SENIOR EMPLOYEE HAVING DIFFICULTY TRAINING NEW STAFF WHO IS 20 YEARS OLDER
Recently I became a department trainer to a new colleague. The new colleague is almost 20 years older than me who has made a mid-career switch from a blue collar role — considered as an upward progression.
Our job role is quite similar to a call centre / coordinator. You need to be able to write reports, answer calls, communicate with many different parties, and know how to respond to different and dynamic situations. It isn’t a very specialised role, and you can survive as long as you know how to Ctrl + F, Google, and apply common sense. Resources are plenty, you just need to know how to find them instantly and where to find them.
This new colleague is very hardworking and very determined. He took a lot of notes and asked a lot of questions. He also stayed late to review the notes he took.
However, I encountered some issues that made me doubt whether he is truly suitable for this job role — his pace, thought processes, etc.
And despite the diligence he put in his notes, I found that when it comes to applying the things he had noted, he couldn’t find what he had written down or took too long to get the info he needed. Or he’ll just totally forget about what he had written.
Another worrying issue is his English proficiency. I asked him to write a report and that report was unreadable to a point where he also didn’t know what are the things that he had written.
While I do my best to coach him, I am also getting increasingly frustrated and helpless of the situation. I have to be wary of not hurting his ego and be very patient while coaching him, and at the same time I’m also bogged down by my own work and the tight training timeline for him.
At his current pace, I’m quite certain that he would not pass his probation. And if this is the case, I think that it is better for him to consider other career options because he also has a young family to feed. But it is not right for me to tell him that as his trainer.
That being said, this is also my first time coaching someone, and there’s still a lot of things I need to learn about coaching people. I have a short fuse and am not known to be very patient, so this is also an opportunity for me to develop myself.
How can I move forward with this situation?
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sakura98 16/03/2024
Changed the way you teach. Maybe your metjod if coaching is too fast for him as it is something nrw that he is learning. Not something he is familiar with. Put yourself in his situation. If you are the one going for career switch, would you not also have the same issue. Use an effective way to teach. Schedule stage by stage. Not all at one go. That is why he has to take down so many notes. You are going too fast. Have patience. Allow him time to learn.
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