Co-Worker flailing. Can we/should we help?

March 26, 2015 7:34 AM

Small office, co-worker is over her head and floundering - she's crying because she doesn't understand the work, and the rest of the team is spending a lot of time doing/re-doing her work. What can we/should we do? Snowflakes inside.

I work in a small 4-person (three team members and a boss) division of an also-small (ten-person) company, working with complex databases and spreadsheets. One of our team members - the one who has been here the longest - is in way, way over her head. She doesn't have any tech background at all, much less any data-specific background.

Over the last year, our projects have grown more complex, and gone more and more over her level of knowledge. Team Member 2 and I do our best to help her and explain things, but we have our own work to do, too, and we're now falling behind on our own projects - so we're frustrated, because we're spending time explaining basic things (like how to filter in Excel) when we have things to do...meanwhile, our floundering co-worker is crying in her car on her way home from work at night because she's so frustrated and doesn't understand her job (her words).

The boss on our team, who sits in the same open office plan room as we do, seems to be vaguely aware of the problem, but not bothered enough by it to do anything about it. Our other boss (who would probably be the one to do something about it) is in another location and mostly (I assume) unaware. We don't have an HR department.

That's the background; here are my questions.

1) what is a reasonable amount of time to spend training a co-worker/answering questions that are fundamental to the job? Is there a point where we need to stop helping and just let her sink or swim?

2) I feel really bad for her, and would love to have some resources to share with her, but I'm having a hard time thinking of something that would work at her level. What she needs is basic database/data analysis theory - this is a very think-on-your-feet job, working with data from all different source types, so the rest of the team uses a lot of basic database and spreadsheet knowledge (and I mean *basic* - database structures, queries, VLOOKUP in Excel, etc.) - but she's the type of person who needs a class to use her new cell phone (she told us that last week, this isn't me exaggerating), so I can't exactly sit her down with an old SQL textbook.

3) what are our responsibilities, if any, to sit down with our boss(es) and say "hey, this person is flailing, you need to know about it, can we do something about it"? I feel like that's what we should be doing, but I don't want to come across like I'm whining about someone pulling her weight. I'm also worried that by not saying anything, we're doing the company harm.

posted by okayokayigive to Human Relations (24 answers total)

I don't think you have any specific responsibility to do one thing or another here. It's a personal judgement call and will depend a lot on the personalities of you, her, and your boss. You certainly could talk to your boss. You could also talk to your floundering coworker. In the mean time, it's perfectly appropriate for you to start setting boundaries so you can get your own work done.

Bottom line, though, is that it sounds like she should get another job, either in your company or elsewhere. I don't know whether you'd want to talk to her or your boss about that, or neither. Again, it's a judgement call based on the personalities.
posted by alms at 7:41 AM on March 26, 2015

I think you need to encourage her to talk to "the boss who can do something about it". She needs to have a real conversation about how the requirements for the job have morphed over time into something she doesn't have the right skillset for, so they can work together to figure out the plan forward. That plan might be training, finding new/different work more suited to her skillset, reassigning tasks within the team to better align with her strengths, etc. She may not want to do this for fear that she's jeopardizing her job by bringing this to their attention, but in reality that's what she's doing now by relying on the rest of the team to bail her out. It would be better for her to be proactive in trying to work with management to see what kinds of options there are for her.

If you're unsuccessful in getting her to address this directly, I think it is reasonable for you/your team to take it up to the bosses, but focus on your own performance/the impact to you or your clients, that way you're not "whining about her" but instead you are bringing an item that affects your or your team's whole performance to their attention.
posted by msbubbaclees at 7:44 AM on March 26, 2015 [17 favorites]

There are companies that do training in business applications, including how to do VLOOKUP and basic database functions in Excel; I used to teach such things back in the day and they can be geared to non-tech-savvy users. Perhaps if she took one or more of these classes she'd at least have a better grip on the basic skills you mentioned.

Of course, to authorize the expense your boss would need to know about the problem. I'm a little baffled that in such small office environment your boss is only vaguely aware of the problem, nor bothered enough by it to do anything about it. Your team's success is his or her responsibility, and this issue is directly affecting not just your co worker but all of you, now.
posted by Gelatin at 7:46 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

Is there any money in the budget for training? Could you suggest to Boss that you could all use some technical skill improvements and suggest subscriptions to lynda.com (or The Great Courses, or similar). Then, you can suggest a curriculum for Problem Co-Worker that starts with some of the more basic stuff.

