should I tell candidates about 2 dating employees, employee is posting videos about customers on social media, and more

by Alison Green on August 15, 2024

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Should I tell candidates that two employees they’ll be managing are dating?

An organization I’m involved with is hiring their next executive director. There are two key long-time employees who are dating (there are fewer than 10 full-time employees total). When new people join the organization, nobody tells them that these two people are a couple, and they tend to find out in ad hoc and sometimes awkward ways.

I’m involved in the process of bringing on the next executive director and wondering at what point we should tell candidates this information (finalists who interview in-person? only the last candidate? after they start?) and also how to share it. I imagine straightforward is best — e.g., “You should know these two are a couple.” And if they ask whether it’s something to be concerned about, say, “It’s common knowledge, we just wanted you to be aware.” But in fact, these two do hold some power (they can essentially veto things if they don’t want them to happen). I don’t want candidates to be taken by surprise by these dynamics once they get the job, but also want to respect people’s personal lives and work/life boundaries.

When I started reading your question, I was thinking, “Just mention it after they’re hired; it’s not a big enough deal that it needs to be disclosed.” But then I got to the part about the power they hold as a unit — and yeah, I’d be pretty unhappy to take a job leading a small organization and only find out after I started that two key employees were in a personal relationship that allowed them to veto things they don’t like, and that no one had bothered to tell me I’d be walking into that.

So I’d raise it at the finalist stage. The message shouldn’t just be “we just wanted you to be aware they’re dating” because that’s not the most relevant part. You need to disclose what the relationship means for the dynamics in the organization, so that your finalists have a chance to ask questions about how that plays out and to consider whether they want a job where they’ll be managing that situation.

Disclosing it isn’t a violation of people’s personal lives; it’s about sharing a problematic staff dynamic that the person you hire will need to navigate.

2. Employee is making videos about our customers and posting them on his own social media

We have a newish salesperson who is creating his own videos/posts three times per week on his social channels about our customers/businesses. The quality is poor and his posts are not fact-checked. He graduated from college one year ago and works in B2B sales.

Because he is posting on his personal social accounts and not mentioning our company name, do we have the right to talk to him about his posts and ask him to stop creating his own videos about our customers? I’m concerned because he uses the customer’s actual websites in his videos. Their websites are in the background and he literally scrolls through their website during his videos, clicking on their videos and pictures, etc.

Is he breaching some kind of business SOP, ethics, or no-no by creating content about our customers? I have no doubt that if our customers saw his jenky videos, they would not be happy.

Yes, he absolutely is breaching basic professional expectations by posting about your customers, and you need to tell him to stop!

It doesn’t matter that he’s doing it on his personal account and not mentioning your company by name. He’s an employee of your company and you’re on very solid ground in telling him he can’t comment on your customers publicly, period, and that it would be a customer relations disaster if clients find out an employee is doing that. Tell him he needs to remove the existing videos immediately and not post more. If that single warning doesn’t resolve it, that’s a firing-level offense.

Even if that conversation does solve it, though, you should take a closer look at his work and judgment more broadly because this speaks to a real lack of sense.

Related:
my new employee keeps tagging us in negative social media posts after we’ve told her to stop (and then live-streamed her performance review)

3. Several weeks of uncontrollable burping

I have a soon-to-be embarrassing situation coming up. I have a condition called R-CPD, basically the inability to burp. Excitingly, in a few weeks, I will be having surgery to correct this. Without going into the details, I will literally have no control over my burping for at least several weeks and possibly longer. Some people’s side effects are so much that they burp every time they open their mouth or turn their head.

I work in a couple of different settings, some in a quiet space where everyone will undoubtedly hear. One day a week is directly in client’s homes and I’m dreading explaining it to them (it sounds weird and fake!) or just pretending it isn’t happening. Taking so much time off, or getting accommodations to be in a different location, isn’t an option due to the nature of the work.

“I need to warn you — I just had a medical procedure that’s causing a lot of uncontrollable burping for the next few weeks! Please excuse me in advance!”

If you want, you can say, “I won’t excuse myself every time or that will end up being more distracting than the burping is, so I’m going to say one blanket ‘excuse me’ now.”

That’s it! Be upbeat and matter-of-fact about. It doesn’t sound like being coy will be an option anyway, so you might as well just be open and direct about what’s going on. (It would be a lot weirder if you didn’t acknowledge it.)

4. I can’t get people to attend mandatory trainings

How much handholding should be expected of professionals? I am at my wit’s end. I am in a relatively senior role that involves keeping our staff compliant with various rules. So let’s say we’re going to have a mandatory training, which will keep our company on the right side of the law (and which we do at most twice a year). A month in advance, I will send an email explaining the training and why everyone needs to attend. I will quickly follow it up with a calendar invite, which maybe half of recipients will accept immediately. I will include it in the monthly staff newsletter. I will ping everyone in Teams a few days in advance. And on the day of the training, I STILL get a handful of people saying, “Oh, I didn’t realize that was today” and “Sorry, double booked/ something came up, can’t make it.”

I could complain to their managers, but it’s MY job to make sure we’re in compliance. That this is still happening in 2024 tells me it’s not about the tools or the technology for keeping track of appointments, it’s just plain disrespect. What do you think these folks need to hear in order to take it seriously?

You need to involve their managers — meaning that a week before the training, you message all the managers reminding them the training is on Date and is mandatory for their staff members, and asking them to confirm that all their team will be in attendance, and then you do that the day before too (not several days before — one day before, so it’s less likely to be forgotten in the interim). You do the same thing with individual attendees.

You will still have people flake out unless you have the ability to impose any kind of real consequence, which it sounds like you don’t (but their managers do, so you want them on your side!) but you’ll get less flaking than is happening now.

But there are no magic words that make people take this stuff seriously, unless those magic words involve consequences — like “if you miss this training, your vacation accrual will be frozen until you make it up.” I assume you don’t have that authority, so if the above doesn’t fix it, you need allies — maybe that’s your legal team, maybe it’s just someone higher up than you — who can put real teeth behind the requirement. You’d approach that by pointing out the legal risk for the company, the stats on lack of attendance, and what you’ve tried so far, and pointing out that you’re at the limits of what you can accomplish without real consequences for no-shows.

5. How do I network with the people who ghosted me after an interview?

I’m pursuing a job in the academic market, which is … tough, to say the least. I was recently ghosted after interviewing for a position at a university in my area. Months later, I found out through connections that while my interviewers liked me, they ended up going with another candidate.

There is another position at this university which I want even more than the position I didn’t get. In fact, I think it’s a much better match for my skills and goals than the last one was! However, I’m not sure how to network and communicate with the people who ghosted me. I was recently at an event where one of my interviewers was in attendance and they seemed decidedly nervous every time they saw me, like they clearly wanted to avoid talking to me.

Although I’m not happy about being ghosted, I am capable of getting over it for the sake of pursuing this other position. However, I’m concerned that my past interviewers’ own nerves over dealing with someone they ghosted may impact me negatively. Do you have any advice on how I can navigate this situation graciously?

Any nervousness at seeing you probably wasn’t about the ghosting; it’s more likely to have been about interviewing but not hiring you. People who ghost candidates often don’t even realize they ghosted them; they think someone else sent rejections, or it just fell off their radar, etc.

That said, people who hire normally don’t feel that much awkwardness about running into rejected candidates unless there’s something else going on, like they made you promises they later reneged on, etc. Any chance some of this might have been you projecting the awkwardness you feel about the ghosting on to them? Or maybe these people are particularly odd, but either way they’re probably not horribly consumed with guilt about the ghosting.

When you apply for the new job, send them a note saying you really enjoyed talking with them earlier this year, were glad to see the X position open up, have thrown your hat in the ring for it, and hope to get the opportunity to talk with them about it. Be cheerful and upbeat. All of that will demonstrate that you aren’t feeling weirdly about what happened and that there’s no need for them to feel they need to tiptoe around you.

