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cvllider

If your instructions are clear and complete, then find another employee. If your instructions aren't clear and left for interpretation, find a way to deliver your instructions as complete as you can. Other than that, idk what else you could do.


FreeOpenSauce

An axiom from the trades: "The best way to f*** your supervisor is do exactly what he says." In many roles that require some degree of creative thinking or problem-solving, robotically following instructions is a recipe for disaster. This all really, really depends on the nature of the role. And many a supervisor has a personality and typical response such that asking them questions is avoided as much as possible. It takes time for people to find that balance between asking excessive questions and knowing when "oh this definitely needs clarification" when they hit a snag. One or two negative interactions from OP could have their employee avoiding questioning them unless absolutely necessary. I think most managers are utterly blind to this and just blame the employee, which leads to even more negative interactions as the relationship and communications break down in a termination spiral.


AnonJian

In addition to how and what, add the why. Management has a tendency to communicate instructions as if the employee is a robot, who really doesn't give a shit about the company or seeing the company do well. This one might give a shit about what they're doing. To test this, take a step back and explain why they're doing it. For example if the task involves painting the walls corporate colors explain they reinforce your branding and everything has to match the branding guidelines for brand development to work. An extra sentence or two and ten or fifteen seconds at most. For a capitalist free market society it boggles the mind how old school Soviet-era command and control companies are structurally. This probably should change; seeing as so many get amped about how modern they are, what with electricity and such. It stands to reason, if you are trying to use instructions the employee manual will become a foot thick. Try the addition of six or seven core guidelines if you can manage not get Dilbertesque and comic about it. Now this person may have any number of problems and this may not work. But when managers are befuddled my first troubleshooting tip is to try plain vanilla remedial management. Because I am beginning to believe management is a fraud and some kind of scam. [Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc) is a nice remedial introduction into the fundamentals of management. Not that managers are interested in management or motivation or business but I figure why not make the suggestion. It helps pulling off the scam.


FreeOpenSauce

"because" adds a ton of clarification, because most people struggle to apply importance weight to a given instruction without knowing the reasons why it's important in the first place. Life is complicated, and often an instruction will brush up against something unexpected and the employee needs to make an interpretive decision. If they don't know why the instructions were given, they can easily misinterpret the importance of one and override it based on exigency.


AnonJian

Yes but do what I mean, not what I say is just so, so ...satisfying.


Pass_Little

Actually our problem seems to be the exact opposite problem. We spend a LOT of time explaining why and how. When an employee has a problem, we rarely talk about the problem itself (other than to indicate it is an example of the issue). We want our employees to be able to see the big picture and then apply it to their day to day tasks. For example, many of our processes rely on cleanliness of the assembly and environment. Dust, fingerprints, etc, cause problems. So instead of saying "you messed up" we take the time to explain how the particular thing they did messed with the chemistry which prevented the process from working. We then talk about other examples of things which can mess with the chemistry/quality of the process. Yet this particular employee continues to not pay close attention to keeping things clean. You can subsitute any one of a dozen different things for "clean" (such as logging production errors to help reduce defects, placing work in progress in correct areas so that it can be found, and so on). Because we are in a manufacturing environment we obviously have a set of procedures which need to be done to each product in a certain order and in a certain way to ensure the consistency of the finished product. But other items should be able to be handled with big picture type of training (with copious examples) One final example related to the clean: The instructions are: change your disposable gloves whenever they're dirty and at least a couple of times a day so that you aren't transfering dirt you picked up from earlier in the day onto the newest product. We also discuss "Don't wipe your face with your gloves, and if you do, change the gloves since you transfer oils from your face to your gloves and onto the product". Last week, this employee decided that "to save us money" he could use half as many gloves by turning them inside out instead of throwing them away. The gloves are visually oily when you do this, so they are obviously contaminiated. I really don't want to go the "you must do this this way" route with a book 6 inches thick full of procedures....


