Re: Employee experience dilemma....

[Jo Francis Byrd <jbyrd -at- byrdwrites -dot- com>]

If the situation is as you describe, you're not being petty and jealous in the
least, and you have legitimate cause for concern.

I'd say, gather all your ammunition and arrange to meet with you manager about
the situation. Have one of Lisa's original docs and an edited one so you can
demonstrate your concern. Be sure and hammer in the amount of time you and your
coworker have to invest to bring her document up to standard. Time that will
impact your own deadlines (all of which are crucial, of course!)

At the same time, present a plan to train and mentor her to bring her writing up
to standard. Make it very clear you think Lisa has promise, and you'd like to
help her fulfill that promise, that giving Lisa proper training and mentoring
will benefit the company (and the bottom line) and increase the output and
efficiency of your department.

Good luck!

Jo Byrd




Atticus Fisher wrote, in part:

Situation:
We are a small doc department (three full time and a few part-time) in, as is
typically the case these days, a fast-growing company. Recently, another full
time writer was brought on board. Let's call her Lisa. Lisa is young, probably
no more than 23, with no technical writing experience. She was originally hired
into the technical support department, but for whatever money-saving or
political reason, was brought over to our department as a full-time writer. I'm
not exactly sure what screening processes were used, if any, when she was
considered for the writing position.

Regardless of the circumstances, I have found her to be very bright,
knowledgeable about our products, and possessing of what appear to be decent
writing skills.

Problem:
She has been "tasked" (awful word) with writing an entire user guide and
reference manual, pretty much from scratch, for one of our new products.
Smelling danger, myself and a co-worker asked our manager if it would be OK to
check her work. She said OK. Of course, the chapters we received from Lisa were
full of errors, awkward constructions, and some bad grammar that required
extensive (and I mean extensive) revision to bring them in line with our
departmental standards and style.

Fears:
If this continues, my co-worker and myself fear that every chapter that she
writes will have to be extensively re-written, in effect doubling the amount of
work we already have to do.

 Assessment:
 We quickly realized that with little or no documentation experience, Lisa
should have be given "junior writer" status and should *never* have been handed
such a large responsibility . It's obvious that she needs to
undergo mentoring and a proper period of training before being given large tasks
like the one described above.

What to do?
So....what do we do? My co-worker and I feel that we need to discuss this issue
with our manager, but want to avoid stepping on toes or second-guessing hiring
decisions. We want to propose a proper course of training and mentoring for Lisa
and thus prevent laborious re-writes down the road. My co-worker has been in the
industry for years, and I have an advanced writing degree (MFA), so we feel we
are both qualified (and
justified) to bring our issue to the table.

Are we being jealous, petty, and difficult, or do you guys believe we have
legitimate concerns? Anyone else experience this type of thing?