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{ 376 comments }

{ 376 comments… read them below }

  1. Artemesia*

    OMG. posting about customers on his social media. That stops yesterday. If it doesn’t he is fired so he has no more access to information about clients/customers. This is a tornado warning level breach of professional ethics. Yikes..

    1. TheBunny*

      He’s 22 not 40. I think maybe save the sirens for him doing it again after someone does him the kindness of reminding him that jobs and college are very different.

      1. Artemesia*

        Which is what I said. IF IT DOESN:T (stop it) HE IS FIRED. This is not a minor thing; this is a huge breach of professional ethics.

      2. Allonge*

        I think the talk needs to be more than that. This is not an oooopsie, it’s a serious breach and it cannot just be ‘you are not in college any more’.

        Stop it now, any further public actions need to be run past your manager, next slip you are fired.

        1. AcademiaNut*

          I would go one step further. If, when this is discussed, he’s defensive, or argues that it’s not that big a deal, he does need to be fired, because if he doesn’t recognize the seriousness of what he’s done he’s likely to keep doing, but be sneakier about it.

          It might also be worth including a brief ethics/professional practices section in the new hire orientation, particularly for people straight out of school or who are new to the field, to prevent this sort of thing in the future. Some people aren’t going to care, or aren’t going to take the warning seriously, but at least if you catch them after they’ve been directly told not too, you know they need to be fired.

            1. Ally McBeal*

              I’m surprised OP’s company doesn’t already have a social media policy. I’ve written a couple and read many over the course of my career and “don’t share internal or client information” is ALWAYS in there.

              1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

                I think that he could argue that being that he is showing public websites that he is not sharing client information.

                1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

                  Darn it I hit submit by accident! I was going to finish by saying I wonder what he is saying about the customers and their websites. If he is talking about how a customer acted while at his work, how demanding they are, or making up information about them and their website, then that would be a problem.

            2. Spiritbrand*

              This section of the handbook is titled “I Can’t Believe We Have To Say This, But Someone Did This Ridiculous Thing And Now We Have To Spell It Out”

          2. allathian*

            Yes, this.

            Some people are so caught up in broadcasting their entire lives on social media that they don’t see anything wrong in this as long as they aren’t mentioning their employer by name. But this is certainly a breach of professional ethics, not to mention customer privacy. I’d be tempted to fire this person without any second chances.

            (I hate to be recorded on video, mainly because my face is so asymmetrical that I barely recognize myself in photos/video. Live cameras-on meetings are fine because I’m not looking at myself all the time and when I am, I’m looking at my mirror image.)

            1. Apex Mountain*

              Firing someone for a one time offense like this would be way over the top imo. Just tell him what he did was wrong and why.

              Also, not sure of the connection between what this employee did and you not liking to be recorded

              1. Artemesia*

                It depends on the content. If the content is relatively benign then a warning and retraining are appropriate. If there is anything critical or any ridicule involved then he should be fired.

            2. The Gollux, Not a Mere Device*

              The problem isn’t that he’s broadcasting his own life–it’s that he’s broadcasting other people’s lives without their knowledge and consent.

              Broadcasting his own life would be, oh, “I had a really strenuous day, six different people all wanted help at the same time” or even “someone today asked me a long question about purple alpacas–what kind of dye do they use?” Not something that specifically shows the content of individual customers’ websites

          3. Cabbagepants*

            Agree. My company has an official social media policy and an associated mandatory training. It’s 2024 and people are going to post about their jobs on social media, so it’s best to get ahead of problems like this and have (and communicate) what right vs wrong looks like.

        2. Observer*

          Agreed.

          He’s not a child. And if he’s on social media making these posts he has not been living under a rock, so he should most definitely be aware of some of the issues here.

          So,yes a conversation. But ONE, and *only* one, conversation and it needs to be not just crystal clear, but severe and explicitly naming the consequence of non-compliance.

      3. GythaOgden*

        No. The warning is fine, but he’s an adult and establishing consequences for a pretty egregious breach of corporate practice needs to be made in no uncertain terms.

        This isn’t something that has fuzzy edges like falling asleep at your desk because you can’t cope with the study load in first-year financial accounting like when I had my one and only encounter with the boss as someone in trouble (he was ok with my explanation but I think it led to me questioning my suitability for the job and they also felt it was a symptom of a larger root cause). This is something deliberate and focused and also something that many people do not do because they generally are thinking and conscientious people who know that publicly ridiculing their company’s clients is not a good thing to do if they want to remain employed.

        1. metadata minion*

          I don’t see any indication that he’s ridiculing or otherwise disparaging the clients, just that the videos aren’t authorized and badly done.

      4. Peanut Hamper*

        And this is why I think it’s important for kids to have jobs in high school. They should have an understanding of this distinction much earlier in life, and not suddenly discover this after getting their first job out of high school.

        1. Polly*

          I agree. When I think back to how clueless I was at my first job, it’s very embarrassing. To give credit where it’s due, my colleagues did set me straight on a lot of the dumb things I was doing. And I’m still very grateful!

        2. CowWhisperer*

          For industries that hire a lot of low qualification first-time job seekers, the good employers also explicitly teach what’s expected of employees like, “When you punch in, you need to be ready to work immediately – so arrive a few minutes early to take off winter coats and put away any personal items in your locker” and “You are scheduled shifts to work. Here’s what to do if you become ill before a shift or if you need to trade shifts. ”

          It’s a boring few days for experienced people – but you get paid with no customer service so it’s not horrible.

          It’s not magic, but it gives the teens who want to do well but haven’t had access to adults who can teach employment readiness a reasonable shot.

          1. Bruce*

            LW3: One of my former companies had a policy that if a manager was late turning in their performance reviews / proposed raises then their raise for that year would be cancelled. After one example was made that policy was not violated as far as I knew…

            1. Bruce*

              Odd, this was not intended as a reply to CowWhisperer… though I do agree about needing to give coaching on basic work place expectations!

      5. Hyaline*

        I mean, this has to be dealt with immediately and firmly, but it’s also not necessarily….surprising? This kid is a member of an extremely online generation and has probably had very few situations in which he needed to separate his online life from his real life. College life doesn’t really confront the issue of ethical social media use very often (or if it does, there’s little guidance outside of equally clueless peers). Obviously he needs to stop right now, but if he quickly understands the error and doesn’t display other breaches of judgement, I wouldn’t hold it against him.

        Having a company social media policy might not be a terrible idea, either–beyond just part of training/onboarding, something clear and standard you can fall back on.

        1. Observer*

          This kid is a member of an extremely online generation and has probably had very few situations in which he needed to separate his online life from his real life.

          Actually, I would say the reverse. The fact that his generation is so extremely on-line means that he really *should* be aware of all of the issues around privacy.

          It’s not for nothing that “finsta” is a thing, or that most social media platforms have to grapple with how to deal with fake / throwaway / burner accounts etc. They *know*.

        2. The Unspeakable Queen Lisa*

          Being extremely online is irrelevant. This is the same “not knowing what you don’t know” that all kids fresh out of school have. If they’ve never worked in an office, or never worked in this type of office, they may have no idea what is acceptable.

        3. GythaOgden*

          By that same token he should know a lot about how privacy online works and thus know that people who do ridiculous things and post about them get fired.

          The guy with his feet in the lettuce tray is only the tip of a massive iceberg of people who did dumb things online and got their ass handed to them. My nephews, the older of whom just turned thirteen, know not to do dumb crap online, and they were part of the generation who had to cope with the vagaries of 2020.

          I really don’t think this is generational. There are things you can hold people accountable for before they turn 25, and this is one of them.

        4. teacherandhiker*

          I am a high school teacher. We have strict policies at schools that you may not record someone else, be it a fellow student, a teacher, a parent, an admin, anyone, without their permission. All the students know this and most take it seriously. I don’t think it is fair to blame it on the generation. Gen Z in fact is often very savvy with online privacy, precisely because they’ve grown up with internet.

