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Have you showed her work to your manager and pointed out the shortcomings compared to your product?
Spend a couple of hours (it shouldn't take more, maybe even not that much) and put together a matrix/graph that shows how much time you've spent on her, and graph that against her degree of improvement. Show in numbers how much time you'd have to put into her to get any significant improvement, point out how much that would cut into your real work, and how badly your output would be affected.Â
Maybe you could turn her de facto into the assistance you've been trying to get. Have her do nothing but handle a small range of very specific tasks that are relatively easy but add up to a drain on your time. Maybe have her do nothing but proof and edit things, or ant jobs like checking operation of the hyperlinks.
Now going into cynical curmudgeon/professional paranoid mode: Why does your manager want so much for you to help her improve? Is it possible they are thinking of having you unknowingly train your replacement who will do the same work for less pay? If so, polish your resume and start looking.Â
Actually, start polishing your resume right now even if you don't think you're being cornered into training your replacement. Your company drastically increases your workload without providing any help. They obviously aren't concerned about your limits. If they don't replace you with her or someone else, most likely they will simply keep piling on more work until you are snowed under and your situation becomes unsupportable.
Your words remind me of something that happened to a guy I knew years ago, who had a factory job silk screening markings onto electronic components. The company's output increased and he was getting seriously overworked. He complained about the workload and the company hired him an assistant who was paid about half what he was making. For 3 months he worked with the assistant and got the new guy trained up. Then the company fired him and had the cheap assistant take over the entire job.
Moderator Note:Â The following is being posted on behalf of a Whirler who
needs to remain anonymous. Please post all replies to the list and not to
me, as replies will not be forwarded to the original poster.
I have been in this job for almost eight years. I started documenting two
products. Now, Iâm responsible for eleven. Three share similar interface
and features, but it is a lot to handle. Iâve presented data on why an
additional resource is necessary each year, and Iâve been rebuffed. Shortly
before the end of 2011, I was told to hand one project to one of the Admin
Assistants to do since âshe has a lot of downtime until the summer.â She
isnât stupid, she isnât clueless, but she canât write. She is a novice at
using Word. I use Flare as the authoring tool, and it is beyond her. Again,
Iâm not saying sheâs stupid, but she doesnât get the concepts or the
workflow. She gave me seven topics to review, and theyâre terrible. While
theyâre spelled correctly and the mechanics such as grammar & punctuation
are good, the procedures are poorly written and theyâre just not
acceptable. I can rewrite them, but thatâs not the point. When I brought
up the writing problems and the time involved, my manager said that I need
to help her come up to speed and work with her. Iâve tried to show her how
to write a procedure and what goes into a topic, but it just doesnât seem
to work. Iâve suggested local and online courses that might help her, but
thereâs no budget for it. This is taking up more time that I can afford to
devote to it.****
** **
Iâm trying to react to this with uhâgrace and no emotion.****
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Create and publish documentation through multiple channels with Doc-To-Help.
Choose your authoring formats and get any output you may need. Try
Doc-To-Help, now with MS SharePoint integration, free for 30-days. http://www.doctohelp.com
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