New employee (Gen Z} doesn’t want to meet in person

[outofofficeon]

I took on a graduate for a new position, she’d been job hunting for a few years, I felt good about giving her a hand up into a great career.
She lives about an hour away so works remotely. She bright and polite and reliable and a good member of the team.

The problem I have is that she doesn’t want to visit the office in person or meet her colleagues in person, I offered to put her up in a nice hotel and pay travel costs so that she could spend a few days with us in person. She declined. My latest issue is that she doesn’t put her camera on when we are communicating at work as part of daily work or chats. I understand she might not be very confident but I think that you have to get out of the house / your comfort zone if you want a career.

im not sure what to do- any advice oh wise ladies.

People becoming more snd more atomised isnt s good thing. Why do you think we were born with movable features and body language ability ....so that we can communicate. We're not robots yet.....although some prople on here sound like they'd prefer it if we were.

It doesn't need to be in a contract to have a camera on. I work fully remote and senior leaders often start company wide meetings by saying 'polite reminder that we are a cameras on business' and then wait in silence until everyone's camera is on. If not they will call out individuals and directly say 'Sally could you pop your camera on please and then we'll get started'. It's a sure fire to make sure it doesn't happen again 😅

Pick your battles and manage properly. Do your job better so she doesnt have to do what you cant manage.

What on earth!?

I've worked fully remotely for over 20 years with different teams for different companies. It is hard to operate remote working successfully and requires more effort than managing a co-located team. I've seen it work best when the team meet in person for 3-4 days at least every 6 months, and when remote, always have cameras on. In person meet ups should include some nice things to do together, decided by the group.

In one team, we had a "bad hair day" pass which meant you could leave your camera off, but were expected/allowed to do this once or twice in a year. Most of us just got used to being comfortable on camera with our bad hair 😁. It takes time but observing the rules, being professional and applying good manners are especially important for remote working.

Your graduate is very lucky to have the opportunity, and if she doesn't wish to follow the rules that make the remote working possible, she could always apply for another job but I doubt she will get a position that is is fully remote so easily again.

Are you the recruit the OP is concerned about, @BoredZelda ? You seem to have all the traits. Unless you're on the phone and neither of you can see each other, 95% of people find it both rude and disconcerting to be visible themselves but talking to a blank screen.

If you're someone who doesn't 'do' people then why on earth would you accept a job that requires close involvement with a team or people all working in the 'people' business?

Ultimately if productivity is falling it’s a management issue. OP seems to think she is doing this employee a favour, so very generously offering her an opportunity and a career. She is expecting gratitude and fawning.

If there is a contractual requirement and /or policy around what this employee is doing then a good manager will have briefed them on it when they joined the company. Instead, she has heaped a bunch of her own unwritten and unspoken expectations on a new member of staff and is blaming their generation for her own failings. It isn’t hard to see why the team hasn’t “bonded”. I dare say she hasn’t been quiet about her thoughts on the new member of staff when talking to other team members.

I think it,'s suspicious that this employee had been looking round for a job for years. Sounds like she's someone who can't communicate properly. Maybe autistic. Which is absolutely fine if she is up front about it, but just being stubborn won't get her anywhere.

I hate this remote stuff. There are soooooooooooo many people who conveniently work from home Mondays and Fridays...I think it's fine to a certain extent but I also believe a lot of people are taking the pee. There's a new word - mousedodger.

Ahh of course! Anyone dissenting from the OP’s narrative must be the subject of their post.

You have no idea what my traits are. What I do have is over 30 years of experience in a wide variety of businesses and office settings which I’ve seen evolving and improving. I currently run a team of mixed ages and abilities, who manage quite well to work together. I meet staff where they are rather than expecting them to be where I am. I engage with them to deliver what the team needs, in a way that suits them. That way I get the best out of them. I consistently have the top performing team, and have people from other teams wanting to join mine. What I’d never do is hire someone letting them believe they were getting one thing, then bait and switch when they take the job, insisting they should be grateful I gave them the job in the first place.

If a job requires you to be around “people” and is a “people” business, that should be part of the brief when a job is offered. And let’s not pretend that someone who isn’t great for an office setting can’t also be very good at dealing with clients.

It's a video meeting. It's not the same as a phone call...

It may be very different where you work but in my field (professional services) it's expected to have your camera on unless there's a good reason. It's seen as rude because it often means the person whose camera is off isn't paying attention.

100 per cent this - I get invited to many ridicules meetings, have to be seen to be going but i make so little contribution, hardly anyone has their camera on, i then am trying to do the rest of my work while one ear listens to it. I also work remotely with only going into the office one day a week - i have an 4 hour round commute and even on that one day i bloody hate the drive part, my body aches by time get to office, more likely be a crash aswell causing me to have to go back roads so like a bloody briar when in. There is nothing wrong with my performance and productivity, i am meeting all requests and deadlines no issues. I am often told i do alot of hidden work , work that keeps the place running that people don't realise needs to be done.

