A reader writes:
I got my first job as a manager about five months ago. One of my employees, Jane, is a woman in her late 50s (I’m 30). She’s been with this organization for two years, but spent the rest of her working life in retail or as a stage manager for small theaters. Our organization as a whole is huge, but our office is incredibly small; most of the time it’s just the two of us here. On the whole, our personalities mesh fairly well, so on a personal basis we’re fine. However, she has one very distinct character flaw — she talks a lot. It is not unusual for me to have to cut her off after 20 minutes of her talking at me. We have one other coworker in our office who has told me that she works from home most days because she feels she can’t get her work done in the office with Jane around.
I know that you’ve had other postings about talkative employees and how to discourage chatting in the office, but this is a little different because her job requires talking. Our nonprofit serves constituents by providing care consultations. Jane is the only person in our region who provides these, so a lot of her job entails talking to constituents. There’s no set guidelines on how long these consultations should last, but best practices say less than one hour. Jane regularly has consultations that last close to two hours. I’ve listened in on quite a lot of these (mostly unintentionally — our offices are right next to each other and I can hear it even with both our doors closed) and it seems to me that the reason her consultations last so long is because she talks so much. I’ve had conversations with her about the importance of limiting these talks to 45 minutes, and I’ve given her phrases she can use to end conversations. I’ve also explained the importance of not overloading a constituent with information and how they will retain the advice she’s giving better if it’s dolled out over the course of several consultations. But so far, nothing has worked. She continually ignores my advice and comes up with reasons why the consultation had to last as long as it did. Usually, the excuses she gives blame the constituent.
She also regularly complains to me about how much work she has to do, even though I took away several of her responsibilities to free up her time. I know that she’s feeling overwhelmed because of the amount of time she spends on the phone or with constituents. I can’t take away any more of her duties and we can’t pay overtime (she’s hourly, non-exempt), so I need her to manage her time better. I sent her to a time management course offered by our organization, but there’s been no improvement.
Another alarming fact with all this is that other people with the same job in our organization have three or four consultations with each client. However, in the five months that I’ve been here, Jane has never had any repeat consultations. I feel that this is because she inundates our clients with information and advice (and talks their ear off).
She’s a very caring person who just wants to provide as much help as she can to our constituents, but how do I get her to shorten her conversations so she can perform the other very important tasks of her job?
You’ve offered her resources to help her shorten her meetings, but it doesn’t sound like you’ve told her directly that her consultations must end after 45 minutes (or whatever time you decide). That’s what you need to do here — it’s not a suggestion, it’s not a nudge, it’s “I need you to serve more clients and serve them better, so I need you to ensure you’re not spending more than 45 minutes per meeting.”
You might need to sit in on some of these meetings with her at first so that you’re able to move things along, signal to her when she needs to move on, and coach her afterwards on what you saw. But it’s 100% reasonable to hold her to a time limit. And frankly, you’re obligated to do that whether you want to or not — your organization is losing clients because of her and she’s not able to complete other portions of her job. This is a serious performance issue, and you won’t be doing your own job if you don’t treat it as one.
You should also probably give her goals that she needs to meet around number of meetings per month (or quarter or whatever makes sense) and goals around repeat appointments (since those appear to be a mark of client satisfaction), as well as restore the pieces of her job you’ve taken away to accommodate her talkativeness. If she can’t meet those goals, she can’t do essential parts of the job and you’d need to proceed accordingly — meaning be prepared that you might need to fire her.
(You should also address her talkativeness with you — it’s not okay that her colleague doesn’t feel able to work in the office because of Jane’s disruptiveness.)
my employee talks so much she can’t get her work done was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
from Ask a Manager https://ift.tt/2PCpTXR
0 Comments