my worker is simply too accommodating — Ask a Supervisor

I’m having a really backwards downside with one among my workers, Jill, being too accommodating and self-sacrificing.

We now have common hours that we work, however it’s not unusual for hours to wish to alter when one thing comes up. Everyone seems to be conscious of this after they come onboard, and we do our greatest to rotate who has to remain late. Everybody appears fairly content material with how issues work so long as there may be equal division of time beyond regulation. Jill, nonetheless, will usually volunteer herself to work the longest hours to take essentially the most un-enjoyable a part of the work each single time. A number of my conversations with the workforce will go one thing like this:

Me: We now have a big new undertaking that’s simply been introduced it us and the shopper has put in a rush order, so we’re actually going to wish to push over the subsequent few days.

Jill: I’ll do it!

Me: That’s okay, you probably did it final time, plus you’re going to be on trip the subsequent couple of days. We’ll see if we are able to get another person to deal with it earlier than we come to that.

Jill: No want, I’ll do it. I’ll cancel my trip instantly!

And the subsequent factor I do know, Jill has put in a request to cancel her day off and has already instructed the others they’ll go on dwelling and he or she’ll keep late. She does this even when I inform her to attend! In any given month, there are at the very least a couple of instances the place Jill volunteers herself to remain late, work by way of lunch, cancel scheduled day off, and even do another person’s work for them to allow them to go away early. Jill doesn’t appear upset about all the additional work or cancelling day off, and her work is all the time nicely thought-out and glorious.

However I have no idea how one can inform her to please again off and allow us to distribute the additional duties a bit extra! Asking her to cancel a trip could be an absolute final resort for me, not a primary and even second alternative.

I’ve had one speak with Jill the place I defined it’s okay for her to permit others to do the additional work. All through our dialog, she saved insisting to me that she didn’t thoughts and that she was completely satisfied to assist in any method wanted. Our speak ended up not being far more than me saying “you don’t should do it each time” and her saying “I don’t thoughts!” After that, her conduct didn’t actually change.

I’d like to deal with this once more as a result of it merely isn’t truthful to Jill, however I’m struggling to give you a greater solution to phrase it. I suppose I might “pull rank” and ban her from engaged on sure issues, however that appears too harsh for this example. Any concepts on how one can higher deal with this?