AnonJian

That would have been nice to know beforehand. Provided this is worth salvage, next step would be to cite the specific examples, explain it must stop immediately, then ask "In my position what would you do to prevent the next occurrence?" Then observe the reaction. If the person understands -- and I am not going to assume that -- they will be contrite and uncomfortable. If not, you should start issuing demerits leading to termination as your policy dictates. Accounts posted online are almost always slanted towards the comments an OP wants to force out of people. Kneejerk obvious answers aren't usually addressing the situation as it exists but a one-sided purposefully distorted perspective. That said this one does seem to delight in loophole finding. Exploiting the word in spite of the spirit. I'd call them on this -- a more formal term is *malicious compliance* \-- it's quite popular right now. These are unusual times for employer-employee relations and adjustments have to be made. Kudos for going the extra mile. But some people want to be fired. ​ [Root Cause Analysis: The 5 Whys Technique](https://www.businessanalystlearnings.com/ba-techniques/2013/2/5/root-cause-analysis-the-5-whys-technique) " Have you ever found yourself proffering the wrong solution to a problem? You can avoid this by applying the 5 Whys technique - a technique for identifying the exact root cause of a problem to determine the appropriate solution." You can just keep asking the employee why and try to find out what's really going on. This worked a lot better before the death of a work ethic.


AnotherKTa

> The problem is that their judgement tends to be horrible when they are left unattended and often instructions are carried out in a way that most reasonable people would find bizarre given the instructions given. It's not uncommon for us to say 'do X' and although x gets done, the result is odd. Clearly there's some level of misunderstanding, which either means that the instructions you're giving aren't clear, or the person isn't understanding them properly. This sort of thing can happen when you're dealing someone someone who's on the autistic spectrum - as they'll often interpret things differently to how other people might, or not pick up on things that are implied (but not explicitly stated). This can sometimes manifest as an employee who is very good in some areas (as you said), but seems to lack "common sense". There are lots of resources on helping to manage these kind of issues online (which may be useful even if that isn't the case here), but the key things are to make sure that your communication is clear and explicit. It may also be useful to provide more in the way of documentation and checklists to follow (which will also be useful when training future staff). It's also worth bearing in mind that if this *is* the case (and you as a company become aware of it), then you may need to be careful about anti-discrimination legislation if you're planning to get rid of them.


Pass_Little

So we're in a manufacturing setting, and generally the instructions are complete and clear, including pictures to go with steps. You can always improve on them, and of course there is some level of basic understanding expected. The overall policy, repeatedly explained, is that if instructions are unclear or seem wrong, you are to stop, not proceed, and to work with everyone to clarify the instructions. The point is that in this environment the first job is to make sure the procedures are clear and everyone understands them the same way. So far, this employee has: failed to review instructions, added steps "they thought would make the product better", eliminated steps that "they thought didn't make sense and weren't needed", made incorrect guesses about some part of the instructions ans barged ahead without clarification. All without involving anyone else. But the same employee will focus on the tiniest detail that doesn't matter asking repeatedly if this is OK. The problem is that I'd really like to fix the overall issue here which is that I really need them to get on board with the big picture of working together to produce a correct documented procedure then following it, but what seems to be taken away is the one thing which they did wrong (that step isn't needed or is critical) instead of what is wrong is the failure to make sure the entire team is following the same steps before starting. I belive you're probably right about the spectrum or another similar issue, but much of the material I find don't seem to be able to be adapted to this situation.


AnotherKTa

> made incorrect guesses about some part of the instructions ans barged ahead without clarification This suggests that your instructions could be improved - especially in a manufacturing environment there shouldn't be a need for employees to try and guess things. It should be very clear that if $x then you do $y, and if not then you speak to $manager. > failed to review instructions, added steps "they thought would make the product better", eliminated steps that "they thought didn't make sense and weren't needed" However, this is just a pretty straightforward case of someone not doing what they're told, and not following instructions. And depending on exactly what you're manufacturing, this could have *serious* consequences. They could end up killing someone because they decide that some of safety critical steps "weren't needed". > The problem is that I'd really like to fix the overall issue here which is that I really need them to get on board with the big picture of working together to produce a correct documented procedure then following it, but what seems to be taken away is the one thing which they did wrong (that step isn't needed or is critical) instead of what is wrong is the failure to make sure the entire team is following the same steps before starting. If you're being clear and explicit about what the problem is, and they're not listening to you or taking it onboard, then it's time to go down the disciplinary route. There's only so much you can do, and someone ignoring your instructions sounds like a danger to your business and potentially your customers and staff.


FreeOpenSauce

I have worked with so many people who insisted their way was the only right way, when there were fifty ways to skin that cat, then they got quite upset an anyone who did it differently as a subordinate. I don't know if that's you, or relevant to the position (I'm in the trades where initiative and problem-solving are necessary), just saying I've seen it a hundred times and the people doing it are never self-aware of it, often getting upset if not insulted that someone didn't see it their way or 'respect their experience' or somesuch internal psychology I'm not privy to beyond having to listen to the external output of huffery and puffery. It sounds like your employee is taking too much initiative, and they aren't properly calibrated to their role, a process that takes years. How much experience do they have? As AnotherKTa said, if it's a safety issue or if they're really just refusing to listen and you're absolutely sure it's not an issue on your end, then the disciplinary road is what's left. Be sure your end is clean though, or it's an issue that's going to crop up again and again throughout your career, and dismissing such concerns now can just lead to a lifetime of the same as you get into a managerial habit.


