Coworker problem; advice requested? ?
Can someone offer me a little advice as to what to do/how to approach this scenario?
Quick story: My coworker is sloppy at editing the newsletters that go out under my name. If I don’t catch an error, I’m the one who gets into major hot water. Instead of letting this go any longer, I’m headed to our manager tomorrow to discuss this problem. However, I’m timid to appraoch it as I (1) haven’t spoken with this coworker about the issue and (2) know that I really should be the one to be sure the mistakes are found before sending the newsletters out for review. However, something must change with this situation, and I don’t know what should change.
For more information, read below.
Background: I put out four monthly newsletter for my company – three go to our subsidiaries and one is for internal purposes only. For nearly a year, newsletters were created in In Design and sent as a PDF through email.
When our web designer quit, we hired a new gal who is fun to work with but really not as highly qualified. However, she best fit our work environment and our team. She’s now in charge of the newsletters as they have all gone to eNewsletter form.
Situation: It’s becoming painfully apparent that she doesn’t double check her work. She’ll send me newsletters that really are full of spacing issues, incorrect copy and paste jobs, etc. Usually I catch them all before I send it on for further review.
However, this time she really has messed up. She copy and pasted something very wrong. Thankfully our review board caught it, but I’m frustrated with this situation.
1) It’s my fault for not catch it – I could make excuses but I won’t. I should have caught it. Thankfully someone did.
2) It’s her fault for not editing her work before sending it on – I won’t lie; she’s just sloppy. When we were doing our newsletters in In Design, it took 2 days to layout the final text and complete reviews. Now it’s taking 4-5 days before of all the corrections.
It’s coming down to the fact that she’s
A) ignorant to the issues and the situation.
B) always whining about not having enough to do and coming to me for assignments; I’m her peer, not her manager
C) obviously having issues successfully transferring the Word text to Dreamweaver. I have done everything I can, par from directly writing “Article 1″ and “Article 2″ to make it obvious where an article starts and ends.
I’m going to my manager tomorrow, but I’m still stuck as to what to say. I know that my manager is tough on letting mistakes, even though she herself lets them slide through and does many herself. If I make a mistake, regardless of the significance, it’s a big deal.
So I am going in with a few mindsets:
1) Something needs to change; I don’t know if I just need to go over the newsletter line by line and compare it to the original text. I don’t know. I don’t know if we need to go to a third party such as Constant Contact.
2) How do we go about fixing this problem in the future? Obviously this coworker needs to start stepping up to the plate. My job is to write the text; her job is to make it so I can email it to our clients as an enewsletters.
3) It shouldn’t take so long to successfully turn text into an eNewsetter. We aren’t talking about a magazine here. We’re talking about MAYBE 1000 words, max, in the entire eNewsletter.
I just don’t know. I think I’m going around in circles with my frustration about this issue. If this were just me being sloppy, fine. I’ll own up to that. But because it feels like I have to babysit our new grad and her sloppiness, I just don’t know what to do.
Talk to the manager?
Leave it alone and be careful next time?
Talk to coworker (not looking forward to this; she’s stubbon and more willing to put the blame on someone else then own up to it)?
Does anyone have any idea?
Yes, I think I knew that the inevitable process of speaking to her was going to happen at some point. I think that know our relationship, I didn’t want that to fracture. However, it’s time to step up to the plate.
I should mention that I’m not escaping the blame here. I know that’s a lot to read (kudos if you do and it makes sense; my kids are screaming at the moment). However, I own up to my issues.
January 9th, 2010 at 4:40 am
I didnt read it all but it seems that you have a hand in the vetting process of the newsletter too so are at fault aswell. What I would do is talk to the co worker and say you have noticed alot of mistakes slipping past and suggest that before each one goes out you both sit down and double check everything. This will make her check it before it reaches you and also gives you both a chance to check it before it goes further.
January 11th, 2010 at 1:50 am
How do you expect her to improve if you don’t tell her what she is doing wrong? She is just happily copying and pasting, thinking she is doing her job. Talk to her about it. Let her know what to expect.
Or, be prepared to be the proofreader forever.
January 12th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
The young girl probably gets bored with routine work and goofs off. You might be able to seat her where her behaviour is visible to seniors. Is she able to phone friends while at work? It could be that she is not actually working most of the time. If she can be seen then she cannot goof off all the time.
All this is guesswork but after working for years I know what bored teens get up to!
January 15th, 2010 at 4:08 pm
Request from you boss that she be put on a standard of performance by HR. This will be a list of things that you will provide her in writing which details the areas where her work is deficient. She will be given 30 days to correct these issues. If she does not she will be terminated. There are too many good people available to have to babysit someone.
The only exception would be that you need to have given here sufficient training and you need to have warned her about these things before.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:13 am
when she says the work is done …tell her check again …i dont need problems….plz….and then she comes back ……make her sit with you and make her correct the mistakes in front of you ….this will make her feel responsible…….