how much should I monitor a struggling employee’s work hours?

A reader writes:

I’ve been working with a report who has had some troubles with organization — he would have dropped a few balls if I hadn’t spotted that he was missing things. I’ve given him some very direct feedback which he agreed with. He’s been working on some better organizational systems, but now I’m wondering if there’s more to the issues.

We’re all remote and have an online chat system that shows if you’re away from your desk for more than five minutes. And he is away … a lot. I hate that I’ve noticed this, because I don’t want to be micromanaging my team’s hours, but frequently I go to message him and find he’s been away for 20-30 minutes.

We work 9-5 and it’s reasonably flexible. If you have a doctor’s appointment or want to take a longer lunch, the expectation is that you mark it in your calendar and make the time up later. I also have no problem with people stepping away from their desk occasionally to deal with life or to get some thinking time. But there is a limit and I think he’s exceeding it.

As an example, he logged on 20 minutes late yesterday, took a 90+ minute lunch break and at least another half hour break that I noticed — and I’m obviously not monitoring him all the time. As far as I can tell, he’s not making the time up later, and he hasn’t mentioned any of this or put it in his calendar.

If he was a strong performer, I wouldn’t care! And I don’t want people to think they can’t flex their hours sensibly because they absolutely can. But this could be playing into the organizational issues if he’s missing things because he’s not spending enough time on them. Should it be part of the conversation? How do I raise it without sounding like I’m micromanaging his hours?

Yeah, I’d raise it — because while ultimately his work quality (meeting deadlines, not letting balls drop, etc.) is the issue, this sounds likely enough to be playing a role in what’s happening that it’s silly not to name it when it might speed up the whole process of figuring out if he’s going to work out in this job or not. Plus, he sounds pretty far over the line in terms of what kind of flexibility is appropriate for him to be taking. It’s not like you’re calling him out for his lunch running over by 10 minutes; you’re seeing significant and regular chunks of time missing from his work hours.

I would say it this way: “I’ve noticed that you’re away from your desk a lot more frequently than I’d expect. We do have some flexibility with hours, but the expectation is that if you have an appointment or take an extra long lunch, you’ll mark it in your calendar and make the time up later (or take PTO if you can’t or don’t want to make up the time). Generally, though, I’d expect you to be working 9-5 with a half hour for lunch. I don’t want to micromanage your time — but when you’ve been dropping balls and working to get better organized, it makes me concerned that this is playing a role. So I want to ask you to look at that as well.” Or you could skip those last two sentences and just end with, “Can you be sure you’re doing that going forward?”

There are times when it makes sense to just keep the focus on the ultimate outcomes you need from an employee (in this case, that he gets better organized and stops dropping balls) and figure that it’s up to him how he gets there, and that the pressure from you to do that should naturally push him to change those habits — and that if he doesn’t get there, he’s not well suited for the job. But in this case I think you’ll save some time by just naming what you’re seeing and telling him he needs to rein it in. And you’re not required to look the other way when he’s abusing the job’s flexibility … in any case, but especially when where you’re actively coaching him to fix problems.

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