        5. Hyaline*

          Everyone is mentioning privacy…but there isn’t any indication in the letter that the employee revealed private information. What he’s doing is professionally stupid and puts his employer in an awkward position, and could lose the confidence of their customers, but there’s no indication unless there was an update I missed that he’s sharing private or non-public info (the only specific shared was that he’s showing their public web pages–so, far from private or any privacy concerns).

          It sounds like he’s making crappy content and doesn’t realize where the line is on harming professional relationships (it’s about a mile or two back).

          1. GythaOgden*

            Come on, this is splitting hairs. Filming any work related content is going to be bad information governance at best and might spill over into privacy issues at worst. This sort of behaviour is unacceptable, full stop, and handwringing about what actually happened and why doesn’t really matter — the fact of the matter is he was grossly unprofessional in the moment and needs to learn how completely unacceptable this is.

            Sorry, but there are some things that are going to be problematic in any situation. This is gross misconduct however you slice it (meaning sacking would be on the table in the UK), and no workplace that wants to maintain a good relationship with its clients is going to tolerate this kind of thing.

            He needs to go so the company can make it clear this is unacceptable.

      6. jasmine*

        I know taking people’s photos without their consent is normal nowadays especially among college students but like… it seriously needs to stop yesterday. Some sirens might be a wake up call for him

    2. ArtK*

      Company should have a social media policy that forbids that kind if thing. Also, simply revealing the identity of a customer may cause problems; unless that customer has given permission to be a reference, they’re entitled to confidentiality.

      Just went through our security/social media/ethics training this AM, so this is very fresh in my mind.

    3. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

      It’s worth creating a policy for this (although common sense would suggest this is a ridiculous thing for this employee to do). There are lots of cautionary tales on TikTok of people who are fired for their commentary about clients/customers and other confidential job information. Agreed that kiddo needs to learn early that this is a serious breach and he needs to knock it the hell off.

  2. Sleeve McQueen*

    LW4: any chance you can get HR to help you? ie make completing mandatory training everyone’s KPIs and say attendance will be taken into consideration during annual reviews?

    1. Brain the Brian*

      Or any chance of locking people out of certain systems / job functions / facilities if they don’t comply?

      1. Analyst*

        This. Not staying compliant is a fireable offence and you WILL loose access to many things and be unable to do anything but training where I am (patient related work). My organization could loose its funding and authorization to do its work if we aren’t compliant. Absolutely need clear and immediate consequences.

        1. Polly*

          Yeah, my company is in a highly regulated industry, and if you don’t complete the training, you lose your access.

        2. WantonSeedStitch*

          Same in my job, which involves donor information: if you don’t complete your annual privacy training, you lose access to the database.

          1. JustaTech*

            Yup, our is, until you complete your mandatory training you can’t go into the manufacturing suites, all you can do is sit at your desk and do the training. And if you don’t, fired.
            I think that a few people get close but I don’t think anyone has ever managed to get fired over it (but it would come up *a lot* in your annual review).

      2. ScruffyInternHerder*

        That’s how our (ridiculously basic to the point of almost insulting) IT security training is. You don’t complete, you’re locked out of the server til you’ve completed it AND your manager signs off on it. If you complete your training before the deadline, you don’t need to involve your manager.

        Once a quarter, less than fifteen minutes. It isn’t that difficult, and we get six weeks notice of upcoming deadlines.

      3. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        This is what my org does. One other thing we do that might be useful is to schedule more than one time for the training. Because people go on vacation, have hearing dates, etc.

        1. Brain the Brian*

          Good point. We used to do this where I work, and then the person who led most of the compliance trainings left and was replaced by someone who doesn’t seem to understand how time zones work and schedules one instance for each training, all of them at times that are simultaneously awful for all 20 of our offices. Sigh.

      4. Annony*

        This is what should happen (and what does happen where I work). If we miss something necessary for compliance, we cannot do tasks whatever we are missing until we are back in compliance. It is set up so that if we miss the one we were supposed to attend, there is another training we can attend before it gets to suspension level but if we cannot do our jobs, we are suspended without pay until that is rectified. If it is only a part of our job then our tasks need to be modified until we are in compliance.

      5. Person from the Resume*

        Exactly. Employee didn’t complete your annual, bi-annual regulatory mandated training? Then you cannot work until you do. Lock them out of the computer system until they complete training.

        Also it’s your job to make sure everyone completes training; it’s a manager’s job to make sure their employee complies with rules and mandatory training. You should deal with the managers or even directors of teams and not just the individual employees. This might be change to your old process so start by explaining to manager that their employees need to attend.

      6. Anne of Green Gables*

        I work for a large education institution. We have always had mandatory annual training, but I don’t know what happened in years past when you didn’t complete on time, because my department made sure we all did ours.

        This year, they added an additional topic AND would cut off your access if you didn’t complete by the deadline. Deadline was May 31st. We had easily a dozen reminder emails, starting in JANUARY, about the deadline and that you would lose access on June 1st if you didn’t complete.

        The rumor I heard is that 800 employees did not complete by deadline. I have no idea if that is accurate. Many of our faculty don’t work over the summer and they end mid-May. Again, they still got quite a few reminders before they left campus for summer. But all of them were shocked! Shocked! when they arrived in early August and could not log in to anything. I assume there hadn’t been consequences before and people didn’t actually expect to get locked out.

        Our training is virtual modules, not real-time like LW’s. Those who got locked out had to sit in a computer lab with IT nearby to do their required training before their access was restored. So not only did they get locked out, they then were tied to one physical location (and we’re a big metro area) to complete their training. So they had to travel, possibly to an inconvenient location, and couldn’t just say they would do it to get access restored.

    2. MissBaudelaire*

      Thought of this, too. We have certain trainings we MUST complete or we will NOT get our annual bonus

      1. Anonym*

        Ours is tied to our performance reviews. If we don’t complete them, rating is lowered and that affects bonus and raises as well as promotion opportunities. I think some people see it as unimportant, and sometimes the specific training isn’t that relevant to your role, but this falls under “follows explicit directions” which is pretty damn basic as far as job performance goes.

        1. Trick or Treatment*

          Exactly the same here! Every company I’ve ever worked at, this was essentially part of the company culture and you were told this during onboarding. For most people it does the trick, but I think a side effect is that then managers really zero in on the few people that still don’t care or always have excuses. It’s probably much easier to put the pressure on when it’s only a few people not playing along.

    3. Anonys*

      I don’t know how big the org is (based on the fact that OP is in a senior role and is taking care of scheduling and sending out meeting reminders personally I assume not huge) but I think first step is to have two meeting dates for each training, a couple of weeks apart. It sounds like the meeting invites are only send out a month in advance (maybe amp up to two) and people might already have legitimate conflicts such as external client meetings or vacation booked. After the first training, everyone who didn’t attend and their manager should receive the information that they absolutely must attend the second option appointment and be asked to confirm attendance.

      One idea could also be to send any employee who didn’t make the training the material and require them to sign/confirm that they have read and understood it. Or for example my company doesn’t really require any actual meetings on compliance topics for non-management employees. Rather there are online courses on topics such as competition law (usually mix of video and text), that give the relevant information and then require the employee to complete a few multiple choice questions in the online form, testing if they have correctly understood the training. This might be a some effort to set-up initially but can be used for years and employees can complete at their own convenience (though you will need to set a deadline and still need to do a good amount of chasing).

      Also, in addition to looping in/getting buy-in from the managers of the (non-)attendees, someone above LW, ideally even CEO/Board member level depending on org size, should send out an email to the whole org (LW can draft/write this for them) explaining the purpose of the trainings and that they’re absolutely mandatory and to be prioritized over meeting conflicts (incl. consequences if they can be convinced to implement them). Compliance culture really comes from the top and needs buy-in at the highest level, otherwise it won’t work. Having a compliance target in annual performance evaluation, as suggested by Sleeve McQueen, is also a great way to set tone from the top – for managers, the target KPI should be full attendance from the team(s) below them which will motivate them to chase their own people.