You could also suggest this directly to coworker -- she needs to take responsibility for her own failures here after all -- how long has this been going on without her even trying to improve?
posted by sparklemotion at 7:46 AM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

So just thinking out loud here, but I'd be unhappy if my team was thinking in terms of "my work" and "your work"; I prefer "our work". In my world tasks are assigned to the team, not individuals, and training other team members, whether formally or on the job, is just a cost everyone accepts. I think that's a change that would need management support, but I bet it would be easy to get.

Some people are untrainable, of course, but that's a separate problem.
posted by Leon at 7:47 AM on March 26, 2015 [7 favorites]

It sounds like she needs more training, and probably that training doesn't even need to be extremely extensive...these are ultimately fairly basic things, not like "Learn to completely program computers!" I would try to gently suggest to her that she needs to ask one or the other of the supervisors in this equation for some time and possibly resources to do that -- probably there are some web-based courses on Excel and databases that she could research ahead of time and present as possibilities. I think this will go best if she can go in and say: "My job responsibilities have changed and I need some additional training to complete these new tasks effectively. I would like to take 3 weeks to complete X online course on a part-time basis (say, 4 hours per day of training, 4 hours of completing work-related tasks that are within her current wheelhouse)." She could also offer up doing some of the training on weekends/evenings. Especially if she's been there a long time, I think this could work okay. In the course of years of employment, a few weeks or even months of additional training doesn't seem like a crazy thing, though workplaces vary.

If it's the case that's she's not willing to do the basic research to find out what training she needs, or if it seems to be the case that she feels like NO amount of training will help because she just isn't suited for or doesn't like these new tasks, the she probably needs to start looking for a new job.

In any case, it seems like the current arrangement is unsustainable. Although it's really nice of you to help her out, and it would be unreasonable to take a stance of "WILL NEVER ANSWER COWORKERS QUESTIONS, NO ONE SHALL EVER BE CONFUSED ABOUT A NEW TASK", it sounds like this is taking up a really significant part of your time and isn't what you are hired to be doing. While some assistance like this could be okay in a transitional period, I feel like it does need to be combined with a clear action plan for how things are going to improve.
posted by rainbowbrite at 7:52 AM on March 26, 2015 [9 favorites]

It sounds like her anxiety is getting the better of her. She needs a mental health break. Once she comes back from that, then she needs to decide if she is able to learn the tech stuff or if she needs to look for different work. Can you suggest to your manager that she be given a couple of weeks paid time off? Sometimes the fear of losing a job is enough to keep someone from being able to learn what they need to learn to keep the job. It sounds like that is what is happening here and the longer it continues, the less able she will be to learn anything new.
posted by myselfasme at 7:53 AM on March 26, 2015

Does she have the potential to do the job and just not the knowledge or do you think she will never be comfortable in the role?

If you do nothing, it is just a matter of time before either she quits, a project fails or she is fired.

If it were me, I would sit down and talk to her. I would offer to help with training resources, but also explain to her that after some brief period (two weeks?) if she is not showing progress, SHE needs to go to the boss and explain the situation. Boss needs to make decision about how best to proceed, not you or the team.
posted by 724A at 7:54 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

If you are not already telling Boss about all of this (understandable since you might not want to throw this coworker under the bus), you should be documenting what you are doing. Down the line you may realize that some larger action is needed than the help you can provide. It will make the whole team look better if you can go to your boss, describe the issue, and recount the steps you have already taken. This will also help if the overall team performance is compromised, as you will not want to be blamed later. Basically -- it's fine to try to help a floundering coworker, but make sure you don't get pulled under along the way.
posted by cubby at 8:15 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

If you continue to cover for her at the expense of your own workload, she will continue to rely on you, slide by, and keep working, while you and your team-mate fall further and further behind, and more and more resentful of her.

You have to let her fail. It sucks. Not everyone is cut out for every job, and it's clear that she's not cut out for this one. If she needs a class to figure out how to use her new phone, complex data analysis is not going to be in the cards for her unless she's given extensive training, which sounds like not a realistic option. She is not crying in her car because she is frustrated and doesn't understand her job, she is crying in her car because she's afraid someone will notice and she'll lose her job.

Scripts for declining to help her can include: "I'm sorry, but that won't be possible." "I'm sorry, but my own workload is overwhelming today." "I'm sorry, but I just don't have the time to teach you that." "I'm sorry, but I have a deadline and need to focus on my own work today."

