What can you do when a teammate assigned to "support" you ends up increasing your workload?
I’m a data scientist managing multiple deliverables. To reduce my workload, my manager assigned a junior teammate to support me. I was told to spend around 2 hours/day overseeing his work. However, this person requires frequent hand-holding, regularly forgets instructions, and often delivers work that has to be redone. I've started posting task instructions in our team group chat, as suggested by my manager, to create a clear record and aid accountability. After a few weeks, I expected him to be self-sufficient but hes not. And the extra management overhead is increasing my workload, not reducing it. What’s the best way to structure work or communication in a case like this, where a support resource is underperforming and creating more friction than help? Are there strategies others have used to preserve bandwidth in this kind of setup? And yes these issues are already being surfaced, right now I am interested in mitigation strategies.
I’m a data scientist managing multiple deliverables. To reduce my workload, my manager assigned a junior teammate to support me. I was told to spend around 2 hours/day overseeing his work. However, this person requires frequent hand-holding, regularly forgets instructions, and often delivers work that has to be redone. I've started posting task instructions in our team group chat, as suggested by my manager, to create a clear record and aid accountability. After a few weeks, I expected him to be self-sufficient but hes not.
And the extra management overhead is increasing my workload, not reducing it.
What’s the best way to structure work or communication in a case like this, where a support resource is underperforming and creating more friction than help? Are there strategies others have used to preserve bandwidth in this kind of setup?
And yes these issues are already being surfaced, right now I am interested in mitigation strategies.
