New Staff Member Won't Listen.

Strumms

The guy is obviously as a new employee trying to impress too much and or could be very ambitious and might be trying to show others up a bit. The second of the two scenarios is dangerous. At some point you need to sit down with him as part of a ‘new hire freedback evaluation’ type scenario and ask for his feedback about his experience so far. To be sold as a learning tool for the managers, staff, company and clients as well as the new employee. Go in with open ears and listen to his tone and content especially how he evaluates his colleagues, his new employers in a personal capacity. It can be a useful tool in getting a recent outsider view but also when given the floor how obviously keen they might be to criticize and undermine straight from the get go.

As regards nationality I’ve come across dickhead colleagues and deadly ones on all nationalities so it’s hardly relevant.

MrMusician18

If this guy is a new employee then he's still on probation. The correct course of action would therefore be to have a progress review and let him know, seriously, procedure must be followed otherwise he will fail his probation.

He will then most likely either then wise up or he will leave, and if he does neither then fail him and let him go. Within his first year he really has no employment rights.

This is really simple stuff.

On another note, I always tend to laugh at the bog standard response to these threads - get onto HR, in the vast majority of these threads we are taking about SMEs who do not have more than 10 employees, let alone HR departments.

dartboardio

MrMusician18 wrote: »

If this guy is a new employee then he's still on probation. The correct course of action would therefore be to have a progress review and let him know, seriously, procedure must be followed otherwise he will fail his probation.

He will then most likely either then wise up or he will leave, and if he does neither then fail him and let him go. Within his first year he really has no employment rights.

This is really simple stuff.

On another note, I always tend to laugh at the bog standard response to these threads - get onto HR, in the vast majority of these threads we are taking about SMEs who do not have more than 10 employees, let alone HR departments.

Or when people who don't have a clue start banging on about 'unfair dismissal' its hardly unfair dismissal if the guys a new employee and not up to scratch.

I work with a girl who thinks she knows it all and thinks it would be 'unfair dismissal' if my company fired her despite her being on her final written warning. Some people eh!

Imo i doubt theres many steps you need to taks OP if this employee is new. Id have a sit down progress review kinda chat and try make a plan from there while warning him if things dont change he could potentially be gone

Strumms

I never met as many as 1 HR person who I’d fûcking trust, contact with them is not advisable unless as a last resort. In my experience they are put there by the management and their first loyalty is to management unless that situation has the managers bang to rights with no defense be very cautious.

Mrs OBumble

OP I'd suggest asking for advice in the Entrepreneur and Business Management forum., where you'll likely get better advice.

Fyi my experience with Eastern Europeans is quite the opposite to your friends: tell them whay to do, show them the proper way once, and they perform well. But really both sets of experience are irrelevant. You need to manage individuals based on their performance.

Dublintigger

jeremyj1968 wrote: »

Hi everybody,

When hiring for a junior position in our office, I was warned about Eastern European workers being what a friend described euphemistically as being "independently thinking". We hired an Eastern European guy, and he is a very likeable upbeat guy who everybody gets on with - BUT the guy just wont take instruction.

It's getting to the point at this stage that I can't trust him to do anything. If I ask him to do something, he's always got a "better way". I tried to just gently dissuade him at the start, and offer reasons why he needed to do it our way, but I just end up pulling rank on him these days as otherwise I will spend half the day arguing with him. Most seriously, there have been cases where he has been out with customers and actually criticised the way some of our other staff have done work.

I genuinely like the guy and would really not like to have to fire him, as it would affect his family financially. But it's come to the point that he really isn't of any value to the company. Any suggestions on how I should proceed? He is a full time employee. thanks.

Oh my goodness – I can totally empathise with this situation!!
In a SME business, we hired a guy to train up as a property manager and on paper, looked good – so he was offered the contract.
We should have realised that something was not right when I (office manager/supervisor) asked him to come in for an induction and to go over the company’s code and the office policy and procedure. He made it very clear from then that he would not follow the guidelines or take direction. I felt very uneasy but let it go. A small example was I did tell him that he had to wear a uniform and told me that he would get his ‘tailor’ to do up something and bill us - eh no and I gave him the shirt and jacket for him. It fitted him perfectly! He wore it once!!
There were other situations where he thought he knew better and when I pointed out to him what the procedure was and how to follow it – he responded with – ‘what would you know, you’re a woman!’ Excuse me!! He would never pull his weight and do his fair share of work, we were a small team and part of the ethos was that we all buckled down and help each other out – he said if he didn’t do it at home, he wasn’t going to lower himself to doing it here. And any mistakes he made – obviously made, he wouldn’t take responsibility for them and even blamed other staff for them even if they were out of the office at the time. We could never trust him to do his job properly and everything had to be checked and verified once he had done. He didnt/couldnt even do the filing correctly and we even found filing in the bin!
He constantly boasted how much better he was at doing things and ‘back home’ he was highly respected – but yet he could do his job properly!
It got so bad that we had to let him go – he lasted 2 months, he bawled his eyes out when we gave him his P45 – and said that it wasn’t his fault that we didn’t understand him…..
Oh sweet Lord – it took us a good 6 months to clear up after him and even then we kept hearing from clients on how he discredited us and the company saying at one stage that we were going ‘to the wall’!! There was a trail of mayhem and destruction after him!!
And yes he was Eastern European – and I am not xenophobic either! Neither were we were trying to mould him to fit in with the company way of things – he was just the way he was and nothing was going to change.

