Your largest problem is that your director isn’t supporting you. I would go to the director and explain that while you want to do everything you can to help employees get a head, the fact still remains that you have business needs that aren’t being met, then ask “Can you help us with a viable solution?” That puts the ball in the director’s court. If the director then tells you to come up with your own solution, explain that you will gladly allow the employee to contribute to work outside of her duties once her departmental duties are complete, but that her current job duties must be the priority for the organization to run efficiently. You need to have a conference with the employee to remind her of her duties and explain in no uncertain terms that those duties come first and that if she is unwilling to perform them that you have written a recommendation for her to find employment elsewhere - and then hand her a hard copy of that recommendation.
I am suspecting the AA has gone behind your back and talked to other employees (maybe your director, also?) about her desire to take on other tasks and get away from her AA responsibilities. Your director has unfortunately undercut your authority. You need to have a frank conversation with your director and work out a solution. Then you both need to speak with the AA and be clear on her duties. If she doesn’t like her job, that’s her problem, not yours. She needs to do the job she was hired for.
Excellent insight, @tutumom2001. The director isn’t improving the organization by developing one employee at the expense of two others with greater responsibilities.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to change office procedures to accommodate one employee, unless it will work to the organization’s benefit regardless of who holds the job.
If the learning curve for this job is more than 2 years, I can’t think that it is all that menial. Some of it has to be challenging.
I had an employee who complained that ‘all I do is customer complaint letters.’ I had to point out to her that I did my share of the responses to complaints too, but they were tasks that I could delegate to her. I was the attorney, and some of the work had to be done by me so she got more of the routine assignments.
i think the answer is that all the work has to come through her supervisor (your cohort), and that she can’t take assignments directly from others in the office. Period. Her supervisor should stress that the other tasks must be done first, but that she’ll try to assign some ‘fun’ things too. Your director has to be on board with this and agree others cannot offer her assignments directly. Honestly, if someone on the level of your director (say a dean or dept head) came up to you constantly asking you to do things for them (give a talk, plan an event, special requests for paperwork review), even if you enjoyed those tasks, wouldn’t your director be pissed if she then had to do your regular tasks or they just didn’t get done?
I think your director should realize that you do want to employ your students/former students, but if they are unwilling to do the job, next time you’ll hire ‘off the street’ and not an insider. If you had hired a non-artist to answer the phones and do some paperwork, this might not be a problem.
I second @twoinanddone 's comments, especially the final paragraph.
Since you mention that YOU are also doing filing and other similar tasks, can’t you just give her more work to do that would take it off your shoulders? She really shouldn’t have any time to be stolen by other employees.
“This has become enough of an issue that we talked to our director. Apparently, the other employees had anticipated that this would be an issue, and they had already approached the director. The director informed us that she is of the opinion that this is all well & good. In my conversation with her yesterday, she said something that really got to me: “She is a graduate of our program. Surely, you don’t expect her to just sit and answer phones all day. She needs to be able to do the things that she wants to do, in order to develop herself.”
This does NOT seem to be about an employee who is without support doing something other than what she was hired for. It is an employee who got your boss ( I assume that the director is ) to fully approve a change in her responsibility because the director believes that this is appropriate. Your issue isn’t with the AA. She has every right to want a change in responsibilities and to see if she can get support for that in whatver way she can. ( In other words She doesn’t have a right to just do what she wants but she has the right to see if she can get someone to approve her doing so) If she had not been able to get that support she would be subject to firing. If the director thought the way she went about it was wrong she would be subject to firing.
But she got that support. And the director seems to have no problem with how this came about. She IS doing the job that people higher up than you have approved her to do. Do not act like she’s done something wrong. If there’s a problem with her doing that job or not doing other things because of the approval of her new responsibilities, you need to take it up with management as a problem with needing the assistance she used to provide but no longer can due to the change.
I believe that was the OP’s original concern.
Are the other employees who ask her to do work in the same department and budget? If not, you may be able to appeal to the Director that way, i.e., your budget is being used to fund the work of another department but with no hit to their budget.
@maya54 great insight! Frames the situation in a whole new light
We have approached the director to begin discussions, and part of the reason I wanted outside thoughts was to give us more to think about as we try to fix the situation. We certainly feel the director has undercut our authority, but we need to address that situation creatively - and there are suggestions here that will be helpful in that regard.
I also strongly agree with the idea that answering phones is not menial - my coworker & I consider it very important, as is answering emails. To be honest, having a graduate is a bonus, because knowing our program and being able to respond appropriately is a really good thing.
