Reply to Tips on dealing with employee who constantly has issues?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have an employee like this and some of it is cultural. She is older, but it is an entry level job. It is always something with her. Her adult son needs to borrow her car. Her niece needs someone to watch the baby. She needs to take her mom to get a prescription at lunch time and it somehow turns into a 2 hour errand.

As best I can tell, she is the only person in her family with a “professional” job. Her siblings and adult children all seem to have hourly jobs like being a gas station cashier where if you don’t show up for your shift you don’t get paid and probably get fired. Since our jobs are largely work from home and allow some flexibility like occasionally taking a long lunch for an appointment, her family seems to view her as the most responsible and successful and call her for every possible issue. They also don’t understand what she does since she’s “just looking at a laptop” and assume she’s 100% always available. They seem to live adjacent to poverty and there is a lot more drama that comes with that - which I picked up on because I grew up in a rural area and am familiar with the patterns. Her husband was military and I don’t think anyone she knows has an office job that is not customer service related.

I struggled at first to talk to her about setting boundaries because I didn’t know how to explain that the frequency and duration of her absences were in excess of the flexibility others in the team have to go to the dentist or a parent-teacher conference. What I settled on was coaching her to schedule her appointments for the very beginning or end of the day and to minimize the mid-day breaks because they seem to lead to mistakes in her work and inefficiency. I also told her that we understand things come up as emergencies, but she needs to have a backup plan.

In the case of the employee you describe, I would tell them to check their car the night before if needed. They should borrow or rent a car, ask for a ride, or take an Uber if they don’t have their car. If they are only in the office one day a week, they need to have a back up plan for childcare that day. 
[/quote]

Good for you for actually trying to understand and work with your employee. Nice to see. [/quote]

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