Instead of a written email (or in addition to), send him a voice recording. Then he can play and replay it to his heart’s content. I believe there are programs to facilitate this.
I second this and further add that the OP should not take such comments personally.
There are a lot of things which may seem obvious to someone setting a task that just aren’t to the recipient. Or maybe the writer wants to avoid a TL;DR email, when in fact a huge email is exactly what’s required.
As a former contractor, I’ve worked for many companies. Everywhere I’ve worked it’s been necessary to press for more information than people usually put in emails. Indeed, if I’ve ever had problems in my career, it’s because I tried to go off and implement something without having the dialogue, because the task as written seemed clear enough.
I suspect the guy never, ever reads anything on his own; has probably never actually read a book. It sounds like he doesn’t really comprehend the relationship between the written word and reality, that words don’t exist in a world of their own. Sure, he understands things once they’re verbalized, because speaking, to him, is normal. But reading and writing exist in a different realm, and until things are verbalized, they exist in some kind of alternate reality.
I don’t think there’s any way to change this.
Maybe he fancies you /
It sounds like the problem is more than just an inability to process written information. If that were the only problem, then you wouldn’t be emailing him at all, you’d be walking over and talking to him, or picking up the phone and speaking to him.
What is your working relationship to this guy? I’m assuming you aren’t his line manager, or you would have said so in your OP.
And how have you come to the conclusion that the problem is his inability to process written information? Is that something his line manager has told you, or is that your own assumption based on the interactions you’ve had with him so far?
I was thinking the same thing. Send the email first, then phone his voicemail (or use whatever app), outlining the steps in the email.
Count me as another “I don’t see the problem” person.
“Stan, attached is the procedure for tuning the widget machine. Let me know when there will be a good time to set up a meeting to walk through it.”
Sure it’s more work, but your at, you know, work.
If I tell one of my employees to do something and then five minutes later they come to me and say “so, what exactly did you want me to do” and I tell them the exact same thing and then they go and do it, that’s one thing. But if it happens every single time, that gets annoying, almost to the point that you’ll begin to resent them and start giving their work to someone else.
Just imagine if you had two employees, if you send Stan an email he’ll come and do what happens in the OP, if you send Pat the same email you’ll get a reply a few hours later 'all taken care of, boss, anything else you need me to do?"
Stan doesn’t want more clarification or help with some of the details, he basically just wants to read the email to you and have you say ‘yup, that’s it’, then several times during the project he’ll stop back in and say 'okay, I finished the first thing, you want me to do step 2 next, right, after step 1 I should do step 2?"
Yeah, Stan, step 2.
So a 2 hour project take 3 hours as he stops a bunch of times to track you down or waits for you to get off the phone just make sure he’s on track or maybe he thinks he’s kissing your ass by giving you updates along the way, who knows, but in the end it’s annoying and you know that if you gave the project to Pat, it would have been done by now and with a lot less interaction from you.
Well yeah, disabilities that require some form of accommodation are a hassle, but hopefully the impaired person can perform well enough in other respects to remain valuable.
I know the person in the OP has not been reported to have a diagnosed disability, but it makes sense to accommodate him in the most efficient way possible regardless. If these accommodations cost too much time, effort, or money to make him worth keeping around, then he could potentially be useful in a different role at the company or should be cut loose.
I am certain that a blind person who cannot read emails without assistance could still be a valuable employee in an industry that relies on written communication, so perhaps the real problem here is that there is no physical reason he cannot follow the emails so accepting that it’s a fact and developing work-arounds is not an obvious need.
I’d ask him point blank why I had to read the emails to him and what he thinks would help him quit wasting my time this way. I suppose the possibility that the emails are not clear exists, but then other recipients would have the same problem. Just in case, run some of the emails by a third party for review.
Lets just stop right there. Most people aren’t disabled, they’re just annoying. I don’t think it’s fair to disabled people to call someone that asks you to explain something seven times ‘disabled’. The employee I was talking about earlier most certainly wasn’t disabled. She was a bit of an attention seeker, she had a lot of problems with authority, she didn’t like to say no to customers or tell them they’re wrong and a handful of other things and one of the ways this manifested itself was that I could give her 5 things to do and after each thing she’d come back and say ‘what do you want me to do next’. Not disabled, just obnoxious.
Having said that, I agree with the other part of your post and mentioned it upthread, the OP might just have to bite the bullet and ask him why he needs everything explained to him two or three times. He might just need his confidence boosted ‘hey, you’re doing everything just fine, next time I send you an email, just do it and come get me when you’re done’. Or, he might just not be a good fit for where he is in the company if he just can’t comprehend what he’s supposed to be doing with out being babysat through the whole thing.