      But how much effort this is worth for top management also depends on how much actual legal liability or trouble in case of an audit is created if not everyone attends those trainings. The better LW can outline for management the actual consequences to the company of non-compliance, the better.

      1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

        “Sending anyone who missed the material and require them to read and confirm they understand it” sounds like a great way to reduce attendance at the in person training to near zero – so now they can do the training at their convenience within a few days or a week, and in half the time or less? Most people I know would definitely pick that option (and would legitimately read the material!) Reading is just sooooo much faster than listening for most. (Not everyone. Kid has dyslexia, and listening is definitely his preference and faster for him.)

        1. Snow Globe*

          In our organization, we are required to view a recording of the original training, if we missed it for some reason. But all training requires completion of a brief quiz at the end. Anything less than 80% score means you need to re-take the training. Ensures people actually pay attention.

        2. Hyaline*

          And uh if that method works…maybe reading material and doing an online quiz is preferable for everyone to in-person meetings. We have no idea how much flexibility LW has in ensuring compliance, but generally thinking creatively outside of “I schedule one meeting everyone comes to” might be advisable.

          1. UKDancer*

            I know my company said the compliance rate for the mandatory fraud and cyber training we have to do each year shot up when they went to an e-learning approach (learning package and test) rather than face to face. People could do it at a time that suited them and as long as it was done in the time period required, it was a lot more flexible .

        3. JustaTech*

          My company has a ton of documents that you have to be trained on, where “trained” means “read and understand”. At least, it used to be that way until the industry realized that “read and understand” was really “skim and say OK but retain nothing”, so now there are incredibly simple quizzes on the really important documents.
          Still a million times better than in-person!

          In-person training should be for showing how to use a new system, where you have time to ask questions, not the “this is how to write the date” training.

    4. fhqwhgads*

      Yeah totally. Anyone who missed a training and didn’t make it up = not eligible to reason “meets expectations” on any part of their review. Behavior will change fast.

    5. Kevin Sours*

      I’m going to take a different angle people are taking about consequences for not attending, and that’s fair. But how much real support is there for going?

      Do line managers give their reports time to do it? Or is the expectation that they will get the same amount of work done that day despite spending an hour or two in training? Is “I can’t jump on this issue today because of training” considered a reasonable response? If the consequences for going are worse than the consequences for skipping then guess what people are doing. And just ramping up consequences until they’re worse for skipping is going to make things super miserable.

      Is the training useful or just a box ticking exercise? I’ll be honest that the quality of corporate training I’ve experienced is piss poor. This is less true of in person training (which I haven’t seen in a while). Faced with online training that is slow, tedious, and painfully generic people are going look for things that are more important to do. (I’ve been looking without success for a Simpsons clip of a school film strip where Skinner is clearly reading the name of the school dubbed over because that’s the quality of presentation I’m experiencing). And it’s worse when it’s mostly just a repeat of everything I had to sit through last year. Some thought to making this useful for the people taking the training and not just the compliance department will help.

      1. Digger*

        I think this is a really good point. If you want to know how to get people to attend, it’s useful to ask why they’re NOT attending.

        If they don’t think it’s a priority, why is that? If they dislike the training, what about it do they dislike? If they don’t think it’s helpful or relevant, why not? Etc.

        Different answers will point you towards different solutions.

        1. Reebee*

          Way too complicated, and more than a little entitled.

          Just show up, complete the training, and that’s it. It’s what adults do. If they’re delivering a baby, attending a wedding or funeral, or some other unanticipated disruption, by all means, make other arrangements; otherwise, just do it.

          It’s not complicated.

          1. Kevin Sours*

            When faced with the choice between:
            * Getting yelled at by my manager for not getting something done.
            * Skipping a corporate training that is a complete waste of my time
            * Working unpaid overtime to get both done

            Which I’m going to pick. Call that entitled if you want.

            1. Reebee*

              How do you know it’s a waste of your time? That sounds entitled. Also, your manager disallowing you to engage in *legal compliance*, which is the LW’s context, is worth a complaint.

              Right?

              1. Kevin Sours*

                You were the one starting that LW looking to whether the training was perceived as useful to the trainees or if managers were providing support for their people attending training was “too complicated” and that people should “show up” regardless.

              2. Aquatic*

                It sounds like they’re basing their assessment of the trainings on their experience attending previous trainings.

      2. File Herder*

        “I’m not doing unpaid overtime” is one of the reasons why I don’t get my training done. Another is that I use assistive tech and the online learning is typically accessibility-hostile. Also gets a bit demoralising after the third time you’ve done it in a week and the system still won’t accept that you’ve completed it. We keep a spreadsheet in my office so you can tell your manager which things you’ve done, because all too often the automated record-keeping system doesn’t.

        And not everyone uses the interactive point-n-click learning style. Gimme a Word document any day. Oh, yes, forgot one gripe – there is an accessible version in the form of a Word document on many of the modules now, which is wonderful apart from the bit where reading that doesn’t register as having completed the course and you still have to do the not-accessible version to prove you’ve done it.

        (Some of the ways in which the stuff at my very large employer is less actively hostile to assistive tech users nowadays may be as a result of me filing a formal disability discrimination complaint. I got a very apologetic phone call asking for help in making it less horrible. “But you can email to ask for an accessible version.” This was deliberately not put on the main page, because then everyone would just read that instead of doing the wonderful interactive version. It had apparently never occurred to them that making AT users go round in circles on several pages looking for the very tiny notice about who to email for an accessible version might be an issue.)

    6. Bitte Meddler*

      At my prior company, it wasn’t a regulatory environment but there was training that certain new hires / promotions needed to complete in x-timeframe per company policy.

      I’m an internal auditor and we originally dinged the Training team for not getting all the requisite people trained on time. They complained that they’d done all they could (scheduled the training, sent out the training invites, followed up with reminders, etc.) and *still* people would no-show. They also could only invite the people they knew about.

      So I made the HRIT team send Training a list of all news hires / promotions in certain job roles, along with who their managers were, so that at least Training was working from a complete set of who needed the training.

      Then a new policy was written that said *managers* were responsible for making sure their people attended the training, with escalating consequences, up to and including termination of the managers who failed to get their folks trained.

      Worked like magic. The only no-shows afterward were people with legitimate illness excuses.

    7. I Have RBF*

      Yes, this.

      If you do not count compliance toward their review, you will never get sufficient compliance.

      At my company, compliance with training is mandatory, and is a mandatory part of your annual review. It is tracked and counts toward your score.

  3. Daria grace*

    #2, this is really inappropriate behaviour and I would not be comfortable continuing using a business that employed people who did this kind of thing. I agree with Alison that you need to look at his judgement more broadly. Even if he is willing to stop this particular thing I’d be wary of continuing to employ him. Someone willing to seek inappropriate personal advancement and online clout at the expense of your company and your customers will probably have selfish behaviour & poor judgement show up on other things.

    1. urguncle*

      Unfortunately, I think this is a combination of bad advice and generational culture. New grads get “career advice” that makes 0 sense from the career center, including sometimes being told that having an online “brand” is a draw for employers.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        If your “generational culture” makes you have bad judgment in one area, it’s possible it’s causing you to have bad judgment in other areas, too.

        The fact that he is mentioning customers by name, but not his employer by name, makes me think he has some awareness that what he is doing is if not crossing a line, pretty damn close to it.

        1. Pastor Petty Labelle*

          If you are trying to create your own brand, of course you wouldn’t mention your employer. Because then its about the employer, not you.

          Or it could be part of being online constantly while also realizing you don’t reveal too much info about yourself for safety reasons. So don’t mentione employer so no one can find you.

          The fact that the LW even wonders if anything can be done since its on personal time may be the key to the thinking — its on personal time so it has nothing to do with work.

          The employee deserves to be told how the working world really works. Their reaction will be telling. Defensive and/or doubling down – out the door. Apologetic and showing a willingness to adapt to professional norms, a second chance.

