How to deal with a supremely unmotivated coworker? I am supposed to mentor my new coworker but I am losing my patience. I have been having daily meetings with her but I am not seeing any progress. I point her to resources and the next day it is clear that she has done nothing about it. She says she has some issues but refuses my help saying she will not learn unless she figures it out herself. It turns out that she was hiding the fact that she has not even started working on her task. She gives misleading information in status meetings.. saying something is done when not even 25% is done. I told my manager that she is struggling and that she needs more training but he says that she has been in training for 3 months and she is ready. I am not sure what training because for everything I mention she says she was not trained on that particular part. My manager has not been available for the past 2 weeks and he just sends terse emails about status. I emailed him that I need to take over her task if we want it done.. and worked over the weekend because I am responsible for the project delivery. I am 'mentoring' another new coworker and that has been a far more fruitful endeavor. Tomorrow I have to tell my manager that she has been misleading the team about status and I find that I am feeling bad for her
You got to do what is needed ,since you are ultimately responsible for project delivery. Tell the manager everything
Have you communicated your frustration about the lack of progress to the employee ? I would do that first and also let her know that you will have to bring this up with the manager. Hopefully that should jolt her into performing better.
Big mistake. Why did you do her work? You missed a big opportunity for manager and mentee to get a wake up call. You mentored her. You informed him. That was the extent of your responsibility. Now you should have let the chips fall where they wish and Let the project go if needed. If project is not finished she would have to explain it and managers eyes would opened. That she was lying all along. By doing her work you have covered her mistake and given her a free pass. She will repeat this in future also because you have just given her more incentive to stay the same. Now since the work is done manager won’t tell her anything either she will not be disciplined as you are expecting. Nothing will happen. Because. Work was done. Project finished. Your input will be dismissed as complaining and or jealousy. Nothing will change. You want to feel sorry then feel sorry for yourself for you just created a big problem for yourself. Never ever do another persons work. Not unless you are specifically asked to and are being paid for it.
Yes. I also told her not to mislead about status. And explained what exactly is pending on the task so that there is no misunderstanding. But within an hour she is sending another email that apart from minor details, everything is done.
We have been doing this for so long. To meet deadlines, senior team members are routinely asked to drop everything and complete a project that a newer coworker has not been able to complete. My manager himself has done this multiple times since he could not find any other resource. In frustration, he has mentioned once that he doesn't know how to solve this. I take it that this is rare in other places? Ugh!
If she is a fresher then there might be little difficulty in understanding things and we all would have gone through similar situation. Not everyone can pick up things easily and faster. But if she is not putting any efforts to learn things then that should be worrying. But informing a manager is must as he is the one who decides what to do with such resource. Even in one of my previous projects seniors are supposed to help new comers (freshers) in completing. They would see the progress atleast for 6 months and then decide. And moreover training for freshers will be completely different than what’s used in project. For ex. There would be many frameworks and technologies in project. But in training there will be just some basic technologies. If I were you and if that person was fresher I would see for few more days based on completion of other tasks. Wouldn’t be too harsh on her. Inform manager but in polite manner
Not good. This girl is too clever by half. She is setting you up for a she said- she said confrontation. From now on as soon as you are done with meeting her you should send an email summarizing the meeting, eg in this case that you found she has not done the work, that you warned her and went over all that remains and listed them out. Sent that to her and the manager. Always document document document. Send email to notify manager as soon as 1:1 is done. The email will have a time stamp. It will be proof of what actually transpired in the meeting. Are you in India? If her lies continue then meet her not1:1 but with a 3rd person. Again afterwards send meeting minutes and document what was said
True. But that is not the case here right? Lying and misleading is the issue not inexperience. In your earlier post you stated that a) she misleads about work status and b)manager believes her lies and thinks she is ready to do the work. Both are red flags. Also c) it seemed that you had taken it upon yourself to volunteer to do the work unsolicited. My advice was in that situation which is not a good situation for you. If you got asked to finish the work by your manager then it is different matter. But even then you should do so grudgingly and with a lot of moaning. Remember, Only squeaky wheel gets the grease. No it is not rare but you need to know how to deal with it. Women are overworked the world over. So be smart. If this person was brought on board to help you finish in time how does it help you to do her work in addition to your own and cover her mistake? It doesn’t. Value your time. Respect yourself. We women get comfortable and start feeling this is my work family blah blah. It is not. At home if hubby didn’t do his share or kids hw is due tomorrow yeah sure help them do their work or do it for them . But work is different. Make that distinction. Keep it separate. In this case manager was relying on you to manage her. Hence his terse replies. So value your time and yourself . After 3rd 1:1 when it became clear you are not making any headway, she is not doing the work and is lying about her status which is a big no-no you should have told your manager that mentoring her is not a good use of your time. Bitched and moaned about how much work you already have and refused to spend more time with her. Asked for a different work resource to be assigned and warned him that project deadline is in danger. When she told you she has issues but refused to discuss with you you should have notified HR and then your manager. Created a paper trail because she is not your problem. She would have got a wake up call right when HR called her about her issues. Being nice doesn’t help anyone. You want people on your team who can pull their weight. Firing anyone these days is difficult so every bit of proof helps. A month ago you should have told your manager that project deadline is a problem and asked for resources. Be tough and uncompromising about work because if they don’t do it then it ends up in your lap. See... what reputation do you want among freshers? Corrie ma’am is easy, just keep lying she will do your work for you. Or Corrie ma’am is tough but I learned a lot under her?
have nothing much to add , but to reiterate/second what @1Sandhya has already said This seems the right and the best thing to do, whenever you are confronted by a situation/person you intuitively not like. There is nothing wrong about it and even if later you feel you were over reacting, this is only a record of the things you did at a particular time.