Is your issue that she wants to work a bit differently and that you are so used to doing it your way you cant see this working ?
If she is meeting deadlines and performing well then I don't see an issue with her not wanting to visit the office unless it directly impacts her work which I'm presuming it does not as she was hired for remote work?
Take a step back and look at differently and address what is the real issue, you are just uncomfortable with this different way of working and cant accept a new way of working

But OP is not asking her to visit clients or attend training at another venue.

Someone working in the office would be in the office surely. How is that not different to someone contracted to work from home?

I also think OP's suggestion that she would pay for travel and "a nice hotel" misses the point. People contracted to work in the office presumably stay at home each night. Being expected to come into the office if you are contracted to work at home is an inconvenience, even worse if it means having to sleep in a strange bed away from home. Not everyone sees staying in a hotel as an exciting treat, no matter how nice the hotel. If your work requires travel then that is expected. OP's original post did not suggest that this is the case.

@Doteycat

there IS a need for cameras. It’s terrible doing training or a meeting or whatever talking to blank screens. Cameras on make it way more interactive.

A jobseeker or employee has no obligation either legally or morally to share their medical history with a prospective employer.

There are any number of reasons a person has been looking for a job for a couple of years, especially a graduate. That doesn’t mean they have been rejected dozens of times. I’ve just taken someone on who graduated 3 years ago. She lives with her parents so doesn’t need to work to pay for a roof over her head. She has travelled extensively, funding that by taking on freelance tutoring work. She applied to a few places on graduation but didn’t want something too corporate. By that time most places taking graduates had filled their positions so she did something different for a while until she found the type of place she wanted to work. She heard we were hiring and as she had known me from some lectures I gave in her 3rd year at Uni, approached me for a graduate position.

I know from the learning profile she had at uni that she is autistic, we have access to this information as lecturers so we can make sure they have the right accommodations. My bosses have no idea, she never raised it with them. I haven’t spoken to her about it either because as her team leader it is none of my damned business. She isn’t brilliant at communicating in large group settings like meetings, so I don’t put her in that position. If it were necessary for her to do that right now, we’d work on getting her there. That she hasn’t felt it necessary to share her diagnosis with us doesn’t mean she is stubborn. It means she has spent her life understanding what it means to share it, and working out her own strategies to deal with it. Given how many people you see on here, and elsewhere deciding there is no such thing as autism and that people are using it to excuse their own shortcomings, I can quite understand why someone wouldn’t share it. My daughter is autistic and I would encourage her not to share it with potential employers either.

I would be doing what I could to legally terminate her contract if she refuses to come in at all and turn her camera on

I agree, since Covid everyone thinks they can"wfh" jiggling a mouse every half hour while walking dog/ taking kids to school/ pegging washing out etc etc time for everyone to get back to work now.

Contract states remote working but doesn’t mandate cameras on,

That's a shame.

Get someone grown up to draft it next time. It was mandatory when I was setting up remote working 15 years ago for my employer ( I was working on the tech side with the HR bods),.

Warning then end her probationary period. Anyone this tricksy is going to be an ongoing nightmare.

I’m also in professional services. Some have cameras on, some have them off. It makes absolutely no difference.

It is exactly the same as a phone call or teleconference. You can’t tell if someone is paying attention then either. That you have decided it means they aren’t paying attention when cameras are off, doesn’t make it fact. I might have turned my camera off because my dog has decided to clamber on my knee for cuddles. I can still pay attention to a meeting. I might decide to turn it off because sometimes to visualise what people are talking about, I prefer to lean back and close my eyes if my vision isn’t great that day. I’m still paying attention but it looks like I’m asleep. And, the reality is other than when meeting with one or two people, there are some parts of the meeting where my input/attention is not required, so I take my headset and laptop and make a cup of tea, just as I would get up at an in-person meeting and get a coffee. None of that it rude, but you have decided it is.

Tell her to put her bloody camera on. If she refuses, you've got one you need to through back into the sea.

Whilst it seems unlikely you can 'force' her into coming in for team events, she appears to have little interest in being part of the team. Hopefully here probation period is t up and you can let her go at the end of it and pick better next time

I have had issue with training groups who had no camera on. It is so hard to keep talking without feedback. I could not tell if the group was appearing to understand the content. My career is in communication - the 80% visual point is supported in research.

I used to wonder how many were wandering round Morrison’s and worst still how many were in the bathroom.

To come in to the office? If the manager is not happy then she doesn’t have to pass probation.

It’s really poor that she doesn’t want to make an effort and impress in a new job that she’s apparently waiting years for. I’d raise it in the next 1:1 and document it.

If you have team members doing that, it’s a management issue. If someone isn’t working and meeting deadlines, you manage that. If people can do this day after day and it isn’t showing up as a productivity drop, you have too many staff. I often take work calls whilst walking the dog. Job still gets done.

It sort of does when you're a newbie graduate, been struggling to get your first job and, you know, presumably want to be kept on after your probation period

Yes, broad sweeping statements about rudeness are just ridiculous. There's so very much variation when it comes to workplace norms and practice, sometimes even in the same sector. The most anyone can say is what's normal and expected in their personal experience.