so frustrating.

Start with regular fortnightly supervisions and clear targets. Flag your concern about disorganisation and ask her to work out some strategies to rapidly improve things. It might mean getting a well functioning admin lead to explain their systems to her?