The second letter to Dear Abby here concerns an employee whose performance has dropped off, causing all the coworkers to pick up the slack in order to get all the work done. The letter writer wants to know if this should be reported to the manager or (I presume) if it’ll come off as whining.
Hence my question to managers and supervisors: How would you view an employee who told you that everyone was having to pick up the slack for one non-contributing coworker? Is your first reaction to assume the messenger has a grudge? Or to confront the slacker? Or pay more attention to what’s going on before acting?
I hated my short stint in a boss role, so I really don’t know what I’d do, but I’m inclined to the third option - figure out what’s going on before doing anything. Also my reaction to the employee doing the “tattling” would probably depend on my view of that individual - someone who’s always whining would lack the credibility of a known high-performer.
And anecdotally, eons ago, I was doing some OT for a couple of weeks, and a coworker was also on OT - doing her taxes, reading magazines, doing her nails… I decided to approach the boss. I asked him if he’d want to know if someone was abusing overtime, and he said he would. Turns out he’d suspected my coworker, and when I confirmed his suspicions, he suspended her OT privileges. I have since realized that he was an exceptionally great boss, having had a few stinkers in there…
I ask the person who brought the matter to my attention for clarifying details re: what was observed to lead to this conclusion, thank him/her, and then investigate the matter myself before taking any action.
I would mind my own business and do my job. As a worker its none of my business as to how a coworker spends his time barring anything illegal. If the boss is any kind of boss then its his job to know what’s going on.
I think your anecdote hits on a crucial point. As a subordinate, it makes some sense to presume you’re “telling” your manager about the problem. You have no way of knowing otherwise. But from a hypothetical situation, it’s not fair to assume, albeit implicitly, that the manager is unaware of it.
If you want to stipulate that I’m hearing about this for the first time, I’d definitely be a little skeptical. But only because it’d be so unusual for me to be completely unaware of a problem.
In reality, I’d almost certainly be somewhat aware of the issue, and you’re either telling me something I already know, or adding specific details I might not have been aware of to a situation I already had on my radar. You probably would not have much impact unless you were bringing really specific new facts to light that I was completely unaware of.
But it is my business if I’m repeatedly having to do my job and my co-worker’s job. Long term, that could lead to my work suffering and me getting poor performance reviews.
I would listen to your concerns, observe closer for a few days, and if I determine you are right bring the person in for a personal session to discuss it. Depending on that session I would proceed to do something quantitative about it. Maybe they need a leave of absence, their work load is too much, they don’t know how to do their job, or maybe even free them up to be successful somewhere else.
I would meet with the other people that are supposedly “picking up the slack”. If they all concur, I would address the problem. I don’t need to observe it if several people are experiencing the same issues. Not to mention that it is amazing how fast and furious everyone works when I am around. I don’t get much information at all that way.
This made me giggle a bit. My last job before retirement was in an organization that had a lot of military folks in management positions. The higher up the chain of command, the less view of reality they had as to the day-to-day operations in each office.
For example, in our office, wise-ass comments flew thither and yon on occasion, but if the CO or XO came in, it was all silent except for the clicks of mice and keyboards. For all they knew, we were nose-to-the-grindstone for 8 solid hours a day.
**bot3 **- you mean if a coworker was slacking off and causing you more work, you still wouldn’t say anything?
It depends a lot on what type of office it is. Is work tagged with the names of those who do it? If so, no action is necessary, since the manager should have the data. Does the manager see this, or is the manager aloof? Can you tell who is working?
When I was a manager I visited enough that I pretty much knew what was going on, and I did get complaints, because I came from the ranks. But our work was more thinking.
It is often the case that something is being done about a poor performer, but of course this isn’t shared with anyone else.
I would ask first if they had spoken to the co-worker about their concerns. I expect my employees to behave like adults, and that includes making an attempt to solve the issue peer-to-peer before going up the chain. Going to management before attempting to resolve the issue does strike me as tattling. Secondly I would likely ask what they would do if in my shoes. I’m not a babysitter, and not here to solve their every issue. I’m here to give them the tools to solve issues on their own. A huge part of my job as a manager is to train/coach my employees. Whether or not you have any inclination to be a manager, it’s always good to be able think like one.
I also agree that the manager probably already knows/suspects something is amiss. In cases where an issue does not imperil deadlines or moral, I have been known to watch and see how the team handles it before I decide whether or not to step in. Issues are inevitable. A group that can resolve them among themselves is a strong team indeed.
You’re correct if your job is dependent on your co-worker doing his. By that I mean you can’t put the thingamajig in the do-hickey if coworker does not provide the whatchamacallit. In which case a whole assembly line goes down or a service is brought to halt or a proposal is not complete at deadline or a legal brief is not filed, etc…This is quickly seen by the man in charge and won’t be tolerated.
I have found in most cases this is not the case. We as humans do not like to see a person not doing as hard a work as we might be doing. Or we think we are being given the tougher job or being dumped on. It’s like knowing what everybody’s salary is for the same or similar work. We think we don’t get paid enough. That’s the down side of unions. The pay is the same regardless if person is qualified or not. Or doing ones job in a more efficient way gets no reward.
Although rare, I know of one situation where a person was hired and given a bogus job just to observe if others were doing theirs. It was obvious that this person was doing next to nothing all everybody was mad. When complaints were presented to the boss his reply was it’s no business why I hired an individual. Just do your job and don’t worry about it. Was it good? No. Was it smart? no.
