<p>I think everyone is allowed to make a mistake once - sometimes even expensive mistakes - but they had better be really apologetic and they’d better not repeat it. I do think making your expectations clear is important. My husband frequently complains at how little time his grad students spend in the lab, but when I ask him he’s never told them that while flexible hours are fine they should be working x number of hours a week. It doesn’t help that they don’t see how many hours he puts in at home on lab/college business. </p>
<p>I remember working for a boss who told us at our regular Monday meetings that he expected more than 40 hour weeks from us. We had flexible hours, and since we were in Germany the office was deserted by 3pm on Fridays. We kept time sheets, but were on salary. </p>
<p>In general I think praise can come off badly, but positive feedback is important. The more specific the better.</p>
<p>In this case may I suggest rotating the work, with appropriate reviews by a third person. That is, one person may do one week of processing and one of underwriting. Or, is it possible to do the entire process from A to C as one person.</p>
<p>In either case some basic tracking tools will be valuable to track where everything is. Let’s say you get 10 loans per time period, and they all need processing and underwriting. Is it possible to give 5 each to each of the two workers and at some predefined steps of the process they check each others’ work (or you do). </p>
<p>Methinks it’s more of a work design / setup rather than anything else. If each person is responsible for A to B to C, but there are ‘gate reviews’ to make sure that everything is done properly, there will not really be the boring phase blues any more. If they’re not willing to do the ‘boring’ processing part, then a fireside chat may be in place. </p>
<p>Can an Administrative Assistant be hired to do the basic paperwork tasks associated with processing?</p>
<p>Fire incompetents. No mercy. I think you’ve been too nice to this worker who isn’t doing the job right and keeps asking for time off. (Of course I’ve only heard your side of the story. . .)</p>
<p>Turbo and Tom – both good ideas. I’m thinking of doing a processing checklist along with “gateways” (if I understand that process correctly) so that a file doesn’t go to point B if everything required in A to B hasn’t happened.</p>
<p>I try to tread very lightly on them because the job is stressful, but I think if I had more systems in place, their job might be easier.</p>
<p>Atomom – that’s almost where my head is at right now. I’m going to give her some more time – maybe a week or two – but we’re already interviewing other people. There’s also a complete passivity about the mistake – sort of a “so what? I did the other ones right” that concerns me.</p>
<p>Mathmom – you’re right about making expectations clear. I can also include that in the manual.</p>
<p>Ugh…if work was fun, they wouldn’t pay you to do it, right?</p>