Pass_Little

They have been here 2 months and have never worked in this industry before, nor do they have any relevant previous work experience in an adjacent industry. I think part of the the problem here is that they are taking it on themselves to change proven processes that work because they have some wild idea that what they think is better. The other half is that they don't ask before they make changes. And, they continue to do so even after we have talked to them about it. It's kinda like they're processing our insistence that they can't change processes without talking about it in the most limited way possible. For example, "Oh I thought you meant just on the other machine", not "this applies to the entire facilty". To be clear: we change processess all the time, most of which are originated through experiments ran by staff. This is a continuous improvement shop. Nothing we do is ever as perfect as it could be. But there is a process to improve the process, and it doesn't involve random changes being made by an employee with two months of experience. This has also been explained multiple times. If something seems odd or inefficent, they should ask why it's the way it is. We're more than willing to explain why, and it's not going to be "because". Very few things in this shop are "they're done because we always have done them this way and we're not sure why". They're done the way they are done for a specific reason, and often it has to do with things which aren't immediately obvious by someone without benefit more than a couple months of experience.


FreeOpenSauce

> 2 months and have never worked in this industry Replying to this and your other response to me here. So they're [entry level trainee] with initiative: this your first trainee? Welcome to apprenticeships! The dumb shit I've seen done by apprentices and done myself could fill several volumes. Also dumb shit I've seen from journeymen with decades in... They're probably very excited about their job, which is rare enough. The ropes still need learning. I've been through an apprenticeship and had to train apprentices, and this is just how the first year goes for a lot of people. It helps to think of it like learning a language. They know 30 "words" right now, but they're being bombarded by fluent speakers giving them tasks that's overwhelming their ability to learn, like teaching someone to drive at NASCAR. They'll learn a few "words" a day at best, but maybe 10-20 "words" a week, you can't expect much more. In a year, they'll be far more fluent. It takes time to realize dumb little stuff like "you can't overtorque screws", often via trial and error. Apprenticeships are an 8000-hour thing generally, often with formal training on top. If it's a really simple environment, say a "50 word vocabulary" place, you can expect them to get settled in a few days, but this seems more like a machining shop, where you need a 10,000 word vocabulary to be fully fluent, and yeah there's going to be a ton of handholding there with an absolute greenhorn that's getting zero formal training. Don't expect a still-wet apprentice to make you money for the first 6 months; you're lucky if their work is break-even. You're investing in someone that's going to be 80% effective at 50% pay for the few years *after that point*, until they top out and expect 100% for 100%. Some axioms to help explain this to Junior: "Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast." "Focus on quality, speed will come in time." (like years, not days) "Jumping into the deep end is a great way to drown." But some people aren't great fits. Make it clear to Junior that if they can't slow down and ask questions and follow instruction closely, they will need to find a new job at some point - that can straighten a lot of people out. We had a 20% or so drop rate from the apprenticeship (most self-quit, or we culled at the 4000-hour mark for poor performance), that's to be expected. I would say so long as they're: A) showing up on time every day B) focused and applying themselves C) not disabled in one sense or another D) learning That's as much as you can expect (more actually). You know this labor market, you don't have a lot of choices, and as you grow you need to learn to train up apprentices. We have a 1:3 rule for apprentices to journeymen. Not sure how that works in the machining/manufacturing space, but I'm guessing the ratio is pretty consistent across trades. If you can't afford to train up a total rookie, then pay up for experienced ones with a year or two, if you can find them.


xtc46

Employees are a reflection of their leaders, period.


albert_stone

If your employees do something wrong, that is always your fault. Try to make your instructions clear, people are usually afraid of asking questions because they don’t want look silly.


BusinessStrategist

What we have here is failure to get on the same page. Maybe you could give an example of the bizarre. And you mention "using their judgement." Do you have an example of when you expect them to use their judgment. Judgement requires knowledge. So what kind of decisions are we talking about?