The reason that it takes so long to get to know the position is because so many things are here-and-gone due to the nature of the way a school like ours works … so doing things at least twice allows an employee to become confident in what that particular situation requires. The work is actually quite varied, and my coworker and I have never considered it to be all that awful. It’s more or less being framed that way by our director, though. This is a busy position, so it’s not that there is nothing to do. It’s not glamorous or sexy work, but it’s necessary to our operations.
Some of the new work being given is from the manager of a completely unrelated area that experienced a job cut this summer - they are framing it as on opportunity for this employee to learn new things, but we are being asked to allow her to be away from all of her responsibilities for periods of time to do this work (sort of an I-am-overworked-so-need-help-but-I-don’t-care-that-it-makes-more-for-work-for-you situation). Some of the work that others are putting on our AA is more of the kind of work she does for us - that is its own issue to be addressed. This same person giving the similar work has decided to take over something that is actually in both my coworker’s and my job description - and is trying to enlist our AA to do part of that work - again, another issue to address (people around here seem to be suddenly deciding that if they like something, they should be able to do it). My coworker & I also suspect what @chercheur brought up … a bit of behind-the-scenes positioning.
And when you finally see a post on CC about my new job, you’ll know why. 
I wasn’t aware @kelsmom that you and my H work for the same organization.
In his case, he’s not the one supervising. The supervisor wants everyone to like them and doesn’t want to be the bad guy. The supervisor does not want to solve any conflicts between people. The admin loves to go to the boss about any real or perceived slight. And there you go, the admin gets to work on what they want, when they want to.
Only 3 years 11 months to retirement, but who’s counting.
I know we don’t want to call “kids these days” snowflakes, but I have to say that there is definitely a different attitude with younger workers.
It doesn’t really sound like people are finding interesting and different tasks for this AA, it sounds like poaching.
I’m wondering if the OP could add to the occasional design work they give to the AA to answer the director’s point about giving her different tasks. That way, her work stays in the proper place at least.
Kelsmom, have you spoken to the employee to see how this is all coming about?
BTW: It occurs to me that you (@kelsmom) and the AA’s direct superviser may be viewed by the Director as old fogies who will never advance, while this bright young thing has soooooooo much potential.
This is a good question for Askamanager.org
If you are this person’s direct manager, then you would say "“Let me lay out what your role here is, and then we can talk about whether it’s the right fit for you.”
@kelsmom, Don’t you work at a college?
I work as an AA at a medium sized university. I have a B.S. in a technical field but took the AA job so I can return to school and change fields. I was hired as, and am receiving the pay of, an AA. I do many things but none of them are things I was trained for in college. I could certainly DO more, but it would cost them more than they’re willing to pay so I don’t.
I think your coworker is being taken advantage of. What are the graphic artists in your media department being paid? It’s going to be more than an admin makes. I’d find the job description closest to what she’s doing and ask her why she’s willing to settle for the pay of an admin for doing professional work.
If she’s doing work beyond the scope of an AA, she should be compensated for it, but I suspect she’s doing more than the other admins for the same pay. At our university that gets you nothing but more work. If you want a promotion or higher pay you have to go elsewhere. If it’s the same at your college she isn’t impressing anyone and she has nothing to gain but the ire of her co-workers. She’s annoying her immediate supervisors for not completing work and she’ll upset the other admins for taking on responsibilities that, in time, will probably be added to theirs with no extra pay. I don’t think she’s going to come out ahead here.
But just because your college won’t pay her what she’s worth it doesn’t mean another company won’t. She needs to know that. If she gets another job, you can hire a new admin. And if she settles for just asking for a raise (which I don’t believe she’ll get) she may not be satisfied with doing more than any other admin while being paid the same. At that point I think she’ll either quit doing the extra work or go look for a new job…possibly both. Either way, I think it helps you.
What @veryhappy says could be true. That’s why I would NOT put the ball in your boss’s court, you should position yourself as someone who wants to be part of the solution.
Customer service is important to the success of your institution and roles must be properly aligned for that to be handled well. IMO it’s wrong for the employee to seek out extra or different work when she’s not even performing all that well in her current job. Her first responsibility is to adequately fulfill the duties of the job she agreed to, and is being compensated for. If she’s not doing that well, why would the organization give her additional projects and/or responsibility? If she’s not doing her job well because it’s uninteresting or menial, that suggests a bad attitude which will show through in any job she has, and it’s tough to keep an employee like that around in a small, lean operation. And the other folks giving her work are stepping out of line as well.
Perhaps it’s time that one of you go to lunch with your employee and find out what their goals are.
And tell her what your goals are for the department and why she’s needed to make that happen…
I can see where having someone with background is a huge plus in this particular position. But that needs a boost in compensation over the “guy off the street” answering phones.
Don’t think we know this, her comp very well might reflect her education and any work experience she already.