I share the opinion of others who say to fire the employee who is lying to you. If that can't be done for whatever reason, you're basically screwed. (I think you know that)

You can strive to make everything objective, not subjective. Create a system for making those assignments, and implement a system of documentation. If you're worried about offending this supervisor, sell it as though you're trying to protect him (or her). You've heard some grumbling about unfairness (he/she must be aware because you've discussed the process). To protect him/her and the company from claims of bias, you want everything documented. If an unhappy employee quits and makes claims, you'll have the documentation to support your fair process. Your supervisor may figure it out, but it won't matter-can't complain about making something objectively fair and documenting for loss prevention purposes.

You have a conflict of interest when family members are under your supervision either indirectly or directly.

It puts everyone in an uncomfortable position. No matter how you want to spin it it is complicating how you deal with this issue.

For good reason most companies don't allow it for good reasons. No matter what it will been seen as your wife running to you and this isn't fair to the supervisor or the other employees.

If he isn't doing the job then deal with it without any input from your wife. Honestly she should not be working under your direct or indirect supervision unless you own the company and then all rules are off.

I've had similar situations, probably a smaller scale.

I told the intermediate that it seemed to be working, great job, and that my last step in the process is always to get a feel from the grunt level, to get feedback from all those being assigned. That what I'll be looking for is at least 75% agreement that the tasks are being fairly distributed, but that shouldn't be an issue since he/she is saying it's being done.

Then I go in (without said intermediate leader, to avoid forcing the staff to say they agree with him/her) sit down one on one with the line level employees, and get the real dirt.

Then I come back and say you know, turns out this is NOT working like you and I apparently thought it was, so what I am going to do is give you this chart to chart the jobs and the employee by task. If we need to assign a difficulty level to each task, so that we can catch ourselves assigning more difficult tasks to certain folks, maybe that is the thing to do....

It worked for me, without intermediate losing face, and with them understanding that we would be doing it my way, regardless of what they wanted.

quote:

Originally posted by slabsides45:
I've had similar situations, probably a smaller scale.

I told the intermediate that it seemed to be working, great job, and that my last step in the process is always to get a feel from the grunt level, to get feedback from all those being assigned. That what I'll be looking for is at least 75% agreement that the tasks are being fairly distributed, but that shouldn't be an issue since he/she is saying it's being done.

Then I go in (without said intermediate leader, to avoid forcing the staff to say they agree with him/her) sit down one on one with the line level employees, and get the real dirt.

Then I come back and say you know, turns out this is NOT working like you and I apparently thought it was, so what I am going to do is give you this chart to chart the jobs and the employee by task. If we need to assign a difficulty level to each task, so that we can catch ourselves assigning more difficult tasks to certain folks, maybe that is the thing to do....

It worked for me, without intermediate losing face, and with them understanding that we would be doing it my way, regardless of what they wanted.

Excellent response and very fare to everyone involved.

I would think there are other ways to measure the performance of your department other than just words from the wife.
I agree it would be very lame to start up a bunch of shit simply because of that.
Those optics would be terrible.
If that's all the evidence you have - you might want to get some from additional sources.
YMMV

quote:

Originally posted by urbanwarrior238:
Can you re-assign those employees always getting the easy tasks?

One or two at a time and then he and the soon-to-be-re-assigned employees will get the hint.

Seems to me that this would only make life harder on those employees being re-assigned, and not addressing the problem with the manager.

My solution, as a long time manager up to and including 3rd line, would be simple.

Fire the manager. He/she is clearly a problem and is barely likely to change.

Allowing this to go on only causes morale and performance problems, which equates to financial hits on the company.

The manager needs to move job duties around so that the employees are cross trained.
You need a list of what employees are doing what jobs so when you look at the financials for that period you can determine if the assignments increased productivity or not.
Change the assignments until maximum productivity is achieved, but also get the input from the employees and managers.

Wow, this is an easy one.

Gather everyone together, state what your directions were, and ask why it is they were not followed. Those who were taken advantage will let you know they weren’t told. It’ll go back to the supervisor.

There’s your culprit.

