Dealing with tattle tale employee and staff that insist I consult with the owner for every decision
I have a two parter. I am new in my management role, working in food service. Overall the team is capable, with only a few minor personality issues that I believe I can manage or coach successfully.
One of the issues is with an employee who is great, they perform their job very well and are generally truth worthy. However, this employee tends not to play nice with their coworkers especially if they’re not as tenured or competent as them. This employee will speak badly about a coworker in a different language (I don’t think they realize the coworker also speaks the language) and will constantly complain to me on an almost daily basis about the quality of the other coworkers work. It’s not just one coworker tho. This employee complains nonstop about a few other team members. They spend a good portion of their day pulling me aside to complain. It gets very annoying. It’s not that I don’t agree I just don’t see how her complaints are actionable in the immediate tense.
I think this employee doesn’t realize that I have other priorities to consider, and that their personal opinions of their team members is not always my main concern. I am not going to fire someone just because they need to perform better, if I haven’t tried everything possible to coach and retrain. And I don’t feel the need to explain all my reasons every time they come to me to complain.
My next concern for discussion is how do I as a manager break the entire teams habit of insisting I consult with the owner for every decision I make? I’m talking about small things like where stuff is placed, to scheduling, to changing SOPs, and dealing with attendance issues. I feel that if the owner is willing to pay me a nice salary to manage, then I should manage. I don’t feel the need to ask my boss everything but i get push back from pretty much everyone. They reason that they know the owner better than me which is true, so I appreciate the concern. But also part of my job is unburdening them with certain things. They constantly message the owner for things I can easily manage and I am getting frustrated because it’s not just one person it’s everyone. I don’t wanna give specific details to preserve anonymity.
Thanks for reading and hope to see some helpful responses.