      2. Justme, The OG*

        Except anyone I know in Gen Z has been taught that bullying is bad, and online bullying is bullying. And that’s what he’s doing. Don’t blame the entire generational culture for that one.

        1. Hyaline*

          Ehhh….showing a customer’s website is not the same as targeted bullying. We don’t even know if he’s critiquing the websites or companies, and even that wouldn’t be bullying. (For all we know he’s sharing neutral information or glowing recommendations.) We’re really weakening the terminology when we apply it way too broadly (and it makes it harder to actually DO something about real, problematic bullying when everything is “bullying”).

        2. Learn ALL the things*

          the LW doesn’t say anything about bullying. They just say he’s scrolling through websites and clicking on things and talking about them.

        3. Jackalope*

          I don’t think we have the evidence to say that it’s bullying. As far as we know this is not targeted to a specific person or group of people, and when I looked over the OP’s letter again it doesn’t even say whether the employee is saying negative things about the companies. He could just as easily be going over their websites and pointing out how to navigate them or what he did to make them work. And honestly, even if they are all negative, that doesn’t automatically mean bullying. It’s reasonable to post about websites online, even negative posts, and can absolutely be done without bullying.

          1. Learn ALL the things*

            This. I follow a several book reviewers online, and it feels like every week or so one of them is accused of cyberbullying an author because they posted a negative review of that author’s book. That’s not what bullying is. Bullying is a very serious thing, and using it to describe things that are not bullying dilutes the meaning. It’s important to reserve that word for what it actually is.

            LW’s employee is doing something that’s not okay. We don’t have to call it bullying to drive that point home.

        4. bamcheeks*

          Acting like individual people have the same responsibility to be kind to companies as they do to other individuals is weird neoliberal shit, not Gen Z culture. This is a bad idea because it’s unprofessional and likely to lead to No Job, but it’s not bullying.

      3. bamcheeks*

        including sometimes being told that having an online “brand” is a draw for employers

        I can tell you it is overwhelmingly employers and influencers who give advice like this, not professional careers staff.

      4. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        I don’t think that this is bad advice from a career center. I think this stems from 1, the use of social media and how they publish their lives and 2. that there are quite a few influencers out there that make content about their customers and/or their work. The thing about most of those videos is that they do not publicly shame the customers, they use fake names, no longer work for that company, etc.
        So I think employee sees all of these social media posts and think that its ok to post about customers and his job.

        1. bamcheeks*

          no longer work for that company, etc

          I think survivor bias is the thing that younger people don’t really see. The people who make it to “influencer” status with this kind of content and have big audiences / are generating income either waited until they were no longer associated with that company or took a massive risk which paid off. The people who lost their jobs and didn’t successfully monetise their content aren’t really visible.

      5. Reebee*

        Not all career centers are bad, and how many people know not to do this? A lot, I’d wager.

        Some people are just inherently bad employees.

    2. Hyaline*

      I mean, sure, keep an eye on him but you should for all new employees, right? We all know this was a huge judgment fail, but for a 22 year old, social media use could be a legitimate blind spot. Documenting your whole dang life on social media is typically pretty innocuous…until it isn’t, and he’s navigating those changes in life situation without clear guidance up to now. I would be far more interested in how this employee responded to the correction in terms of gauging his judgment. If he quickly catches on to the ethical issues and goes out of his way to correct the mistake, that speaks a lot about his willingness to take correction and learn, which is how we develop good judgment. (After all, “judgment” is a developed skill, not an innate character trait, right?)

      3. jasmine*

        but there’s documenting your life as in “ugh I had to deal with an annoying customer today [queue anecdote]”. and then there’s taking a video or photo of someone without them knowing and then posting that photo/video with a caption like “[specific name] is so annoying”

        I hear that kind of thing being scarily common on tiktok, but there are also plenty of 22 year olds that know better. don’t fire him without talking to him (22 year olds do dumb stuff, hopefully he is open to learning), but we don’t need to minimize the behavior either

          1. MigraineMonth*

            Yeah, I also thought it was going to be something like this from the headline. Reading the letter… I’m unclear on what exactly the employee is doing and therefore how big a judgement lapse it is.

            Are they showing off the work they did on the site? Critiquing it for usability? Mocking the products as silly? Spilling confidential info? The videos should be taken down in any case, but some of those behaviors would be “automatic firing” and some would just be unwise.

  4. Eric*

    #4, I think you want to reframe this in your head, but about disrespect, but about priorities.

    I’ve been in the other side of it. Yes, you say the training is important. But I’ve got a report for a two million dollar project that’s due out. I’ve already been working 10 hours a day for the last two weeks to get it done. Going to a training means now I’m working 12 hours that day. That ain’t happening.

    Maybe my company really does think that this training is more important then doing a good job on this major project. But my boss hasn’t said so, and your email to me doesn’t convince me that that’s the case.

    So yes, escalate and raise the concerns. But also realize what’s a priority from your perspective looks different for different parts of the organization.

    1. Daria grace*

      Perhaps also worth considering whether past training and compliance stuff that wasn’t that important got communicated like it was super important so people are now calibrating their priorities accordingly

      1. Kevin Sours*

        People are actually very good about understanding and aligning themselves to an organizations priorities. The problem for a lot of organizations is that they fail to understand what they are communicating. A breathless email about the importance of attending training is meaningless. And in my experience managers never say stuff like “go do the training and we’ll figure out the how to get the Smith Account fixed when you get back”.

    2. Transitory Property*

      Something that works great in my company: rewards for departments where everyone does the training on time. That way the managers AND peers are incentivized to say to each other “everyone is going to the training right?? I want those Beats headphones!!”. They do a random drawing with every department that has 100% compliance.

      Because yeah, unfortunately you are never going to get me to actually care about these trainings when I have my own work to do that I am really invested in.

      1. Governmint Condition*

        I had a supervisor who did that. One reward for individuals who completed the training early by a certain amount of time, and one for the group if there was 100% compliance by the deadline. (But the rewards were much smaller than Beats headphones. More like Starbucks gift card, box of donuts, because Government.)

        1. Learn ALL the things*

          Yeah, incentives can be really unconvincing for government workers, because they tend to be extremely underwhelming.

          My state’s constitution includes a provision that prevents tax payer money being used to buy gifts for staff. This means that all staff incentive gifts either have to be donated (which is a problem because we’re also legally prohibited from soliciting donations, and not a lot of companies are banging down our door to offer us free stuff we didn’t ask for), or funded by the managers personally. I got an email just this morning reminding me to participate in a mandatory survey, and it says that one participant will be randomly selected to receive a $25 gift card. A 1/5000 chance at getting $25 isn’t all that incentivizing, in the grand scheme of things.

          1. Pine Tree*

            In my fed office, supervisors can always let people leave 59 mins early. I’d be happy leaving 59 mins early (that day or another day of my choosing) if I attend the training.

      2. Ray B Purchase*

        +1 to this!

        My company started giving out AirPods and other $200ish raffle prizes for people who come to quarterly meetings in person after our office reopened and meeting in person was (relatively) considered safe and it increased attendance by a lot.

        And — not so much an incentive as a requirement these days — if there’s no free meal at the trainings, don’t even bother holding them.

    3. Silver Robin*

      As someone in a position that is closer to LW 4’s, we know this training/admin work is not a priority for you. I would ask you to imagine the experience of a person whose entire job is deemed “not a priority” by everyone they have to work with while also being fundamental to keeping the place running. That lack of perspective from folks in *your* position can be infuriating often leads to folks in LW’s position feeling like they are set up to fail.

      Because, if you do not do it, you do not get to do any other part of your job because the grant does not get renewed/you get fined/you get shut down (depending on the severity). Not only that, *our* performance is judged, to an extent, on how well we get people to do these things. Folks ignoring us, flaking on us, and deprioritizing these tasks gets *us* dinged more often than not.

