Managing a older member of staff

[Lipitick]

I’ve recently inherited a failing team with the remit to turn them around in 6 months.

I’m 2 months in and around 70% of the team have shown improvement, green shoots are happening etc etc

My problem is with “Tina” (not her real name).

Tina has been with the team for over 30 years. From our 1-1s and feedback from previous managers it’s clear she stopped taking on new processes a good few years ago. She’s very reluctant to change anything even when shown the bigger picture or indeed processes become obsolete.

She can be quite vocal about ‘how things were’ 10-15 years ago. We didn’t have this issue when we did it on paper or when we had the card file etc (I’m really talking office processes from the 90s)

Shes easily distracted eg making a cup of tea takes 40 odd minutes. She wanders off for periods of time. 20/30 mins to turn on and set up in the morning.

Here is the problem - I have zero backup to performance manage. She’s just turned 70. She’s “part of the furniture” as it were. Nobody wants to tread on any kind of dodgy area with her due to her age. I haven’t asked about retirement obviously but she will tell you “they’ll have to carry me out in my coffin”

This afternoon another mistake came to light whereby she hadn’t followed process and actioned something within the timeframe agreed in the SOP. It’s going to cost to rectify. I asked her for 10 mins to discuss the issue, asked her if she was unclear what the process is, explained the ramifications and what it was now going to cost to fix it. She doesn’t seem to take it in or offer any solution or assurance - just a oh yes sorry forgot about that one (standard process she should be following BAU)

What do I do?!

1st verbal warning.

Set her workload to limit the damage she can do and be thankful you're not where she is yet.

Bloody tricky

It's baby steps, intensive baby steps

Document it

Can you give her a specific area to focus on rather than all the work streams?

Are you doing monthly supervisions with staff? Monthly supervisions plus weekly meetings with this lady, outlining successes and importantly clear set written targets to enable her to support the team. Ask her to outline how she will achieve each target, who she can gain support from and write down her commentary around each individual target. Email her the agreed plan. Next meeting review her progress. Ask her how she will resolve any incomplete targets. What steps will she take. Make suggestions. Meet to review again a week later.

Begin to feedback on problems and incorporate this into 1-1s. If no improvement then it's a performance plan regardless of how long she's been there.

Here is the problem - I have zero backup to performance manage from HR, from your line manager or both? This is an issue. Does it just relate to Tina or are they generally toothless?

Surely the key would be to find a way for her to be retired. There has got to be a process that could be followed to ensure this happens. It must be a "thing" that lots of businesses do.

So when someone is vocal ‘how things were’ 10-15 years ago' it could indicate they are not comfortable or confident in how things are done now. She sounds confused as to what is going on and her role so sticks to what she knows. The tea making etc could be an avoidance tactic.

So either limit her role to minimal damage/low impact or has anyone given her any training? Maybe when you have 1-1 ask her what she thinks the process(es) are and take it from there. But this is a tricky one tbh (and I worked with an engineer who preferred a pen and pencil to cad software).

This is a horrendous way to treat an elder person. Yes you will be rid of her if that's the result you want but you would always know that you were the one who caused the final chapter of her working life to be stressful and humiliating.

In any team everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. Very often these can't be measured by targets and appraisals. Some people perform better than others. Older people lose cognitive function and often have physical health problems that impact their capacity to work. Other people have physical disabilities or mental disabilities that mean there are aspects of work they struggle with. A decent manager can work with strengths across the team as a whole to compensate for individual gaps. Now that the government wants us all to work till we drop decent managers are also having to get their heads accommodating the limitations of older employees. And actually as decent humans that's what we should be aiming for anyway.

Coaching

A decent manager can work with strengths across the team as a whole to compensate for individual gaps.

I agree.