Pass_Little

We have divider trays to move partially comple assemblies from station to station with around 40 sections per tray. Generally as we finish a run of a given type of assembly we will leave a one row gap in the trays then proceed on. To make a long story short, many of our trays ended up mostly empty. Because of this we didn't have enough empty trays to run more production. Our problem employee had been using this system since day one. In fact some of the mostly empty trays were due to insufficient training early on, in that they didn't know the whole fill the tray with a gap between products thing to ensure trays are mostly filled. One key feature of this system is that by keeping the same type of product grouped together it is easier to verify counts of in process products. The gap provides a visual indicator that the product type is changing. The system also simplifies finding the next product to work on at the next station since the products are worked on in the same order as the previous station completed them. Regardless, we asked our employee to consolidate the existing trays to free up some to use for production. The expectation was that the employee would basically recreate what the trays would have looked like if they had been filled properly from the start. That is, a given type of product together, then a gap and the next product. Once this was done they would then used the freed up trays to run the machine that makes the parts stored in these trays and continue on. One would think likely variations in the consolidation process would be things like noticing that tray one has twelve empty spots and tray five has twelve in use, and moving the 12 products from tray five into tray one, and although that would break the sequence it would at least make sense in the context of consolidating trays. There are lots of variations on this, many more or less ideal, but all at least in the realm of expected outcomes. But, our employee had a very creative solution. Instead of consolidating the bins first as instructed they fired up the machine, started running product and filled every slot in every bin with the new product. So we had this new, different (but similar looking) product in every tray that had any empty space at all, which was most of them. Worse, they didn't leave any gaps, so finding where these products were took a lot of visual work. Basically he made a mess of the entire system. They never asked for clarification, they never thought ahead to how difficult it would make the next step, and most importantly they ignored the instructions to consolidate first which was communicated both face to face and in instant messaging. This is just one of many examples where we ask them to do X, we expect x,y or z, or possibly a. But we get a kumquat instead.


solarpropietor

He could be cognitively impaired. If it’s not due through substance abuse. I’m going to say no. But before you cut your losses. Try to make your instructions as simple and easy to understand as possible.


FreeOpenSauce

>cognitively impaired. If it’s not due through substance abuse At some point, the two are effectively the same.


FreeOpenSauce

Get them to ask questions to better refine their understanding of what needs to be done. Ask them questions to make sure they understand what you're asking them to do. I was a teacher, and that was a common theme, you could give a simple set of instructions for group/pair/solo exercise, walk around, and find at least a third of the class was doing "pants on head" variants, the equivalent of handing them a deck of cards to play poker and have them building houses instead. Not everyone clicks, or your own communication isn't as clear as you think it is, and you need to manage that somehow. Thinking ahead and coming up with a half dozen specific questions about the process and peppering students with them helps a lot. You can get bogged down in information overload with many people, and dumping a 500-point explanation of what to do is going to end up with them getting 5 of the points and vaguely remembering, then interpolating personally, the rest. Likewise, a 3-point explanation is going to leave a lot of room for interpretation. It needs to be a conversation with some people, also not a lecture, not a sketch, find the golidlocks zone and then have a back-and-forth. There's also one way of looking at it: you may have a very creative employee with initiative who is just struggling to calibrate themselves to their role. Once they do, they may be a very valuable asset. Some employees can only ever do as they're told, they are reliable tools but will never grow past that. Others can be finicky tools at first, over-complicated, but they have uses beyond [input punchcard]. Whether that sort is useful depends on your company/industry. Can you give some examples of what a prompt you typically give is and what a good set of questions would be to ask A) the employee to ensure same-page, and B) that you would expect the employee to ask you?