ETA and I think most people would be insulted if you called them disabled when they just have trouble understanding instructions. Back in high school when my ADHD was really in full swing I’d have trouble with that kind of stuff. Someone at work would give me a list of things to do and I’d get side tracked or forget half the list (until I started writing everything down). If someone labeled me as disabled, not as a joke but in a serious way, I’d probably go to the boss over it.
People just communicate using different styles and as someone trying to hand over a complex process it’s really in your best interests to learn and accommodate his preferred style, mostly because it will make your job easier.
even sven’s suggestion is pretty much what I expect you’ll come to, but I’ve found with most people a quick discussion about their preferred method of communication is easier than assuming so you might add that step on the front of the process.
I have multiple communication streams for reaching people at work, email, meetings, phone and a communicator app. Some of my team prefers meetings to be booked because they get less interruptions that way, other prefer email so they can slot things in as they have time etc, etc. Learning which resource prefers which communication method is key to me being able to get my project work completed in a timely manner without being the escalating bitch. One of my peers is known by this nickname. He’s an older man who is nearing retirement and has no patience with how others communicate, they must bend to his will.
Send him a voice mail instead of an E-mail. If he needs to hear your voice actually describing how you want things done, he has it. He can also refer back to the voice mail if he has a question, instead of bothering you.
I would have no patience whatsoever for that BS. If he can’t understand it, I’d tell him to ask his manager. If you’re his manager, fire him.
He might not be “illiterate”, just dyslexic, or something like it, so reading comprehension isn’t easy for him.
Or, he might be like me - raised by micromanagers who expected him to do everything perfectly and to check in with them at even the smallest question, rather than using his own judgement. Or maybe it was just his last boss or two who was like that.
Regardless, it’s a hard habit to break once you’ve got it, and if you think of that as the “normal” or “right” way to be then you might not realize you’re being annoying. (I didn’t until my current boss pointed out to me that I was asking him a lot more questions than my co-workers, and that it kept him from doing his job, and told me not to come to him to confirm that I was right but only when I genuinely didn’t know what to do.)
Let him know (nicely) that it’s a problem. He is probably genuinely unaware. And give him specific parameters as to when he should check in with you.
And if that dosen’t work, maybe he is just one of those people who performs best with real-time interactive communication.
In other words, he’s a kind of meat puppet.
He doesn’t report to me, we’re at the same level but work on different teams. The thing that we work together on is a task that I used to be responsible for, but was asked by management to transition over to him. That was more than two years ago and he still doesn’t feel confident enough with it to just run with it. I shouldn’t have to be supporting him at this level still.
This is the feeling I get from working with him, not anything that anybody has told me. I mean, if I write something, and he prints it and brings it to me and reads it out loud to me and then says “so what you’re saying here is…” seems to me that he needs to hear it out loud to verify his understanding.
Exactly. We’re supposed to be professionals at this level, not fast food line workers who need constant supervision. If you can’t do the slightest bit of problem solving yourself, you’re in the wrong job. I mean it’s as bad as showing him a different way to copy and unzip a file completely threw him for a loop. I had to not only show him the new way, but explain that it worked the same way as the other way and reassure him that it wouldn’t cause any problems. “Yes, Bob, you can just drag the file out of the email and put it directly into the folder. It works the same way as right clicking and choosing ‘save as’. Yeah, it works just fine, it won’t cause any problems down the line.”
(Unless of course he fat fingers or something and then comes back to me to help him again because it “didn’t work” and now he’s lost confidence some MORE! And that’s part of the problem with having this guy on this task: it IS problematic and needs someone who can problem-solve.)
This is what I figure, but makes me hesitant to go to his boss about it. If it’s his current boss who is micromanaging him to death and beats him up over every little mistake, what’s the reaction going to be when I tell her about this problem? I suspect he’ll just get another figurative beating, which won’t help him (or me) at all. From other things that people on his team have told me, this department is a bit micromanaged and not treated entirely as professionals like my team is.
BTW, I have tried telling him he’s doing just fine to bolster his confidence. I’ve also tried telling him to “try it and see”. That makes him really uncomfortable, which is why I think maybe he gets beat up for mistakes. He really does NOT want to try things to see if they work or not.
Bottom line is you’re now carrying this guy. For whatever reason he’s being tasked with work beyond his skill + confidence level. And you’re spending X hours a week helping him do his work instead of doing your own work.
Ask your boss if he/she agrees with you doing X hours less work per week on your projects to help the other department for free. Be guided by the answer.
This is it, I bet. And well said. The (older) HR lady at my old company was just like this. My employee tried to explain it to me, but didn’t succeed as well as panache45 did.
“Email is one thing, to her. The real world is another. Never the two shall meet.”
There is no “able” and “disabled” besides who people decide to put in which category, only varying degrees of ability. I don’t care if people feel insulted by that idea.
Of course I would not call the person who needs seven explanations disabled. I don’t want to have to explain that to him six more times!