Jim2007

jeremyj1968 wrote: »

When hiring for a junior position in our office, I was warned about Eastern European workers being what a friend described euphemistically as being "independently thinking". We hired an Eastern European guy, and he is a very likeable upbeat guy who everybody gets on with - BUT the guy just wont take instruction.

Of course it could just be the poor quality Irish manager he was saddled with... failure to communicate clearly and concisely, poor grammar, diction, etc...

Then there is the lazy attitude of the Irish manager towards training staff properly....

I have managed teams for Eastern Europe for well over 15 years and you are talking a lot of Bo*****ks. You'll meet these kind of people in all walks of life. It is up to you as a manger to provide leadership and stop blaming your staff for your failures.

Dublintigger

Jim2007 wrote: »

Of course it could just be the poor quality Irish manager he was saddled with... failure to communicate clearly and concisely, poor grammar, diction, etc...

Then there is the lazy attitude of the Irish manager towards training staff properly....

I have managed teams for Eastern Europe for well over 15 years and you are talking a lot of Bo*****ks. You'll meet these kind of people in all walks of life. It is up to you as a manger to provide leadership and stop blaming your staff for your failures.

I have worked and trained different folks at different levels and from different back grounds and cultures – and yes, I would agree that problem can be found across the board. But there are some folks who go out into the work place and behave in a way that they truly believe that they are better than others when it is obviously not the case.
It is not a supervisors or managers fault but it is just the way they are and nothing is going to change that – but it also means that no-one/ or any team/ or any employer should have to tolerate their attitude or their behaviour.
It would be very remiss of the manager/supervisor to ignore their behaviour especially if their behaviour is affecting the team dynamics.

IITYWYBMAD

jeremyj1968 wrote: »

No HR. Small enough business. I don't want to give too much detail, but no HR department.

At the very least, you should have an employee handbook, proper contracts and procedures laid out for situations like this. If you don't have some of the above, they are easily got by employing a HR consultant.

My suggestion would be to sit the guy down. Talk though the views you've expressed her (both positive and negative) and state clearly that while you respect his independence and enthusiasm, there are strict protocols to follow with regards to his work. There is no room for 'ambiguity' with regards to the tasks/projects he works on. You expect the work to be delivered on-time and in the manner he is tasked to do this.

If that doesn't sink in, you will have to go through a formal procedure with him.

Dublintigger

IITYWYBMAD wrote: »

At the very least, you should have an employee handbook, proper contracts and procedures laid out for situations like this. If you don't have some of the above, they are easily got by employing a HR consultant.

My suggestion would be to sit the guy down. Talk though the views you've expressed her (both positive and negative) and state clearly that while you respect his independence and enthusiasm, there are strict protocols to follow with regards to his work. There is no room for 'ambiguity' with regards to the tasks/projects he works on. You expect the work to be delivered on-time and in the manner he is tasked to do this.

If that doesn't sink in, you will have to go through a formal procedure with him.

Wise words.......

seamus

IITYWYBMAD wrote: »

My suggestion would be to sit the guy down. Talk though the views you've expressed her (both positive and negative) and state clearly that while you respect his independence and enthusiasm, there are strict protocols to follow with regards to his work. There is no room for 'ambiguity' with regards to the tasks/projects he works on. You expect the work to be delivered on-time and in the manner he is tasked to do this.

If that doesn't sink in, you will have to go through a formal procedure with him.

This. It's all well and good to say that the employee is financially dependent on the job. But so is the company and everyone it employs. You can't put everyone at risk for one guy.

So give him the opportunity to mend his ways, and if he can't, then it's his own fault that you have to let him go.

Companies end up saddled with poor employees because their management don't have the confidence to to help them improve, and don't have the balls to let them go if that time comes.

If there is no HR department, there is no end of resources online about how to run performance improvement plans. Just make sure you use Irish resources, or EU at worst. Don't use anything American.

In short, you need to lay out:

- What is expected of the employee in terms of performance
- How he is not meeting those expectations
- What you propose to do to help him meet those expectations
- A schedule which will be used to track improvements and provide feedback to the employee on his progress
- The date on which the plan will end - At this point the employee will either be let go or kept on, but whatever way it goes shouldn't be unexpected because you've been giving him feedback throughout the process.

Most people will leave once this process begins unless they're really stuck.

TheQuietFella

They are all communists and they're here to destroy our capitalist society.

Mind you, there were plenty of capitalists who did destroy our capitalist system without much help from the communists or maybe they were communists in disguise?

Anyway, keep it local!

doylerkelly

EverythingGood wrote: »

Not sure what nationality has to do with it and firing some one for being foreign is a no no. You need to frame your case less xenophobically.

Where in the post did the op say they would fire them for being foreign :rolleyes:

Dublintigger

doylerkelly wrote: »

Where in the post did the op say they would fire them for being foreign :rolleyes:

Nowhere - absolutely nowhere

khaldrogo

doylerkelly wrote:

Where in the post did the op say they would fire them for being foreign

Just certain SJWs desperate to be offended

Rubberchikken

i can see how nationality could be referenced.
yes some irish do but overall in our workplace a large % of foreign workers, especially males, seem to thonk they need no instruction and do know better more efficient (in their opinion) ways to do things. these are things done everyday very successfully.

op, i dont see how liking him or feeling that his financial situation may be your responsibility comes into it.
if he wont do the job correctly and take instruction given fairly then does he really deserve the job?