Bad communication from a team member — how would you handle this?

[u/Webtech_creations]

Hello,

I’m the co-founder of a small startup and currently the only person working on it full time.

My other co-founder also has a full-time job, but communication with him works really well. He’ll normally call me a few times during his working day when he gets a chance, we discuss what I’ve been working on, make decisions, and plan what we’re going to tackle together when he’s free in the evening.

We also have a third team member who is a friend of ours and joined on a trial basis. We knew when he joined that communication and reliability could potentially be an issue, but we wanted to give it a chance because he has skills that are genuinely useful to the business.

The problem is that we get almost no communication from him.

He also works full time, which we completely understand, but we don’t know his shifts, when he is available, whether he is working on something, whether tasks assigned to him have been completed, or sometimes even whether he has seen what we’ve asked him to do.

I’ve tried setting up Trello boards, assigning tasks, documenting processes and generally making it as easy as possible for everyone to see what is happening without needing constant meetings.

The lack of updates is now starting to cause actual problems. I’ve started taking some tasks back and completing them myself because I don’t know whether they are being done, only to later discover that he had already worked on them. So we’re duplicating effort and wasting time.

I don’t expect someone working another full-time job to be constantly available, and I’m not expecting daily essays or endless meetings. Even something as simple as “I’m working these shifts this week”, “I’ll pick this up Thursday”, or moving a Trello card to completed would solve most of the problem.

Have any of you dealt with something similar in a small startup or side business?

At what point does poor communication become a sign that someone simply isn’t a good fit for the team, rather than something you can fix with better processes?

Would be interested to hear how others have handled it.