Find out what her strengths are - everyone has at least one thing they do really well in the workplace- highlight and emphasise that. Chances are she is feeling low in confidence and vulnerable. Don’t be the person who is tasked with “getting rid of her “ because nobody else wanted to - be alert to when someone else is loading the gun for you to fire

Agree with performance plan approach,think her age can be seen as irrelevant if she's making mistakes. You would also do a performance plan if she were in her 20s, 30s, etc etc,

She is obviously 🙄 getting on ,

by the sounds of it even with all the help and support in the world,
she would find it incredibly uphill steep climbing channel

I think 🤔 it she wants to stay there and does the usaul excuses of making a cup of tea for herself,
she seems good at doing that and comes natural to her by the looks of ut,
why not make cups of tea for everyone the whole workforce is there and get paid for it instead,

whilst at it, why couldn't she not doing be doing housekeeping, cleaning the workspace there, as she wants to be there until she drops dead,

at least she is being far more beneficial and useful than she is currently is at the moment L.o.l 😆

I think she would be better off working in charity retail shop or in a hospital delivering refreshments on a tea 🍵 trolleys for visitors and patients..

Agreed.

People like this who are stuck in their ways and refuse to change, regardless of age, are ultimately fucking useless - and as OP has discovered - a financial liability too.

Do what you have to in order to sack her. She's clearly out of her depth and is a waste of time.

Fuck her off. ASAP.

A decent manager can work with strengths across the team as a whole to compensate for individual gaps

It depends though, yes they do but if someone isn't following basic processes or doing much work then that's not playing to someone's strengths, it's other people increasing their workloads because someone is incompetent.

OP I'd ask your manager for guidance, regardless of age you should follow the same procedure for performance issues, but if they're happy to just let her carry on as is then highlight that you need additional resource to carry out x duty she should be doing and outline what she can actually do. Get their sign off or their support to actually deal with it. Of course she wants to stay if she isn't having to do the whole job!

@HelplessSoul
this mumsnet thread here
your mumsnet name is so apt L.o.l 😂

I agree totally with everything 🙌 you have said here,

Why waste 🗑 your time pussy footing around in this kind of situation, 🙄

she is walking talking liabilities.

allocate someone to work alongside her to check she is following the SOP
are there simple tasks she can do

Crikey what a nasty ageist thread this is turning into! All this talk of performance plans and managing out this woman saying you'd do it for a younger person so that makes it OK. Surely some adjustments for her age would be reasonable? It doesn't look like HR/Senior Management are putting the pressure on so why don't you discuss with your Line Manager what (if anything) they want you to do here.

you cant manage her out at 70 ffs

Why not?

She is a financial liability.

I would say sack her/manage her out even if she was 17.

Age has no bearing here 🙄

Aren’t there systems in place to manage this?
Seems odd you manage a team via randoms people on mumsnet giving you advice.

I was managing the workload of someone very similar. Luckily we both reported to another manager so I wasn't managing performance etc.

She was absolutely fine at a number of aspects of her job and was organised, efficient etc. But hated new processes. We introduced something she clearly did not grasp but also simply did not want to do. It took coaching, getting her to shadow me, handing over slowly and a lot of encouragement. She got there in the end - and it was part of her role so she had to. But my manager and me recognised she was struggling with it. It does sound from what you have written that perhaps this team has been badly managed so her mistakes might not have been picked up before where they should have been. I agree with a PP that identifying the areas she is good at at building her role around those would help.

I usually advocate for documented, supportive/coaching style performance management when it comes to failing staff in the first instance but it sounds as if there might be more going on in the background here, and TBH rightly or wrongly I’d feel uncomfortable being “the bad guy” so close to the end of someone’s working life, especially if years of managers before me had made no difference to the situation for whatever reason(s).

I’d find out first from your own management chain exactly what the expectation is here. Are they expecting you to turn the whole team around, or the rest of the team except Tina? If there’s no appetite to support you performance managing her, do they understand exactly how little work she’s doing/what kind of errors she’s making? Is there some agreement between Tina and them which you’re not currently privy to? (E.g. as she’s beyond state pension age, did she retire and return with certain conditions in her contract?) If, after explaining the situation factually they’re still not on board with performance management, do you have their support to recruit an additional member of staff to cover the work she’s not completing?

I agree with the PP that rising state retirement ages mean this is going to become an ever-increasing issue in workplaces, and if your bosses are turning a blind eye to Tina’s deficiencies in order to keep her out of poverty in retirement then I do respect them for that. But they also have to consider you and the rest of the team, so you need to know exactly what they expect from you w/r/t Tina before you can act.

Yes totally this.

You need more background on Tina and what the higher ups are expecting of you. You need to communicate that if they are wanting you to turn the team around, managing Tina is part of that. She could be the reason other managers have not been able to make big changes before.