When you juggle someone else's knives, you get cut.
posted by juniperesque at 8:21 AM on March 26, 2015 [10 favorites]

1. You can't save her from drowning, but you can toss her a pool noodle so she can right herself.

2. There are many great places out there that offers basic and advanced Excel training. My office used this company . If the in-person training comes close to where you are, I highly recommend it for her. It did wonders for a co-worker in a similar situation. They also offer Access training, which I know isn't what you're asking for, but they touch on database basics that will still be useful for her. And there is online training, too.

3. It's best to include her in this.
"Hey, (team member) - here's some great Excel training that I think will help you. Want to go to (manager) and ask? Want me to go with you?"
"Hey, (manager), (coworker) and I think training like this will really help her!"
posted by kimberussell at 8:22 AM on March 26, 2015 [3 favorites]

If the boss finds out how deeply ignorant she actually is (and if the boss is any kind of boss), she will be fired. Like if the course that will help her is Remedial Excel, that's not going to look good if she's asking to be comped.

Really she needs a different job, imo, but if she's planning to stay - there are about a million YouTube tutorials on Excel. She could also refer to the help pages at any time over the course of a working day, and she'd get more from it than asking you. If things are as bad as you say, she could take a course online or at night. I think you should tell her she needs to take ownership and do some or all of those things on her own initiative. Help her out when it's team-critical, but otherwise, gently encourage her to use the help pages. (If she needs to come in early or stay late to figure things out, maybe not a bad idea. But since she's not really being productive during the day anyway, she might as well use her working hours to learn to do her job, if you guys are willing to take up the slack a bit.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 8:41 AM on March 26, 2015

A lot of the problem here seems to stem from weak management - the boss should know how people are performing, not just be vaguely aware.

I think your responsibilities are primarily to your own tasks. If helping your co-worker is getting in the way of that, then that is a good way of opening a conversation with your boss: "hey boss, co-worker needs some training on the more complex tasks we're doing, and that's starting to take up my time, how do you want me to prioritise?"

If you don't get clear guidance then I think you have to do your work first, and then help your co-worker to the extent you feel able and willing. If she needs more than that, say you need to focus on your own work, and suggest she needs to talk to the boss.
posted by crocomancer at 8:57 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

Few of the comments here are hitting at the fact that she's been at the company the longest and probably feels entrenched -- like she doesn't have faith in her own ability to do new things OR her ability to go to another job. The boss(es) don't seem likely to let her go because of that. And she may, like one of my former coworkers, be unwilling or unable to retrain.

I think any approach you take needs to take the following into consideration:
1. She may not be fireable. (Yes, she should be, but bosses have reasons, some of which may not make sense, and/or are unwilling to buck up and do it.)
2. She may not be able to do the work, regardless of any other training.

So you should probably come up with a couple of approaches. In one case, maybe she ends up with all of the old stuff so that others can do new stuff.

I think the best thing to do, because you WILL need documentation (regardless of HR), is to set up a set of benchmarks. By X date, she needs to be able to demonstrate proficiency at Y task.

I know her presence is probably not thrilling to you at this point. Guess what? She's feeling even worse than you are. So please be kind to her. But also remember that you're not doing anyone a favor by stretching this out longer than it has to.

It does sound like weak management is the real issue here. Consider that you may end up leaving before she does.
posted by St. Hubbins at 9:01 AM on March 26, 2015 [5 favorites]

1) you're a team, you should help as much as you can without it cutting into your own work. Sounds like her job has changed fundamentally from what they hired her for and that is not her fault, but it's not yours, either. Sounds to me like you've passed the point where helping her is not interfering with your own tasks, so feel free to cut down on your assistance.

2) the best resource you can provide at this point is honesty-- she's confided in you, now be a pal and tell her she has to take this up with the boss.

3) not your responsibility at all. SHE must do this. Encourage her to do so. If she refuses, that would be the time to let her sink or swim.

This is really your boss' problem and he or she is being unprofessional and a bit of a coward to not do anything about it.

The only alternative to that assessment I can think of is that your boss knows, and is okay with it. In which case, great--keep training her and picking up her slack and let the entire department fall behind, per your boss' wishes.
posted by kapers at 9:01 AM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

One other thought...Is it possible that the boss(es) know and are letting her fail on her own so they can either reassign her or lay her off? Some bosses are chicken shit like that and are not willing to help her out or even talk to her about it.
posted by 724A at 9:18 AM on March 26, 2015

If you don't follow juniperesque's advice (which you should), report every day to your boss:

Today I managed to work 5 hours at my tasks A & B, finishing C. I spent 3 hours assisting co-worker on task F.

