How many chances to give new employee?

Batgurl

So I'm managing a new hire who is quite green when it comes to a professional working environment. Trying my best to guide them and take them under my wing but this person keeps having "IT issues" whereby passwords for systems they need keep "getting deleted", locked out of systems, passwords not working ect. Obviously the first few times this happened we went through it together and resolved it by getting IT to reset but now I ask them to sort it themselves by approaching IT support directly.

It happens at least once a week for the last 3 months. If it's a genuine IT problem, this person must be the most unfortunate employee in the company it happens so often. None of the other 5 members of my team suffer from it. I'm starting to think this person may actually be a bit incompetent but hides it with IT excuses. However I've no way to prove this.

So how would you approach this? How many chances should I give? It's worth noting that it's never the same problem too often so each time it's a new section of IT support so I can't even really ask them what the problem is.

TIA for any responses

Atlantic Dawn

Can they change the password to something they can remember themselves? If so show them how to do this and see how they get on.

IT should change their password next time to Th1cko1, they might get the hint to remember it.

Xterminator

ive a bit of experience with this - from the IT side.

we have users who call us weekly - my passwords not working/my account is locked out etc. we have even had people who did this almost daily. however some people just dont figure it out - ever. they are my regular customers, and i alway remind myself they are keeping me in a job.

Its not about chances. some people are this way all their lives because they think thats just the way it is. "oh computers dont like me"

looking for a solution is about finding something that works for the individual.

Complex passwords - if enabled means the person has to come up with a password that meets the rules, but also isnt one they feel they can remember easily.Then password history if enabled prevents them from re-using the passwords they can remember, and if passwords expire too often, and password history is turned on, you end up with 5 different passwords for each system ; even if they started out the same.

I use a programme called keepass as a password vault. I have so many system. This allows me to store password safely - and update them when they change. It is better than a notebook, and a lot more secure.

Getting back yo your user, tel them to use a password vault product, and be sure to keep it up to date straight away when a password changes. Or unofficially let them write everything in their hardback notebook they lock in their drawer. But they are unlikely to ever morph into IT proficient person.

Senna

You just take them aside, say the IT Admin/manager has flagged the user for excessive tickets creation and they will have to put a "keystroke monitor/user monitor" on their desktop to see what you are doing that is causing so many issues.
Depending on what this person knows or understand about this, I'm guessing they know enough that they don't want to be monitored but not enough to know that the IT dept is never going to monitor them.

beauf

In my experience you get 80% of the support issues from 20% of the users.

They might have a memory or attention span problem. So password rules might be a problem for them.

jimmycrackcorm

Show them an easy way to make up passwords

Some people just don't have a natural knack for complex password rules. I know myself that I'm tending now to use common passwords for many sites I use because it's difficult to remember which password is used for which site.

Victor

Batgurl wrote: »

this person keeps having "IT issues" whereby passwords for systems they need keep "getting deleted", locked out of systems, passwords not working ect.

1. How are they at their core work?
2. How are they otherwise at basic work skills?
3. How many passwords do they need to remember? What are the password generation rules? See https://xkcd.com/936/
4. Caps lock?

TrustedApple

In my last told we rolled out 400 new laptops in the office.

Every laptop had a page stuck to it when I handed it out. Saying you must use the same password for Windows and the enquartson of the laptop. I also told you. And also emailed it to you. Other wise you can't get into your system and I need to reiamge it I am not jokeing.

So day 1 of the new laptops being on the floor there is a like of 50 people who are after doing it !!!!! I say 2/3 of users ended up doing it in the 1st week facepalm.

3 people to reset 200 passwords and to reiamge 200 laptops over a week never again I was so nice at the start at it and then angry and giving out to people at the end of it as it was the same issue and you think they tell the person beside them nope they do it to haha.

FaganJr

TrustedApple wrote:

Every laptop had a page stuck to it when I handed it out. Saying you must use the same password for Windows and the enquartson of the laptop. I also told you. And also emailed it to you. Other wise you can't get into your system and I need to reiamge it I am not jokeing.

Maybe it was the letter / mail you sent!! 😂😂😂 Common denominator

Teyla Emmagan

TrustedApple wrote:

3 people to reset 200 passwords and to reiamge 200 laptops over a week never again I was so nice at the start at it and then angry and giving out to people at the end of it as it was the same issue and you think they tell the person beside them nope they do it to haha.

You should have made them log in in front of you when picking up their new laptops for the first time. And stood over them with a stick. People aren't interested in reading about new processes, or learning new systems. In particular password related things really don't interest them. I remember a similar project with a similar outcome one place I worked. I think the consensus afterwards was that it was amazing half the building could hold down a job.

TrustedApple

We did do that to we gave everyone classes in big groups in the board room but barely anyone showed up .

Like the company was bought and everything was changing but people did not seem to care at all ha.

Every way to try and tell people was told. There was 4 of us working out the plans and stages and everything worked just not the passwords and step by step with 400 users we would have not had the man power for it between the 3 of us but we did for the 200 as it took us 2 weeks as we had other work on top of that.

Skatedude

I miss the days when you could actually use a password to login to something, but those days are gone.
You now need Upper case, Lower case, numbers and special symbols and passwords must be changed every few months and cant use any variation of the previous ones.

I spent a lot of time resetting password for people in work, and of course everyone now needed to write them on post it notes, or saved on their phones which defeats the security of it.
Even going from pc to pc became an issue as computers were often setup with uk layout or irish which means the special symbols are not in the same place.

Passwords are essential, but the rules are causing more issues than they solve.

Victor

Skatedude wrote: »

Even going from pc to pc became an issue as computers were often setup with uk layout or irish which means the special symbols are not in the same place.

Other than fadas, what is different?