So, I have an intern/junior at work (the positions are rather fluid) who hardly reports back when issues come up.
For example, they had a bunch of task where a script essentially halves the workload per task. One day I randomly chat with them to see that they aren't using the script but instead doing things by hand, introducing technical issues and significally slowing down their output. I asked "Why aren't you using the script?" and they said "Because it isn't working. I didn't want to report it to you because I thought you were busy and I didn't want to bother you." I said that it was just a quick fix for me and that it's always worth asking me when running into issues because they are usually quickly resolved and that they should never be afraid to ask - especially because not asking can cause even more problems.
They still continued to just "work around" issues they ran into. I'm not the person responsible to quality check their work, in fact we currently have no one in place for that, so the only way I find out is when subsequent departments come to me to ask me why the task is done unusually or incorrectly. (I'm the unofficial go-to person for all problems my collegues run into, whether it's related to my tasks or not).
Now my supervisor has tasked me with introducing them to what is essentially a quality-checking task. The whole point of the task is to report when you run into issues. On the one hand I hope that this could be the right practice to condition them to report things back correctly, on the other hand I fear that we will run into a lot of trouble if they again silently decide to just "fix" a problem themselves.
I will point to the importance of reporting everything back when I brief them, but I'm not sure if it will be enough. Do you have any suggestions how to best convey the importance of this communication and how quality can be ensured if it's not my job to check their work but I have to fix their issues when their tasks are sent back from subsequent departments?
Update: They approached me telling me that they are nervous of having a QA task, aware of their shortcomings. Which to me shows that they are willing to work on it and communication will improve. I ensured them I'm there for all questions and make sure that they'll learn it. So the solution in this case came by the intern taking the initiative - but thank you for your quick and helpful answers!