One of my employee in a tech startup is behaving erratically.. we are a small team of dozen people working our ass off for launching our apps. Initially he was ok.. working.. trying to learn but now he seems a bit disinterested... some of the problems we are facing with him are:
- His father has a terminal illness so he has to frequent his parents... we are fine with it... he goes on friday and comes on monday... all other members work on sat n sun if required but given his exceptional circumstances we are okay with it.
- Quite regularly he just tells my boss that he is in a bad frame of mind and needs to reinvograte for which he goes to his gf's city... stays there for a week and comes back... My boss is very pissed n i don't like that he directly approaches him instead of taking my approval... we are a small team so everyone is approachable...
- A few days back he came up with a plan that since he does'nt like the city we have office in he can work from home(gf's city). This also directly to my boss... my boss talked to me and conveyed that we should start looking for someone new as this will not work... i intervened and talked to employee and suggested that he could work from home for a week but he has to be in office for the rest of time. I do not want to ask him to resign as i think he can improve if he focuses and shows commitment.
- So he went for his monthly leave and came back and did not do any work.. he was supposed to be working from home... seeing his slow pace i finished off his tasks... He came up with excuse that the data card given was not working... i mean in this age of hotspot and tethering.... i swallowed my frustration.
I really do not wish to fire any of my employee... but in a small team we cannot be giving too many freebies to one employee otherwise other team members will start feeling discriminated. Also we are output driven so he should atleast deliver on tasks assigned and agreed on. So i am in fix.. how to make him understand that being adults we have to deal with our problems and work... or we take leave without pay... one cannot be doing nothing for weeks and expecting to be paid...