Don't micromanage, but set goals and conditions. Let the manager know that turnover will be a major factor in his reviews, and that high turnover will have a negative effect on his future with the company. Then let him manage his department.

Come review time, look at the turnover metrics in his department, and act accordingly.

Could it be that the employees getting the “easier” tasks aren’t competent enough to handle the difficult tasks, therefore your better employees get the more complicated things to keep the business running smoothly, and customers happy?

I’ve got employees that are at best questionably competent on some aspects of the job, and downright scary on others. Guess who gets the easier, mindless tasks?

quote:

Originally posted by chongosuerte:
Could it be that the employees getting the “easier” tasks aren’t competent enough to handle the difficult tasks, therefore your better employees get the more complicated things to keep the business running smoothly, and customers happy?

I’ve got employees that are at best questionably competent on some aspects of the job, and downright scary on others. Guess who gets the easier, mindless tasks?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
When I read the OP's first post, that came immediately to mind.

quote:

Originally posted by Beancooker:
To clarify, the tasks are always changing. The core job doesn’t change, but the product does. Some are super easy products, some are god awful. Customer orders and demand change the priority of tasks throughout the day, as well as adds many tasks from how the day started.

Don't worry about offending the intermediate person, your job Is to manage them. Let me ask you a question, is there any chance he's assigning certain jobs to certain people because they're more efficient with that task and not other tasks? If not, have him do a daily list of tasks that gets posted on a wall in an obvious place for the department AND emails it to you. Or you could have him assign the same certain tasks one week to each person and then the tasks rotate through the department. Meaning, Jeff takes out the garbage on week 1, Sarah on week 2, Joe on week 3, etc.

You mentioned others have quit over this practice you believe to exist- would it make sense to essentially audit the assignment process based on negative feedback from exit interviews? I would leave the wife out completely. She is verifying something you already believe to be true but outing her cannot possibly help.

My first thought is something like a dispatch log (already mentioned in here), that could be submitted daily, or on something like a shared spreadsheet that you could be able to check in on anonymously.
Timing-wise. it could be a 2020 goal that you could implement on 1/1/20 as a new practice to be able to audit the dept for annual reviews & such.

My dad did 30 years in the car business (service side) and always kept a tight ship in the shop.

He's moved on to O&G now, and is in scheduling for a pipe yard. So, I've been around it for years.

I would insist on answers as to why X-Y-Z are still getting easy assignments. Skip right past "are they", skip right past any question of it being true, skip past any excuses/lies that they aren't, present it as fact that you know they are and demand to know why. Let them know they're not fooling anyone. In if you're bluffing, let them step in it.

Above average turn over, especially of “good” folks implies bad management.

So I am not about to start whacking managers, as I took over as GM five weeks ago.
There never was a GM prior to me, and to a degree the inmates ran the asylum.
Manager that I have an issue with cannot tell people what to do. If a strong willed (or defiant lazy kid) tells that manager no, then that manager will give the task to a weaker willed person.
I am trying to coach said manager as they have been with the company for a long ass time.
I spoke with this manager today and admission was made that the work was being assigned, but in the way that the manager liked to assign it. Which means throw out ten tasks, easy and shitty and let the employees pick what to do.
Said manager will be color coding assignments starting tomorrow. Each employee will have a color assigned to them. This makes it so the manager can assign tasks, but doesn’t have to confront the employee and tell them they have a shitty task ahead.

So, I am certain I will be bashed left and right for accepting this as a happy medium. At this point, there are other issues and reasons why this is not a situation where termination or demotion would be an option. I don’t like this, at all. But it’s better than where we are at.

As I said, there are a lot of things I won’t cast out to the World Wide Web. If you are interested in the details I cannot share online, feel free to email me.

Quantify -- (actually, direct them to quantify)

Ask them to assign the work and document the assignments in a spreadsheet. Tell them to sort it and assure it is equitable prior to your next meeting.

When was the last time that this individual went on leave?

Would you be able to appoint a relief in their absence, then be the able to clearly see the differences?

Or as postulated, the individual sees different and acts accordingly to their knowledge.

Re-training/certification possibilities.

Sounds like you found a stopgap solution. Maybe a stepping stone to a more concrete solution.