system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How to talk to a grad student about productivity issues?

I'm paying one of my grad students for 40 hours of work per week, and I feel like I'm getting barely half of that. How do I politely approach her on this subject without sounding like I'm micromanaging? I'm fairly new to academia, so I haven't really had to deal with this before.

Most of what she's currently working on is funded from an internal pot of money, so it's not like she's missing external deadlines from sponsors. I will tell her that I want a certain model estimated by so-and-so, and when that time comes she'll tell me that she was having issues with the software, or the model was giving errors, or that it's taking longer to converge than she expected. I.e., nothing I can definitively call her out on.

This is a PhD student entering her third year, and I'm worried that she's slipping. I just don't know how to broach this respectfully.
gpt
Setting up tasks and keeping an eye on the progress is totally fair, just make sure that you realistically estimate the time those tasks need. Sorting out a package installation can take the whole day. Fixing convergence issues can take a week. On top of that, everything takes \*much\* longer for a student who is doing this for the first time. Maybe you should first see if she is actually putting in approximately a full time's worth of work, or if it's a motivation problem.