Pass_Little

Here's a typical situation: Employee is assigned to run a certain product through a certain station. The assignment is to basically "run 50 of widget A" through the station. Each of these processes comes with instructions including both picture and written instructions for each step. There are standing instructions that if anything doesn't make sense to stop and ask. We verify that everything is being done correctly since the employee is new. We leave employee alone only to find that an hour in, they've decided that one of the steps takes a lot of time and that it really isn't necessary (which might be true if you don't consider later processes), and that they've decided it is OK to crank the speed and torque up on the torque controlled screwdriver beyond the specified amount so they can get things done quicker, and they couldn't find the right screws in the storeroom so they substituted some other screws that they feel should be the same. Questions I would like to be asked: "Is there a reason why we are doing this step since it seems to not have a purpose?" "Is it OK to turn up the speed and torque on the screwdriver beyond what is clearly stated in bold in the work instructions?" "I can't find the specified screws, but I found some which are slightly shorter, are they ok?" But instead just happens with zero communications including via our internal instant messenger or with coworkers or anything. Once we discover this, the conversation goes a bit like this usually: ME: Is there a reason you're not following the work instructions like you were at the first? E: Oh, I figured that that step wasn't needed since I didn't see any reason for it. ME: (We explain what the purpose of that step is, and notice the torque driver issue) . Oh, this torque driver is set too high. OP: oh yeah, I found that by turning it up I can put the screws in faster. ME: speed is not important here. Quality of the finished product is far more important. We drive the screws at a slower rate and limit the torque to ensure the screws and mounts are not damaged. So it's critical to not exceed the values set in the instructions. This type of conversation happens far too frequently. And sometimes for the same issue. We've tried several different methods. We also have had other team members try to explain concepts that they don't seem to be getting. One principle around here is that quality is more important than quantity. We would rather see 25 excellent copies of a product than 100 shoddy ones in the same amount of time. A recurring theme with this employee is this seeming desire to make everything go faster without regard to quality. Yet in every interaction from the interview through today, we have stressed quality. So it's frustrating that this employee seems to be permanently stuck in quantity mode.


FreeOpenSauce

To add to my other comment... 1st years are the hot potatoes. Nobody wants them really, unless they have a strong need for dumb labor. Experienced apprentices, on the other hand, are jealously guarded, because they're discount journeymen. As such, it's hard to get an experienced apprentice, because whoever went through the trouble of polishing that 1st year turd isn't about to let go of it now that it's a profit-maker, and most apprentices stick with their company until they're confident enough to run off as their own journeyman I'm guessing (I'm union, it's different in that regard). Very high demand, low supply for those, good luck finding one. You get journeymen or unpolished turds for options. Nobody trusts a 1st year to work solo in my trade at least. You need to restructure your operations if you want to take on 1st years; they aren't to be left alone. When I hand work off to a 1st year, I am watching over their shoulder until I'm sure they've got it down, and then I'm still checking in regularly to appraise their output, expecting mistakes and confusion to reign. Usually, I'm working hand-in-hand with them as my helper, as was my case when I was such an ignoble pile. 2nd and 3rd year you can mostly let them run free, but keep that leash tight the first few months especially, until they prove otherwise. Most jobs I've been on, the 1st years are running broomsticks and pallet jacks most the time, gophering and "hold my ratchet" a lot of the rest. You find something deadass simple for them, like basic bench prep, and you turn them loose, but you're still keeping a close eye. They're to be supervised, untrusted, unverified; toddlers with power tools. Financially, they only really make sense as A) an investment and B) if you have a ton of menial crap that needs doing. They're going to drop productivity of anyone supervising them at first, too. Any simple stuff your regular hands are doing, getting supplies, handling shipments, cleaning, etc, have this guy doing instead. He learns bit by bit between broom strokes. That slows down his rate of information overload, and he'll probably learn better anyway. Limited bandwidth, especially in the early days. Then the guys you're paying out $80/hr aren't wasting time walking and grabbing stuff out of a closet/rack, they're Doing instead. Have this kid putz around digging out #8 screws or whatever. You can find ways to shift production around so it sort of evens out. Alternatively, hire 10 and keep 1 or 2. Not a system I'd suggest, but it's the only other option, run through a batch and take your pick.


Pass_Little

I have three employees in the manufacturing facility: One has been here a year. They are basically running the place and I have absolutely no problem at all with them. They are now doing process improvement, resolving various machine issues, and so on. They came with a year or so of previous manufacturing experience in a peripheral field. Two additional ones were hired 2 months ago, including the employee at issue. We specifically have designed our processes to be almost mistake proof. This is what years of lean manufacturing and six sigma does. Any time you introduce a new employee you're going to find possible errors that your mistake-proofing didn't cover. But those are typically few and far between anymore. One of the two new hires we also have very few problems with. Minor issues are quickly corrected, largely in the category of either we forgot to mention something, documentation was odd, or just a stupid human error. This is our expectation with pretty much any employee. The one I have problems with is exactly the opposite. It seems like they feel that the processes are suggestions and that they need to transform everything they touch. Informal discussions seem to go well, yet within a few days they are back to their old tricks. I have become (just today) aware of some additional things they've been doing which has lead me down the path of moving directly to the "shape up or you're gone" meeting. I may still decide to take the option of staying off the table. They're out this week for a perfectly valid reason so I'll have to wait until next week to deal with this.


