Busybody Employee

Durango64

Not sure how to shorten this up..

We have a design professional on staff who is driving me crazy. He's good at design but a little sloppy...makes mistakes on some of his drawings and documentation and certainly does not like working over 40hrs a week. I'm thinking he spends too much time looking at what everyone else is doing and not enough time on his own job. (I worked with him for 6 years).

The problem is: he seems to be overly interested in what is happening on the shop floor. He is nosy about the work schedules and morale of the production employees, etc. He is not the only one who likes to focus on the production workforce. I assume because it's the largest division in our company and bears the burden of meeting forecasted product ship dates.

At a recent production team meeting in which all depts are represented, I finally had to address the group and, in more diplomatic wording, tell these people to basically MYOB when it comes to HR issues outside of their depts, unless it's something of an extremely urgent nature or a blatant safety violation.

The following day, this guy is overheard in the shop employee's lunch room telling them everything that was discussed and decided upon at the previous day's meeting. The minutes have not even been approved yet! We post the minutes 1-2 days after a meeting for all shop floor ee's to read. The prod. SV was a little frustrated to hear him informing her direct reports of what was coming before she even had a chance to.

How do I deal with this guy? I've talked to his supervisor who tends to get defensive and HIS SV, my peer, another VP, who acknowledges the problem. I don't want to drive the design guy out because he is a valuable EE, but he needs to 'stay home'.

help?

Don D

Deja Vu for me Durango! I mentioned on the Forum recently that we have an engineer who is of the same mentality. He thinks he has some moral obligation to involve himself in all sorts of HR related issues on the plant floor. I handled it head-on with him the first time he presented his problem side to me (I've been at this job 9 months). I told him in no uncertain terms that he has no responsibility for or obligation to interract with or champion employee "issues". I told him that his only obligation, as soon as the issues surface, is to advise the employee that they should take it up with either their immediate supervisor or the HR department, and advised him that I do not need 'roving ombudsmen' to assist the HR Department. He took a bit more maintenance on this issue than I want to detail on The Forum; but, long story short, he has not repeated his behaviors. If he does, I will deal again head on with it and write him up the second time. But, I think he understands the drill clearly and will perhaps do what he was hired to do now. We don't manage people. We manage personalities, and his is a special type that requires a special and direct type of management. You can't dance around a personality like this.

mbeam

Sounds to me like someone who likes to be in the know and needs to feel important by disclosing information that isn't public knowledge to the public.

What are his long-term career goals? Sounds to me like someone who is more of an extrovert in an introverted position.

Would also point out that his very behavior could be having the exact opposite effect that he's hoping for - becoming known as the company busybody or gossip will do nothing but harm his career. Have seen where people have hitched themselves too closely to an individual then watched their star crash & burn when that person left because they were no longer as valuable as they believed themselves to be....

Whatever

I would suggest you, also, focus on the quality of his work. If he is sloppy, start documenting.

Durango64

Thanks everyone for taking the time to share your thoughts. Simply seeing my concerns validated has made my morning much better. I will use each response in some form to deal with this. I just needed some direction.

Thanks again and Happy Friday!