My boss has asked me to keep an eye on a colleague, who is working with me on a project. He wants me to report to him after 2 weeks what I think about how he is doing his job.
Even if I think he could do better at his job, for example, be more devoted, I am still apprehensive if I should say this to my boss.
Any advice on how I should respond to my boss?
This is a challenging question. As a coworker, you should be trying to help the new colleague become comfortable with the new responsibilities and integrate into the team. But your boss has also tasked you with an important role of evaluating and judging another member of the team, which could cause tension and impair the team formation effort. This is an important task, and needs to be performed well. Your boss should be able to observe and evaluate the new employee, and has the responsibility to perform that role. That said, you may have unique or superior skills in some area, or the boss may want to know how well the team is coalescing. You could approach this from a positive perspective and help the new colleague develop a training plan to more quickly adapt to the new team and new responsibilities. You could ask your boss to clarify what they want, and if you are uncomfortable with the role, ask the boss why and what information they seek.
Be honest and fair.
The alternative is to guess what the boss thinks, then to guess what you need to say, so the boss does what you guess the boss should do. That won't achieve anything other than possibly losing the boss's trust.
(Note: I was in IT management from 1995-2012, after which I decided to return to being a worker bee.)
"Empowerment" is generally a euphemism for "abdication of management responsibility." And "keep an eye on" implies a type of observation associated with toddlers who might get into trouble.
Stay objective. A general rule for objectivity when reporting on people and their activities is the avoidance of anything for which there is no useful "unit of measure." You can say these things about your colleague:
Comes to work on time.
Is available during the workday.
Sticks to the assigned task (assuming that you understand what it is).
Gets job done (assuming there is a due date).
Follows measurable processes, such as keeping source code committed to the repo, or keeping documents in the approved, secure environment.
You should avoid providing subjective assessments unless you are widely thought to be an expert within the company. Tell the boss that you can only provide facts; their importance and relevance are a matter for management.
If this is what your boss wants, it becomes part of your responsibilities. Try to track performance in objective terms and don't get into making a judgement on someone devotion. You can be devoted, but poorly trained which prevents things from getting done.
In the future, try to get your boss to be more specific about what to look for and what the expectations are. No point is saying the person is getting all her work done when you don't know what is expected.
Though I think it is incredibly irresponsible of a manager to ask this of a subordinate, I will give this as advice if he presses the issue:
Report only on things you have the ability to subjectively evaluate. Can I report that he is diligent and dedicated? No. That's more opinion. Can I report that he is able to adequately understand the technology used on the project and use/create code without my direct interaction? Yes.
