how do I balance my own disability needs with cultural sensitivity at work? by Alison Green on October 20, 2022 It’s the Thursday “ask the readers” question. A reader writes: I am the team lead for a project developing a new social service, and one substantial part of that new service will be specifically for indigenous communities. Our team is beginning a process of indigenous community engagement, and we are being met with a lot […] Read the full article →
my boss has terrible ideas about social media, video games on your resume, and more by Alison Green on October 20, 2022 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss has terrible ideas about social media I’m part of an academic research lab, and our PI desperately wants us (postdocs and Ph.D. students) to do an amazing job with our lab’s social media, but whenever it comes to concrete suggestions on how this […] Read the full article →
I’m about to inherit a bad employee who’s a jerk to our good employee by Alison Green on October 19, 2022 A reader writes: I’m an assistant manager at a medium retail store. Corporate gives us so many full-time/part-time slots we can fill and we have a number of part-time employees. Let’s call two of them Dwight and Lucy. Dwight has been in the store for a very long time, but unfortunately he is very limited […] Read the full article →
my chatty employee is annoying his quieter coworker by Alison Green on October 19, 2022 A reader writes: I supervise a group of part-time workers doing what amounts to unskilled menial labor. One of the workers, Kent, is an older gentleman who has been doing this job for decades. He is known to be very chatty. Everyone kind of groans internally when they see him coming because they know they’re […] Read the full article →
we had to share our “shadow sides” and “be more vulnerable” at a meeting by Alison Green on October 19, 2022 A reader writes: The small team of seven people I’m on (within a Fortune 500 company) recently had an offsite for team-building and strategic planning. A junior employee was assigned to plan the team-building part of our offsite. She’s repeatedly said she wants more trust within the team and for us to feel like a […] Read the full article →
play-fighting at work, love letters on a shared drive, and more by Alison Green on October 19, 2022 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Employees’ banter turned into play-fighting I have a fairly established team who all get along very well. Two members of my team, Pam and Angela, are particularly close. They chat outside of work, enjoy sharing projects, and always speak well of each other. With their […] Read the full article →
we need to tell our remote employees they can’t take care of young kids while they’re working by Alison Green on October 18, 2022 A reader writes: We are in the place many employers are where we are needing to walk back our pandemic-era policy around children being home when people are working. For context, this is a call center job so people are on the phone with customers the majority of the day. For those in leadership, we […] Read the full article →
should I put more effort into making friends at work? by Alison Green on October 18, 2022 A reader writes: I started at my company almost five years ago. I’m married and was pregnant when I started, and though I worked full-time and more than satisfied my boss, I didn’t get along well with many of the other women on my team who were in different life stages and had different work […] Read the full article →
I’m biased against people who went to women’s colleges by Alison Green on October 18, 2022 A reader writes: I have a strong opinion about something that is making me biased as a manager. I am a woman and I dislike the idea of women’s colleges. I feel things people cannot help like age, race, disability, or sexual orientation are not the same as college choice. People pick where they go […] Read the full article →
apologies in out-of-office messages, avoiding Boss’s Day gifts, and more by Alison Green on October 18, 2022 It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Religious apologies in out-of-office messages It’s pretty common in Jewish circles to send mass blanket apologies (in email and social media) to coworkers, friends, and family, apologizing for anything they might have done during the year to offend the other person, whether intentional or unintentional. […] Read the full article →