      Constantly being ignored when you are asking for relatively little time and relatively easy tasks that may be annoying, but are necessary, does feel like disrespect. Why are my asks (crucial to the continuation of this company) disregarded while everyone else’s are listened to? The importance level is the same, so it must be that they disrespect me. And considering how people roll their eyes at trainings and the like, that attitude can definitely bleed over to the person requesting you do the trainings: “ugh another email from Jane about that God forsaken training, booooo Jane” kind of thing.

      Is it actually personal? Generally not. But is it infuriating to feel like no matter what you do, nobody does the mandatory thing that keeps the org running when your entire job is to make people do it? Is it understandable that parts of it can feel personal? Absolutely.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        I totally agree. The million-dollar report might be very important, but the training is very important too – just in a different way. And of course people are only going to see their own deliverables as important!

        1. Mongrel*

          Especially as, depending on the job, the report may be invalid if the people aren’t up to date with their certification.

          I also think that HR should get involved, the employees are being paid for having professional certification so they’re far less valuable if that disappears.

          1. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

            The OP doesn’t say that this is related to professional certifications, just that the company gets in legal trouble if it’s not done. I was thinking something like HIPAA compliance training. (Maybe because that’s the only one I’ve done that was in-person. Ethics and cybersecurity and anti-harrassment have always been online, take them when you want before X date.)

            1. JustaTech*

              Oh man, I work in an industry regulated by the FDA and honestly HIPAA is the only training I *don’t* have to take (because I don’t interact with patients ever).
              GMP (good manufacturing practice), GDP (good documentation practice), bloodborne pathogen…
              And then there are all the internal systems trainings I have to review every year. It’s *a lot*, but because it is 100% essential to our ability to function and not get shut down, time for training is built into most people’s schedule. (Not senior leadership, but certainly all the lower-level folks.)

      2. DJ Abbott*

        I’m wondering why Eric has to work 10 hour days on this. It sounds like management could be better at distributing workload and having realistic expectations. One of the reasons is so people could have time for this training.

        1. AnonForThis*

          I assumed it was in the last few weeks before a deployment deadline. I’ve been in R&D before where the last couple of weeks were ridiculouly busy and people put in the shifts (16 hours in some cases) to get the stuff ready on time rather than face more set backs. It worked for them and the launch was a success.

          And then the big boss held it up as an example of things getting done and said “why doesn’t everyone pull those kinds of shifts all the time”… I’m not sure he even got it when we explained that a) we weren’t getting paid for those kind of hours and b) we’d all burn out if we tried.

        3. mlem*

          Isn’t that exactly the problem, though — that management doesn’t seem to place any premium on working in time/availability for the trainings? If my company’s training team says “here’s a required training, no consequences”, and my manager says “work on this project with all your time or you WILL face consequences”, it’s only natural for me to disregard the training, with no ill intent whatsoever.

          (My company *does* set consequences for not completing required trainings, fortunately.)

        4. Kevin Sours*

          Line management often times doesn’t prioritize training any more than the people who aren’t taking it.

      3. Snow Globe*

        This is legally required training. In highly regulated industries, failure to have 100% compliance with certain training can mean licenses get suspended, the organization gets fined or subject to further regulatory scrutiny, and public notices that the organization is non-compliant with regulations. It may not be *your* biggest priority, but I guarantee you it is important to the organization’s ability to continue operating.

        1. Jaydee*

          In my mind, if the training is a big enough priority (as something required for regulatory compliance would be) then either there needs to be large scale buy-in with HR and managers all communicating “everyone WILL attend the training or else consequences” and clearing schedules so it can happen or the training needs to be made much more user-friendly to complete.

          Having a single in-person mandatory training needs to be communicated frequently and starting months in advance so people don’t schedule something else over it. But then someone is still going to get sick and miss it, so it’s probably the least effective way of making sure everyone completes the training.

          So maybe offer multiple different training sessions over the course of a few weeks so someone who plans to attend the first one and then something comes up can just attend the one next Tuesday morning (or the one Thursday afternoon or the one the following Monday at noon) instead.

          Or have the training as a video or online training module that everyone has to complete and pass a quiz on sometime during a specific window. Then you really can work with managers to track who has taken it and remind their team members who haven’t completed it yet to get it done.

        2. Observer*

          but I guarantee you it is important to the organization’s ability to continue operating.

          Sure.Which is why it’s on *management* to make it clear,to give the mandate some teeth, and to make sure that they are being realistic.

      5. Pescadero*

        “Why are my asks (crucial to the continuation of this company) disregarded while everyone else’s are listened to? ”

        Because my direct supervisor, the person who controls my raises and whether I keep my job – told me to prioritize them over your training.

        1. Silver Robin*

          That was a bit of a rhetorical question meant to point out the issues with how these equal priorities are responded to. We know why. I said as much in my first lines; we get it. But the prioritization is unbalanced. And yes, yes, it is management’s responsibility etc. But I am trying to explain what things look like from our perspective because comments like yours and Eric’s seem to indicate that you think we do not already understand yours (we do) and shows us that you do not really understand ours.

          1. Reebee*

            Yeah, it seems there is an undercurrent of “compliance isn’t seen as important at my workplace; therefore it’s not important.”

            Carry that logic to its fullest extent, and we’ve got boatloads of healthcare professionals and first responders who are unclear about what to do in crises. Ignorant of new or additinal HIPAA requirements. Employees not sure of the *best* way to ensure surviving an active shooter.

            Compliance training is structured according to updated data that informs the training. I always learn something new.

            I appreciate your level-headedness here, Silver Robin.

      6. Pastor Petty Labelle*

        But Eric wasn’t saying the training wasn’t important, its just that in the days of fewer people doing more work stuff has to be prioritized. Without guidance, how is someone supposed to know hey yeah this mandatory training really is the top priority right now.

        This is why enlisting managers is important. So Eric’s manager can go to him and say — hey I know you have this million dollar report due soon, but this training has to be done or the report won’t matter. This training is your number 1 priority right now, we will figure out the report deadline.

        1. Silver Robin*

          by the words “mandatory” and usually the title of the training.

          Yes, managers and leadership need to be enforcing this. But the attitude of “just see it from my perspective, your *mandatory compliance training* is just not important enough for me to care about” is likely something LW already knows, and did not actually add anything actionable for LW to do. And, as someone who has to do this kind of work, it is dismissive and…well, disrespectful.

      8. Observer*

        Why are my asks (crucial to the continuation of this company) disregarded while everyone else’s are listened to?

        It’s because no one has told them that this is a priority, and that if they don’t comply the company could take a major hit. But they *do* know that if the don’t get Task X done by a certain time, there may / will be these serious consequences.

        And that’s why you *do* need to talk to their managers, and to HR, and top management to do something(s) that actually communicate the urgency of the issue.

        It would also help if you actually tried to understand what you’ve just been told. Yes, you say that ‘it’s relatively easy” and a relatively short amount of time. But if you are dealing with people who are really over-loaded, then that “relatively short” task means that “either I miss seeing my kid before they go to be AGAIN *or* the report to our regulator misses its deadline” or similarly unpalatable choices.

        But is it infuriating to feel like no matter what you do, nobody does the mandatory thing that keeps the org running when your entire job is to make people do it? Is it understandable that parts of it can feel personal? Absolutely.

        Sure, but you are blaming the wrong people. Either you have not brought it up with the people who can change that, in which case it’s on you. Or those people have chosen not to do anything to change the dynamic, and that’s on them. And, yes, you have been set up to fail in that case.

        What it’s not, is intentional disrespect from the people who need to take the training.

        1. Silver Robin*

          I am not blaming anyone! I literally said that I know it is not personal and that I know the priorities are different for other employees. I took issue with Eric’s response of, “well you just have to understand that this is never going to a priority for me and stop taking it personally” which is…not news (LW already knows, since people are flaking and ignoring the trainings) and not actionable (folks do still have to do the trainings; LW being less frustrated is not going to fix that). So I asked Eric to try to extend LW the same courtesy he is requesting of her so that maybe next time he (and others in this comment section) might at least try to come at it from a more compassionate angle next time.

