Many workers all over the place have no sense of communication or responsibility. The reason is because their managers are too busy to teach them, or perhaps because their managers don’t know HOW to teach them or what is important to teach them.
Communication skills are a typical problem for technical people. They need regular coaching on how to get back to people. How to pick up a phone and dial 10 digits (programmers are genetically incapable of this task by the way). How to return an email with relevant content. How to schedule their tasks so they don’t run behind schedule. How to keep in touch with clients and let them know when there is a problem or delay instead of keeping them hanging.
“Not flaking” (not forgetting & keeping track of things) skills are important for lower level managers. I find that lower level project managers seem to not keep track of what is going on, and clients will be kept waiting for months only to find out that no headway has been made on their projects. Assistant managers need to be coached on how to KEEP TRACK of everything and not flake.
If you don’t currently have a mentoring and coaching program for all of your staff, you should figure out how to create one. Your company would do so much better if you did a little training (or a lot of training). Employee output could go up by 20% without spending an additional dime on them simply through training!
Good luck and use your innovative skills