how do I help an employee?

Hi!

First, let me tell you how lucky the employee is to have you in his corner. I think the focus should not be on getting the employee to “fess up” to being LD. He may or may not be diagnosed; also, he may or may not be LD. Regardless of the underlying problem, it sounds like your employee is feeling defensive, which is probably warranted because of the many unhappy experiences he’s had in the past.
Here’s my suggestion, for what it’s worth….
After the next error or inadequate performance, speak to him privately. Point out EXACTLY what went “wrong,” (but don’t forget to include what was done well.) After showing him the error, try to help him identify how this task may have been made more approachable. Did he understand the instructions? Was it an attention to detail error?
Analysis of the error will help! Thanks for caring…

jp

In the short term honesty is the best policy. Your employee is Functioning Under Cognitive Torment. He like many of us has developed defense mechanisms dur to all the feelings of inadequacy failure and ridicule he has faced all through his life.

The saddest thing is is that it shouldn’t be your responsibilty to do his voc reahab and accomodation. You are a business person and your chief responsibility to your employees is to stay in business and provide them with a safe work place. Your local voc rehab will be of no help to you or him.

Let me ask you this, seeing as he is less valuable to you as an employee due to his disability how would you feel if the government compensated you for his lower than required productivity?

He is still figuring out his disability but he may know ways you can accomodate him and maybe he can get up to where he cuts the mustard.

This is a great example of the sh*tty position employer and employees are put in by a lousy educational system and a criminal Voc Rehab system.

Hi Juli,

First, this employee is very lucky to have you. I don’t know if this will help. Many times ld people have trouble with too many instructions at one time, and/or organizational issues.

Are you able to provide a prioritized list of what needs to be done? Can work be organized according to subject matter. Can check lists be used.

Alot, of things that may help him can’t hurt everyone else too. If you are the boss you may be able to make generalized changes that wiil help everyone.

I suggest that you ask the employee what he needs in the way of accommodations to improve his performance and production. This does not necessarily require him to name his diagnosis, only to pinpoint the problems and suggest some ways of working around them.

Based on the little bit of info you’ve given, his problems could be related to a specific learning disability or could be related to a combination of medications, depression, brain injury, a variety of personal or personality problems, neurosis or psychosis. I have seen so many people with multiple diagnoses during the past 29 years that I won’t even hazzard a guess about what is happening with you employee.

One question: Has his behavior been consistent or has it deteriorated over a long period of time?

There is no way to restructure the work or provide assistance without knowing what he needs. I suppose you could try this and then try that, but that approach typically does not work quickly enough to save the job. If he won’t tell you what you can do to help or he won’t see a professional to help him find out what the problem is…then your hands are tied.

All state vocational rehabilitation agencies and their employees are not the foolish bumblers that certain people would have the world believe. You might give them a call and see what they suggest.

I’ve always been fond of getting called in to help solve situtations like yours. The hard part is get the employee to believe that we’re not out to get them.

John

Thanks for the help.
To answer your question, his behavior has been consistent, it just took a while for us to realize the clues. He is so energetic and enthusiastic and willing to help people (we are a computer services group), and he talks a good game to the customers….that it covered up the actual performance problems for a while. With our technical work, it isn’t too hard to “snow” users. And he worked very hard to avoid sharing his work with the rest of the technical staff. Refused to document, etc. It wasn’t until the rest of the IS staff was being repeatedly called out to fix his “fixes” that we started to realize that something wasn’t adding up. Eventually we began to see a pattern and have been trying to identify the underlying issue. He is really quite good at distracting people from his performance issues.

Hi!

Thanks for taking the time to reaspond (to all of you). I am seeing some really good ideas! When confronted privately and as gently as possible with details of what went wrong, he diverts attention with comments like…well I didn’t know that I didn’t understand. Or…he “breaks” something and then creates a “crisis” to fix it so he doesn’t have time to deal with the other issues. I’m not criticizing, it has been a really amazing process to begin to understand when we are being diverted and when he is creating crises! Unfortunately, it is taking a lot of staff time to deal with.

JohnBT,

VR slime are not all stumble bums. It is hard to reach their level of incomptetence by accident.

I also liked how you tried to suggest a psychiatric illness as to why this employee is struggling.

If you are a VR slacker maybe you could learn a lot by having a truly mentally ill client/victim. One with a perpensity for violence. That could prove really enlightening.