          Also very confused that an explanation of a thought process/emotional response is not being seen as the rhetorical device it is meant to be. Especially when my last paragraph explicitly states that it is generally not personal, it just can understandably feel that way.

      9. Frank*

        I am someone who tends to be unsympathetic to the need for this kind of bureaucracy, but I have learned that often the mandates come from outside the organization, and that blaming HR is just shooting the messenger.

        I agree with Alison: involve the managers. OP#4 you have responsibility, for something which is widely disliked, without any apparent authority. If there are time conflicts with employees’ other duties, then that’s their managers’ problem.

      10. Hroethvitnir*

        My sympathies. IME with labs there is a frankly awful mix of scientists often having bad attitudes about training that feels like a waste of time, mixed with actually a lot of the legally required training genuinely being kind of ridiculous and directly taking away time from your work – and H&S guidance that’s completely divorced from reality – so QA people *often* develop at least mildly cantankerous attitudes in response to the disrespect and it’s a self-perpetuating mess.

        I always make an effort to be extra friendly and cooperative with QA people, but it *is* still annoying being told to something impossible and they’d rather write that down then look away than find a realistic solution.

        Genuinely, I don’t have the answer, but for increased safety and compliance you need a culture that cares about it, and the required govt training here is super ineffective.

        I am far more conscientious than average entirely due to taking on unpaid responsibility and being appealed to to *please* enforce PPE rules that are widely ignored on my group. My good friend has had the exact same experience now he’s got responsibility for people, and I rib him frequently because he was *awful* when I informally supervised him.

        1. Reebee*

          Compliance training in a lab is “ridiculous” and “annoying”?

          Oh, dear. Seems another Tuskeegee experiment is possible.

          1. Transitory Property*

            Tell me you’ve never worked in a lab without telling me you’ve never worked in a lab

    4. Nodramalama*

      Training is never going to be the immediate priority though, by its nature. The issue is that if you always push off everything for the thing with most priority, the lower priority matters will never get done. And then suddenly your company isn’t compliant because half the people didn’t do the mandatory fraud awareness training because it “wasn’t a priority”

      1. NZReb*

        Or suddenly your company fails to catch fraudulent behaviour because oops, turns out the mandatory fraud awareness training was mandatory for a reason.

      2. Emmy Noether*

        I forget what it’s called but there’s a concept of an urgent/important matrix. If you only ever do the things that are urgent/important, and then urgent/unimportant, and never get to not-urgent/important, you run into trouble. Not immediately, but in the medium term.

        You have to block off time to do not-urgent/important before some of the urgent/unimportant things in a lot of jobs or you never get to them. If you only ever get to the urgent/important quadrant, that’s firefighting mode, and it’s completely unsustainable.

        Training is almost always not-urgent/important. Until you’re at risk for losing your certification or whatever, and suddenly it’s very urgent.

        1. DJ Abbott*

          And then it’s management saying “all hands on deck! Training now before we lose our credentials” *eyeroll*
          As a front desk admin, I had a disagreement with a manager who thought I should drop everything to do something she considered urgent, no matter what time of day. I explained if I did that, my other tasks would never get done. She eventually came around, and the work is flowing smoothly.
          Of course, there are exceptions when we’re close to a deadline. But that’s only once or twice a month.

          1. Reebee*

            I’d consider it my boss’s perogative to tell me to complete what she deems an urgent task over my other tasks.

            It’s weird she allowed herself to be intimidated by a direct report.

            1. DJ Abbott*

              Trust me, she’s not intimidated.
              I was hired in part for my administrative experience and told I should bring that knowledge. So I did.
              They respect that. Our work is complex government financial, and discussions and questions and learning are encouraged.

    5. Kella*

      This is actually a very good argument for why Alison’s advice is good: Involve the managers and supervisors in enforcing and organizing the training.

      Because the reason the million-dollar project is more of a priority *isn’t* that it’s more important. Keeping the company from shutting down is more important. It’s that the consequences for not tending to the million-dollar project are more immediate and direct for *you* the individual. So the supervisors need to be involved so that the consequences for not attending training are similarly direct and immediate, to prevent the much larger scale consequences.

      Supervisors also need to be involved because if your manager is asking for you to complete 10-hours of work a day and doesn’t carve out time for you to complete training, then the instructions you are being asked to follow are at odds. It shouldn’t be on you to absorb the impact of something someone else is requiring, and supervisors shouldn’t be making it more difficult for you to succeed in fulfilling both sets of expectations.

      1. Observer*

        This is actually a very good argument for why Alison’s advice is good: Involve the managers and supervisors in enforcing and organizing the training.

        Exactly. To me there are two failures here, and one of them is management. The LW *must* loop management in- both the direct managers of the people who don’t show up and HR / Compliance / whoever else.

    6. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

      This is short sighted. What size of project proposal will you be writing if the company falls foul of compliance regulations and isn’t able to operate (hint: $0).

      2. Allonge*

        Exactly.

        I have to say this conversation is especially interesting in light of the solutions offered for LW2 (social media). There it’s all ‘do you have a policy, is it mentioned to incoming new staff, train them’. For LW4, half the people are ‘I am too busy to go to mandatory trainings that keep our business in business’.

    7. mandatory training delinquent*

      Yeah, I would add if I have a last minute client call or similar and *don’t* skip this kind of training for it, it would actively be seen as a judgement error by my bosses. But I get it must be extremely frustrating to be on the other side.

      LW, is there any chance you could create two time slot options for the training, and let people choose the one that works best for their schedule? Giving people an option to select (and therefore their active memory they have done so) and a do-over opportunity in case of last minute emergencies. I know I am much more likely to be able to make it work when training is managed like this at my org.

      1. Grammar Penguin*

        Good idea, but you’ll still get people who pick the second date and still miss it.

        Another possibility is to set 3 dates: 2 dates that you give to the employees to choose between and a third date that you keep in your back pocket for those few who choose the second date but end up not going anyway for whatever reason.

        That way they get the option of multiple scheduled times and OP still has a backup, “second chance” date for the inevitable “last minute thing came up” no-shows.

    8. tabloidtainted*

      Refusing to be “convinced” that you need to make yourself available for occasional, mandatory, legally-required training that was put on your calendar months in advance seems disrespectful by definition.

      1. Silver Robin*

        exactly; it is not like LW is being disrespectful of the employees’ time. She is making sure that they know well in advance and sending out reminders so that the training can be planned around. Maybe she needs to do this 2 months instead of 1 months in advance, depending on how far ahead of time folks’ calendars fill up, but, in principle, she is doing it right (Alison’s advice is very good, but it is just a more intense version of what LW is already doing). But employees are not responding to that type of good faith effort from LW to make it easier on them, so of course LW feels disrespected.

    9. Neon highlighter*

      I agree. I wonder if staff would be supported dropping the ball on other things to do the training? Cancelling clients?, not doing what they usually do during that time?. How much staff actually have the band width to fit this in?

      I’ve mixed opinions. I’ve seen plenty of people just not bother and cause a lot of hassle forcing people to chase them up. I don’t understand why people won’t just spend 5min on the stupid online training.

      But I’ve also seen “compulsory” training that gives no consideration to the fact we have our regular duties to do, and our boss definitely won’t accept us dropping the ball to do the training instead. Where they offer training once or twice a year and wonder how you missed it. Or lots of opportunities during the absolute busiest time for your role and then nothing when stuff dies down.

      If the managers don’t find your training a priority the staff never will. Because it’s the managers who lead where effort is directed. Plus – if your company continues to reward people who don’t do the training on time, then people learn that other things are what the company really values.

      1. Silver Robin*

        And this also adds to folks in LW’s position feeling set up to fail. Unclear how much LW gets to set the schedule of the training and whether people are actually telling her “this is a bad time, can we have this in April instead?”. Because if you are not the one writing those million dollar reports or working with clients, it is not always visible to you when busy season is (aside from the very very obvious, like tax season for accounting firms or whatever). Also, though, different departments can have different busy seasons. Development has a massive busy season in the spring leading up to our biggest fundraiser. But that is not any one else’s busy season. So who’s busy season gets prioritized? It can feel very lose-lose, though better communication would definitely mitigate that and hopefully LW can achieve that.

