What can you do when a teammate assigned to "support" you ends up increasing your workload?

Good answers already, there's one uncovered angle I'll put forward.

However, this person requires frequent hand-holding, regularly forgets instructions, and often delivers work that has to be redone.

Lower your expectations. Give them work they can do. When I've been given people like this I test them to find what they're capable of for a while and then that's what I'll give them. In some cases it's just data entry. Or just 'keep out of my way' work. No squeaking to managers, no drama.

They get some satisfaction I assume from doing work that they can handle, there's little stress for them. The manager sees them working. And my drudge data entry gets done so they are actually a useful asset and I can honestly portray them as such to the hierarchy until they get moved on.

First this should be discussed with your manager.

It is normal for a help assigned to you or your project is going to drag you down.

Management always thinks that adding more people will increase productivity. The reality is that this always reduces productivity.

Either you need to talk to your manager or take the long view. Eventually, your assistant is going to be helpful instead of a hindrance.

In terms of strategies, it depends on which path you want to take

• Train him
• Post instructions in public and take him to task in public
• Replace him

I was told to spend around 2 hours/day overseeing his work.

However, this person requires frequent hand-holding, regularly forgets instructions, and often delivers work that has to be redone.

This is reality. There is a classic book called The mythical man-month where this is explained.

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Those two hours a day was supposed to tell you that you need to still spend 8 hours a day doing your job, plus two more hours helping the new person. That would be true if they were a perfect match for the job, and didn't need much guidance. If they need lots of training then 10 hour days wouldn't be enough.

Until they are fully trained, and have had time to become proficient, they will be a drag on your productivity.

I was told to spend around 2 hours/day overseeing his work.

However, this person requires frequent hand-holding, regularly forgets instructions, and often delivers work that has to be redone.

I've started posting task instructions in our team group chat, as suggested by my manager, to create a clear record and aid accountability. After a few weeks, I expected him to be self-sufficient but he's not.

It’s been a few weeks. You need to tell your manager that despite your clear instructions, to this individual you are spending more than 2 hours a day overseeing their work.

You need to specifically mention that individuals assistance is actually creating more work for you. However, you should keep in mind that, given a 40 hour work week they are expecting you to dedicate at least 25% of your time to overseeing this individual.

It does seem strange to have you perform this oversight, if the individuals entire role, is to help increase your output.

You should determine who individual’s supervisor is and request their assistance. You should contact whoever determines if the individual can be fired for poor performance.

You need to determine if you should be training or just overseeing their work. I would be clear with your supervisor, that you’re spending a significant amount of your time actively training, not overseeing their work. You need to be clear that this training is taking you away from the tasks and ask specifically if training is now an assigned task.

What’s the best way to structure work or communication in a case like this, where a support resource is underperforming and creating more friction than help? Are there strategies others have used to preserve bandwidth in this kind of setup?

What can be done, entirely depends if you have enough clout in the company, but it sounds like this individual hasn’t been trained.

There is always a training cost when bringing a new person on board. If they are the right person, then once they come up to speed you can hope that their productivity will justify that investment.

Note that despite that cost, this can be an opportunity for you to show management how good your own skills are by successfully teaching the new member of the group. If you're interested in becoming technical lead, or manager, at some point this is an opportunity to reinforce that you know how to perform those roles.

There may be a bit of a mismatch in expectations between you and your manager.

You mention that the company replaced productive team members in high CoL areas with this new employee in a lower CoL area. Management may not be expecting this new hire to perform as well as the previous employees -- just "good enough". Further:

They hired him specifically for the task of providing me support because they know I am stretched thin

The plan may have been to hire this person to decrease your workload in the long run, not the current project.

If you are are showing that the new hire is not as productive as your previous coworkers or that they aren't productive enough yet, that may be what management was already expecting and not result in much change. If you haven't already, I'd recommend leveling with your manager on what their expectations are for this new employee. Do they expect them to not be performing at full throttle for 3 months? 6 months? a year? as they are onboarding? What sort of output are they hoping from the new hire when they are fully onboarded?

Once you know that, your conversations may be more fruitful. You get what you pay for, and if management knows that and only expects the new hire to ever be able to do menial work, then you can assign them menial work only. If they can't even do that, then "they can't do menial tasks" is going to be much more useful for your manager to know than "they aren't able to do what my previous coworkers were able to" (which may be within expectations). Further, regarding ramp-up time, if the manager expects them to be onboarded in 6 months, you can shift your feedback from "they're not decreasing my workload now" to "based on their progression it would take 3x as long as you were hoping for before they're useful" or "It does not look like they will ever be able to produce the level of output you expect".

Additionally, since your company is the type to outsource, I'm guessing they're more invested in spreadsheets, numbers, and cost balancing than world-class work. Playing ball & learning how to frame problems in terms bean counters can understand can be a much more effective way of getting problems resolved: for instance, Jira or whatever ticketing / change management system you are using probably tracks how long it takes work to get done. If you assign every work item this new hire does in Jira, it's much easier for the bean counters to see oh this person has 30 tickets which were estimated to take 1 day but all took 2 weeks, there's a problem. If you have issues where you're rejecting their work 5 times before it's right, then capture that in Jira. If they have questions, tell them to ask on the Jira ticket (this may also help them not forget your instructions however many times since it's easier for them to look back on).

And again, regarding the outsourcing, if the company refuses to invest adequately in its employees, at a certain point managers are going to take who they can get. When I worked at my university and we paid in the bottom 5% of similar jobs, we had a lot of people who weren't good at their job. It was rare to get people who were amazing at their job because you get what you pay for. We just had to learn to work within those constraints. You'll need to make a personal judgement call if that's something you want to stomach or to move to a company that does invest adequately in its employees.

I'd like to address the points you mentioned in the comments:

My concerns are related to his attitude -- he often tries to cut corners and 'weasel' out of doing real work if he can, even if it means doing something incorrect. Everytime I've given instructions, his misinterpretation has always involved him taking the easier route. Hes the type where if I don't explicitly assign tasks, he will just not do anything, even though we have deadlines to hit still.

[...] the guy has a solid amount of years of experience.

Sorry to be blunt, but it sounds like your colleague is not a good fit for the job. Apparently, the job requires dedication, initiative and attention to detail, which the colleague lacks.

Sure, it's possble that he will learn those skills over time, but you mention that he already has "a solid amount of years of experience". Apparently, all his previous teachers, supervisors, mentors and trainers were not successful in their attempts to teach him those skills. What are the chances that you---not being a professional trainer---will succeed?

He'll be more happy in a job where he can slack off, and you'll be more happy with an assistant who actually helps you get work done. It might be time to part ways.

When a surgeon has too many complicated surgeries planned, that's not the time to take on a new apprentice.

It's the time when you start delegating work to a different hospital, or you start making hard triaging decisions about who will be left to cope without treatment, or for elective surgeries who will have to come back next year.

If you're already lumbered with your new junior colleague, then you need to get real about whether there is any work available to be done that he can do with a reasonable amount of autonomy, bearing in mind his general capability and the absence of business-specific knowledge.

It sounds like both you and your manager have had completely unreasonable expectations. A junior would never be autonomous in a few weeks. A senior might carry their own weight in a few months. The only time a senior will contribute immediately, is if they bring in a dose of new expertise, and thereby turbocharge the work of the existing staff (rather than through independent work).

If the work is being done sloppy and instructions being forgotten by your junior, then you're either baffling a very new hire with chaotic demands, or you've hired someone whose level doesn't remotely correspond to your present needs.