Since co-worker doesn't accomplish much, make sure her task F appears to be the same every day (maybe slightly more general) and your tasks change and get completed daily. People are very hesitant to lay off, so your marketing needs to be effective. Don't let her take you down with her.
posted by flimflam at 9:21 AM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

"It sounds like her anxiety is getting the better of her."

I guess so, though if somebody's job changes to the point they can't figure out how to do it anymore, getting upset to the point of crying sounds pretty normal to me. And being willing to admit it to coworkers is a positive in some ways too. Another typical reaction is to pretend to understand everything, spend time on busy work, and claim progress on projects that aren't ready to show to anyone. That can leave everyone even worse off.

So, credit to her for facing up to the problem at some level (even if that may have been forced on her to some degree by your group's workflow). But I suppose the group (including management) needs to be honest about the problem too.

Anyway, no idea what you should do, my sympathies.
posted by bfields at 10:27 AM on March 26, 2015

I also came in to recommend lynda.com for Excel/database basics training. I was recently in a similar situation (thrown in the deep end and expected to know VLOOKUPS and the like, as well as some other database fundamentals, without prior experience) and I had a functional skillset in about a week after watching videos from Lynda.
posted by bluloo at 3:39 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you continue to cover for her at the expense of your own workload, she will continue to rely on you, slide by, and keep working, while you and your team-mate fall further and further behind, and more and more resentful of her.

Yes, this is the truth. She needs to either sink or swim on her own, not drag you down with her. If she could do the job she'd be trying to help herself, not making you figure out how to help her.
posted by winna at 3:56 PM on March 26, 2015

You say this co-worker has been there the longest. Presumably her job wasn't always this way. The tasks and tooling have changed over time.

This is a failure of management. Who implements processes or systems with no regard to whether or not the people who are supposed to use them are trained adequately to do so? Bad management, that's who.

The problem is, in too many cases these days, companies expect their employees to be responsible for their own training, on their own time and resources.

You can't help your co-worker directly, and should not be expected to. You do have a responsibility though to let your management know there is a problem they need to address. I'd go so far as to help implement procedures that ensure this doesn't happen again in the future.
posted by spudsilo at 4:26 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

3. It's best to include her in this.
This.
This x100 and it's where you should start by sitting down with your co-working and asking the very broad question, "what do you want here?"

I think I know what you want: you want to be able to do your job in a timely manner with a minimum of avoidable frustration.

If her desires and your desires overlap, then find a way to meet them.

That may be training. That may be different responsibilities. That may be mentoring. Creative solutions abound.

But of course the first step is with her.
posted by plinth at 5:05 PM on March 26, 2015 [1 favorite]

She is not crying in her car because she is frustrated and doesn't understand her job, she is crying in her car because she's afraid someone will notice and she'll lose her job.

Eh, I doubt that. People want to be proud of what they do; feeling like an incompetent failure every day is really punishing on the mental state. More likely she is crying in her car because she knows the job is above her level, she knows her boss knows, and she knows her boss isn't lifting a damn finger to help her so she will eventually be fired. This is pretty f'ed up management, unless they hate her already but don't have the guts to tell her and want it to be a performance issue.

What you can do to help isn't to hand-hold her through her day-to-day tasks. It's to identify what skills you have that she doesn't and help her chart a path to get there. Maybe the boss would be willing to spring for some after-hours class at a community college. If not, maybe you could find some introductory material online for her. Mock up some simpler spreadsheets to practice on? It will take up some time for you but it would really be worth it.

In any case, make sure when you help her, you're (trying to) teach her general concepts and background information at the same time. Not just "like this *click click click* see?"
posted by ctmf at 6:59 PM on March 26, 2015 [2 favorites]

There's no way your in-office boss is just vaguely aware. Your boss is ignoring the issue. As a manager, my advice is to go to management, whenever someone else's performance is impacting your performance. Your management team needs to step up, not you, unless you are directly asked by management to re-train her or arrange external training. This is why management exists.

(I once worked with a 22-year legal assistant who had to ask me how to make a basic table in Word and couldn't get her head around Google Calendar; she'd been yelled at and threatened so much by management about sucking at these things that her anxiety about messing up paralyzed her. I'm pretty sure she's still at that job; I'm long gone. FWIW.)
posted by coast99 at 11:53 PM on March 26, 2015