Fools who suggest mental illness with no proof end up putting the scarlet letter so to speak on people.

LD is a sh*tty enough lable as it is but piling on more unproven crap is cruel.

John, maybe you should get a job working for Lederle or Bristol Meyers and pedal their poison.

My guess is you are a VR goldbricker.

If you want to start a debate thread I would be happy to explain to you how it is.

If you just don’t know any better no biggie but if you are a VR slacker let’s do it. I’ve been wanting to snack on one.

Another thing John, who are the professionals that are supposed to help him?

We’ll let’s just do what VR is best at. Blame the victim! Let’s cook up a personality disorder or mental illness to slap on him along with his real cognitive disabilities.

Let’s do to him what Soviets would do to dissedents. That is call em crazy and lock em up but VR has it’s own little head game prison. While the schools create chemical prisons for kids that are labled ADD and disruptive.

You may not be a bad guy John but if you work for VR or one of it’s other parasite agencies you are a bad guy.

We had a VR slacker on here about 8 mos ago and refferred to LD as learned helplessness. I have a lable for what VR does it’s called learned uselessness or failure by design.

Without knowing anything it is suggested that this young employee is possibly nuts that is outrageous. What isn’t an outrageous suggestion is that the VR agencies are comprised of morally bankrupt parasites who’s main goal in life is to get their state pension.

A person who’s moral compass is pointing in the right direction wouldn’t last long at VR. Maybe that’s why so many of them drink and blow coke.

Juli -

Is it possible he simply doesn’t know the field and how to do the work? It’s hard for me to make any kind of educated guess without knowing the specifics of his education/training and his work history. I probably don’t need to tell you, but there are numerous folks running around with certificates from private tech schools who barely know a floppy from a hard drive.

Like the others, I’m impressed that you’re attempting to work with him on this. Most places would have fired him as soon as they discovered that he ‘broke’ something on purpose. Not doing the work correctly is one thing, but destructive acts are way over the line and could well be a criminal offense.

John

fIRST OFF THE ME SAY IT IS GREAT TO HEAR THAT THERE ARE EMPLOYERS SUCH AS YOURSELF OUR THERE.
I am a person who teches those who had id themselves or have recently been identified how to becomew productive members of the work place. For your information many with Learning Disabilities may not know that they have a L.D. or if they do they are not willing to let the employer know this information a they feel that it will effect there job. (this you indicated you are aware of ). Just one of many suggustions I have for you may at the next perfomance evaluation for raises or such you may approach this matter by offering some adaptive technology to the solution to the situation ( your local L.D. office should be alble to give your organization a list of such technology ). It is an unfortunate situation but some times those of us with L.D. need to fall before we can fully understand our own self worth so you may find that the individual may rejct this option due to the fact they do not want to appear to be different. The one thing that you may need to remember that you can lead the horse to water but you can’t make it drink. If you would like more ideas feel free to e-mail me back and I will send you more
Bonnie

I suggest that you speak with your employee in confidence and share with him/her your concerns. I also suggest that you talk to your employee about obtaining a Psychodiagnostic Assessment that will determine if an ld is present. The Psychologist needs to be a specialist in ld and for adults, since the testing is very different. The cost for this ranges between 800.00 - 3,600.00. However, a clinical interview needs to talk place, background history which involves, family, educational, medical etcc…. and then a series of tests are used to determine if an ld is present. You could contact your nearest ld assocaition in your area, as they could refer you to a couple of psychologists. Sometimes a vocational assessment can be done as well. Each report must have the diagnosis, results of the tests used, accommodations and recommendations.

This will assist for your employee and yourself in providing support.

Sheri

Can you communicate your dilemna to your employee? You obviously value him, but are finding difficulties with his work. You want him to succeed and it is important for him to hear this. He also needs to hear that you need to work together to find ways to help him, as the work needs to get done.

If he becomes defensive, explain that this isn’t going to help the problem to be solved. Try not to get caught up in this with him. Again, explain that he is a valued employee, but there are problems that need to be addressed. Tell him that you see him as trying - that you are not blaming him. Tell him that your goal is to find a solution.

Let him know that you have been trying to figure out why he is having the difficulties that he has. Can he help you in figuring this out? If he can’t, you might suggest that he might want to be evaluated to find out if a possible learning disability may be involved. You could explain that if this is the case, there may be adaptations that could help him to get the job done.