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Coworker is extremely forgetful

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Anonymous

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Coworker is extremely forgetful

I have been with my company for 1 month and 3 weeks, and I am concerned with a coworker who is the lead in my department. This lady forgets a lot of things - names of other employees, forgets to do tasks she should have done -she forgets just about everything. She is very slow in speech and takes forever to get a sentence out. She has been with the company for 3 years and I believe the CEO is noticing that her cognition is diminishing.

Unfortunately this is affecting me and my production. I am the recruiter and she is HR. After I recruit a new hire, I pass it along to her to do the onboarding. She forgets to onboard the new hires. I am sympathetic towards her, but we are not accomplishing what we need to accomplish as a team.

Any insights or suggestions would be appreciated.

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  1. Anonymous

    Your CEO may not know how to handle this sensitive situation either. Maybe begin organizing meetings with new hires with emails that the CEO (or whoever her direct supervisor is) could be copied on for reference? If things are not followed up on, that person would know and be able to address.

  2. Anonymous

    If she is a coworker, stay in your lane, do your job, and let your manager handle the situation. Since you've been there less than two months and she has been three years, you are not in any position to course-correct her and it will likely get heavy push-back.

    If you are her manager, schedule a 1:1 with her and ask if there is anything you can do to help her, since she seems to be having trouble with tasks she previously accomplished well. Be aware that asking about medical information is off limits unless she volunteers it, as that puts you at risk for complaints about age or ability discrimination. Try to come up with something that will help her remember what she needs to (calendar/task list for example) and if she doesn't improve talk with your HR department to see the best course of action. Include the EEOC rep so you have all your bases covered.

  3. Anonymous

    You mentioned this is a co-worker so not your manager, right? If so, then go to your manager, and ask for a 1:1 meeting to review your work, and get feedback. Then talk about challenges. Without knowing anything about your colleague's health, let your manager know you have experienced a few mishaps from your colleague and would like guidance on this. And also, offer a solution (this is super helpful when talking to managers). Perhaps let them know out of 10 new hires over the past 2 months for example, it was shared with you the HR contact has forgotten to send new hire paperwork, or anything related to on boarding. It is then in your manager's hands to explore the issue and address the concern. If the candidate's are contacting you directly then forward the email to the HR contact and copy your manager. It truly from there should be out of your hands.

  4. GirlBossanova934974

    This is crazy. This is the 2nd worst place you would want a person who cannot remember anything. The worst would be the corporate counsel. My bet is that the CEO knows all about this. This coworker should probably be out of the workforce and on permanent disability. I would leave it up to the CEO to do what he or she should have done quite some time ago.

  5. Anonymous

    She might need to use a task manager, or just a list really. I would suggest it in a friendly tone, as I'm doing this since my twenties to keep organized on boring personnal and professional duties. If it's a bigger issues that's more problematic.

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