It’s kind of like the the boss hiring his son to run the business with no knowledge or experience. Hey, its his business not yours. Don’t like it? Quit.
In some cases, the answer to the problem might be to just quit doing your co-worker’s job, and then when things quickly start to fall apart, it will be obvious what’s going on. I think that certain types of job–retail, food service–have a definite “The show must go on” vibe about them, and so people feel responsible not just for their job but for the finished product. So if the tables aren’t getting bussed, they bus tables, even if that’s not their job, because it needs to be done. Then there own work suffers and they start thinking about how they should go talk to the boss about what’s really going on, and explaining how their own poor work isn’t their fault. But really, that sounds like an excuse. Better to just stop bussing tables.
bot3 reminds me of all those people who will complain that some issue of long standing isn’t being fixed but who have never considered informing those who can fix it; these often don’t even know there is an issue (for example because things are working as designed and the issue is a design improvement).
Sometimes “the man in charge” isn’t even there when the slacking takes place; if it’s a shared task, they only hear about it when people tell them.
This. Acting without all the facts can be very, very bad.
However I once had a boss who was the slacker. His 4 subordinates were taking up the slack. We were located over 300 miles from his boss so the ‘big’ boss really didn’t know what was going on day to day. After one particular incident, I got fed up and called the ‘big’ boss. She showed up 2 days later; discussed the problem with the 4 of us; and fired my boss right then. She said that she had suspicions that the guy was a problem, but everything seemed to be working OK from what she could tell. She wished that we would have said something sooner. Maybe she could have worked with the guy to straighten him out or could have fired him sooner so that we wouldn’t have had to work so hard.
I had an employee one time who was very bright, solved problems quickly and did good work. I suspect he had ADHD as he had a short attention span. If I gave him something challenging he would lock on to it like a bull dog until he solved it and then go back to being bored with the more mondane tasks, ( truck mechanic).
He was fast enough with his work that he actually produced more than the other rmechanics and still had time to screw off half the day. I used him as sort of a utility man to handle drive ups and road calls. This way I didn't have to interupt the othe rmechanics and they could stay on their jobs.
The other rmechanics never did realize this particular mechanic filled a very important niche in the shop and moaned and complained about him constantly, they finaly went over my head and got him fired. The shop suffered greatly and the othe rmechanics now got interupted constantly which they complained about even more.
My feelings are unless you are seeing gross abuse or laziness one should leave it up the the supervisor to handle thse things.
But then you’re micromanaging and the employees get annoyed with that. Besides, as a boss type, I have a ton of my own crap to do. I usually take the information and use it to keep an extra eye on the person in question. It’s nice to be able to watch them, know what to watch them for and have them not know that I’m watching them. Suddenly you notice that whenever you walk past that person they put their phone in the pocket. You start to notice that it’s not just once in a while they’re talking to one of the other employees about last night’s [TV Show], they’re always doing it. You can pay attention to how often they whine about being hung over, you can start to notice the other employees constantly complaining about her etc etc etc. Then you can talk to her about whatever the issues are. But, when you’re tied about in your own work and getting your own stuff done, sometimes you have blinders on to the ‘day to day’ stuff. Not on purpose, but when you have a good crew working under you, sometimes you have to be alerted that it needs some tweaking.
But, you still have to keep in mind that people won’t always tell you. Especially, if you work with a lot of high school kids that won’t come and tell you that Manager X is a horrible bitch to work with. They’ll just quit because they’re 16 years old and working on my cash register or the one down the block really doesn’t make a big difference to them.
I don’t get workers that “pick up the slack”. They should just leave him/ her to do their job, or not, and let the managers do their job of running the place.
My question to managers would be “why are so many managers incompetent morons that have no idea of how to manage people, despite every management course ever run telling them how to do so”- speaking as someone that has had hundreds of managers over a lifetime of work.
As for the military, years as a soldier proved to me that the higher an officer/ senior NCO rose, the worse they became, with the exception of a notable few.
People who slack off on their duties, more often than not, have NO FREAKING IDEA how their laziness affects the operation of the entire department.
There’s only so much a manager can do. One reason why there has been, in my experience so much “dead wood” in places where I’ve worked is because getting that person to be dismissed for poor performance is complicated, depending on the company’s policy.
I’d expect the boss to monitor productivity and address the slacker. That’s not micro-managing - that’s just plain managing. You’ve got so much work, you’ve got so many people - if someone’s not pulling his weight it has to be showing somewhere: the people picking up the slack are doing overtime or skipping lunches, their productivity numbers are skewing higher, or this person calls in sick or goes on vacation and there’s no change in workflow. If someone can slack off without such impact, you’re over-staffed (something the rest of the team may not want to point out).
But bear in mind that you may not know the whole story. I had an employee with a serious attendance problem and her section had just three people. One came to me complaining about the constant work pressure the missing person caused and I assured her I was dealing with the situation and I moved others to help the section.
One really bad day when the problem employee called in again, her co-worker marched in and quit, fed up with me “not doing anything.” The day after that, the returning employee was fired, having finally exhausted her chances under company attendance policy. HR policy said I couldn’t talk about the problem employee’s disciplinary action level, so I couldn’t tell the good employee the bad one wasn’t coming back until we’d done the paperwork, so she quit her job for nothing.
I think the point is that the reason they have NO FREAKING IDEA how much their laziness affects things is because others pick up the slack. From their point of view, everything is working fine. And the better others are at picking up the slack, the less likely management or the slacker are aware that there is a problem, and the harder it is to demonstrate poor performance.