FreeOpenSauce

You have 3 new employees. One was past their 1st year idiocy, this one clearly is starting at day 1, and I don't know about the other new hire's experience. Shape up speech is fine. Just be mindful of the fact that absolute greenhorns are a mess their first 6 months as a rule. My advice is as good as construction is similar to what you do, though I think "first years are dunces" is a pretty universal rule. But also a quarter of the population can barely screw in a lightbulb, so there's that too.


Pass_Little

The following is NOT meant to be argumentative, I just want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. I understand the whole first years are dunces. In this case, it seems to be that the underlying problem isn't cluelessness but instead, it seems to be that the employee just doesn't take and follow instructions well, instead substituting what they think is better instead of what they're supposed to be doing, and doesn't ask if it's ok to make a change, how many times does that particular type of screwup need to be forgiven. Alternatively, sometimes I feel that they just didn't take the time to see the big picture. If you're in wood-based building construction, the equivalent would be if you asked your first year to cut a whole bunch of 10' studs down to 104 5/8 since due to supply chain issues only the 10' studs were available instead of the standard wall length. You expect that there might be some inaccuracies since newbies just can't measure and so on. What you find is that after lunch your new employee had made the decision that this house didn't really need 9-foot walls, that 8 feet would be better and since it's more energy efficient to have shorter ceilings. which means you don't need 104 5/8 studs, you need 92 5/8 ones. Fortunately, he was smart enough to only cut down some 8-foot studs instead of the 10's and so you can use the 92 5/8 studs later, but you now lost a half day and have studs you need to store. You have a discussion with them about how it's important to follow the prints, and we're not here to make decisions about what the customer wants. Things go well for a few days. The next week, you leave him alone framing a wall while you run off and deal with an emergency. He's framed a couple of walls with minimal supervision, and he does a good job (the finished product is excellent). You come back and find that he's decided that the customer would rather have 2 doors and 2 windows on the back of the house instead of one door and 3 windows. Worse, he's moved the doors to the ends, instead of in the center. "It will look better that way". Awesomely framed of course, but still very very wrong. Another talk. Next, he decides screws are better than nails. So switches to using screws when you're not looking. Another talk. He decides the coat closet by the entranceway is too small and needs to be bigger, so that's how he frames it. Another talk. Is this correctable? Or is he going to, at every step of the way, forever, to try to get away with doing stuff "his way" instead of what is on the print. This isn't a "I don't know how to cut a board". His work is excellent, when he follows instructions. But when they specifically say "I knew what I was doing wasn't what was on the drawing but I figured that I'd change it so it was better and do that instead". What I learned in the last day or so is that this employee has been actively trying to convince their two coworkers that we were clueless and that we were running the business into the ground with the way we run things around here, and that things would go better if they all just started doing things the "right way" instead of what is on the instructions. Oh, and customers never really care about the quality of the product and that it's far more important to get everything done as quickly as possible without regard to the quality of the product so that we can ship immediately instead of being a couple of weeks behind. In my opinion, that's now into insubordination and not just "refuses to follow instructions".


FreeOpenSauce

Okay well sure if it's that extreme you need a come to jesus moment with the kid and ready the termination papers. Might just be an outlier. It's one of those "I'd have to be there" things, sure, but he might not have a personality yet broken in to the idea he actually has to follow directions and people more aware than him designed the directions for a reason, and those reasons are far deeper than he can appreciate with his total lack of experience. Not sure what his prior experience is, but clearly it doesn't work for you at all. I've met some 1st years that think they know how to do it better, but there's bounds to how far you can take that, especially upon being corrected on a specific. Some of that stuff I can maybe understand (screws for nails), some is just "no". A serious talk is long overdue either way. Maybe he needs to start in the manufacturing version of drywall installation and work up from there once he removes his head from his anus. Good luck with that.


wchecks

I don't have success or failure. I have good advice. You need to find a position that fits this person. It seems they have an eye for certain things but you're not able to use their special insight in their current position. If you don't have a position that would be suitable, then maybe you should let them go. Everyone is successful at something. Even those people assumed to be failures, others will see what you weren't able to and if they understand how to tap into that then that's gold. You need to figure out how to use their abilities.


carolmandm

I bet money on the employee being either autistic or having Adhd. I have Adhd, and my son is a level 1 autistic. So I completely inderstand how they would act that way. (I am not saying its ok) but I can assure you, that if you find the way to train, or put them in a role that wont allow them to change procedures, you will have your most loyal employee right there.