        1. Zarniwoop*

          They feel like they’ve been set up to fail because they have been set up to fall: they’ve been given responsibility without power. What they need is the ability to impose consequences for noncompliance.

        2. Analyst*

          LW may not control the timing of this- it’s regulatory and you can’t just delay it until next month if your certification expires this month. Ours is thankfully an individualized computer course, but we all have our own renewal deadlines (and yeah, someone in regulatory has to keep an eye on 50+ people with varying deadlines)

          1. Observer*

            LW may not control the timing of this- it’s regulatory and you can’t just delay it until next month if your certification expires this month.

            That’s true, but you can do it the month before. Or you can do it in an asynchronous manner (ie they need to take this recorded course and then answer some questions that indicate the you didn’t have it run while you went to take lunch. etc.

    10. Insert Clever Name Here*

      I write contracts for work that is essential to the operations of my company (a utility, so our operations are also essential to our rate payers’ lives) that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

      You know what is a bigger priority? My company remaining in legal compliance.

    11. Katie*

      I I agree! OP knows it’s a MANDATORY training but people are just hearing ‘mandatory’ because there have been no consequences for missing it.

      Do I think the MANDATORY trainings I take are helpful? No. Would I rather spend my time doing my actual work? Yes. Do I take them because I am told that I won’t get a raise without them? Yes

    12. Ashley*

      This definitely happens and coordination on mandatory training needs to be had. Companies will have employee with a last minute emergency whether work or personnel related.
      So how many times is the mandatory training offered?
      Who picks the date for the trainings? And are they aware of project timelines for the attendees. Granted these shift, but in my field I know not to schedule trainings in October if I don’t expect a lot of people to cancel if we have a shift in the weather. (It is relevant to our work.)
      Sure they will always be people who claim to be to important or busy for the training and the boss whoever that is will have to drag that person by their ear into the room, but to get to the 95% mark, think about how to make it as convenient as possible for the attendees. And always build in buffer because inevitably someone will be sick or there is a truly legitimate urgent work priority for someone.
      And when your colleague doesn’t listen about mandatory training needing to be done by the end of the year don’t feel bad when they spend New Year’s Eve online doing 8 hours of training because they didn’t listen all year. You can only push so much before you spell out the consequences. If the company doesn’t give you the power to drag the person by the ear spell it out to the person that does.

    13. Tulips*

      I’ve been on the legal and compliance side of this and many trainings are absolutely mandated by regulators. Nothing is more frustrating that having every sales and relationship person tell you why their job is more important than the training. I’m not saying that is what is happening here, but if a regulator shuts us down for non-compliance or a big error happens and the press gets wind then not only did you just have a big error, but no one completed the mandatory training (it happened this week in my city) the sale in progress you are working on is done anyway.

      It honestly does come across as disrespect, when it is intended that way or not.

      1. Alice*

        I mean — you can go into every interaction with every sales and relationship person feeling disrespected and loaded for bear. Or you can reframe the perceived disrespect as “they are focused on their priorities” and figure out how to get their managers to make your priorities their priorities too.
        I have a guess which approach will be more effective *and* leave you feeling happier.

        1. Silver Robin*

          “you can go in feeling” is a really dismissive way to respond to somebody’s entirely human and reasonable emotional response. Tulips is not preemptively going in frustrated, Tulips is getting disrespected and, as a result, feels frustrated. Cause, effect.

          ….and sales/relationship people can understand that their jobs only continue if the trainings are completed, rather than repeatedly dismissing the importance of said trainings. Balancing priorities is hard, managers do need to set those and workload appropriately, but it is totally reasonable to feel miffed when you are repeatedly told “your work is unimportant and not worth my time” when the work in question is the thing ensuring the company gets to keep doing its thing.

          1. Pescadero*

            It is totally reasonable to feel miffed AT MANAGEMENT when you are repeatedly told “your work is unimportant and not worth my time” when the work in question is the thing ensuring the company gets to keep doing its thing.

            It is not reasonable to be miffed at employees for doing what heir manager tells them to do.

            1. Silver Robin*

              Having the same conversation over and over and over where the employees say “no, this mandatory obligation that keeps the lights on is not what I am going to do right now because this is just not important” is frustrating. Why are we not allowed to feel frustrated when our coworkers are regularly dismissive of our jobs and the requirements of keeping the company running?

              Yes, management sets priorities and tone, but like…the impact is that lots of people are disrespectful and that sucks…? Genuinely bizarre to be told “employees are directed to disrespect you, so you are not allowed to feel upset with their behavior.” It feels like we are being asked to have endless patience for the coworkers but God forbid we point out our perspective and how their behavior lands for us.

    14. Learn ALL the things*

      In my agency, we have one mandatory meeting a year, and all other work for the day is cancelled by order of our equivalent of the CEO (were government, so that’s not her title, but it’s her function in our hierarchy). It’s announced months in advance and managers are told not to approve any PTO for that day, and to ensure their team is 100% in attendance unless there’s an actual emergency. I think the only person who missed last year had a death in the family the day before.

      This means that when workloads are being allocated, the timelines are planned without including that day, so we don’t end up with people doing hours of additional work.

      I think that’s really the only way to make something like this work. You have to get buy in from the people at the very top of the organization, and you have to make sure that this meeting is taken into account when people’s tasks for that month are being assigned so they don’t end up drowning in extra work because of the training.

    15. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      You bring up a good point. I wonder if the OP should talk with the managers to see what could be preventing some people from not completing the training. Not from a tech point but from a work obligations point. If they are scheduling the training during tax time of course there’s going to be the accounting team who is not going to prioritize it because they have all this other stuff to do. Or if these trainings are coming out at the end of the quarter and everyone has to have paperwork filed by a certain time then they might not be able to complete the training.

    16. CareerChanger*

      Eric, I agree. From the other side, it’s about being overwhelmed, having an “emergency” pop up, etc. It has nothing to do with whether I think something is important in an absolute sense. My calendar is often a long series of hard choices and I have to skip/miss/neglect something. It’s all important. I’m not saying that skipping mandatory training is the right choice or that I personally always make the right choice, just that it’s not like “oh, that’s not important,” or “I don’t respect that person/dept so I won’t bother.”

    17. fhqwhgads*

      In the LW’s case though it’s not about the company “thinking the training is more important on this major project”. It’s a legal compliance issue. Legal compliance is always more important than any given project.
      Your 10 hour workdays are besides the point. That’s a separate management issue.

    19. Justin D*

      I create compliance training for a bank. the assignments and enrollments go out and managers get hassled if employees don’t complete it. Managers will then breathe down your neck to get it done. If you have to move some work around or whatever they help with that. But the managers must be involved. Otherwise it doesn’t get done.

    20. I Have RBF*

      Training that is supposedly mandatory isn’t actually mandatory until management, from the top down, mandates that it gets done. Anything else is a no-win scenario. You can’t, as an IC, enforce compliance unless management directly backs you.

      Responsibility without authority is a bad place to be in.

  5. Certaintroublemaker*

    LW4, how big is this university and is the new job in the same department or building as the other one you applied for? Most universities are pretty siloed and the people you previously interviewed with might never see you, except by chance—unless it really is the same department.

    1. bamcheeks*

      Hm, if it’s an academic job they are applying for, it’s very likely to be in the same school. There can be situations where your expertise means you could be comfortable in, say, Criminology or Social Policy, or Engineering or Built Environment, but mostly you’re going to be targeting yourself pretty solidly at the same departments.

      1. Pescadero*

        Generally jobs like “Research Administrator” and “Undergraduate Services” etc. are considered academic – not just faculty… so I wouldn’t say that is true.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Oh fair enough, that’s a cultural difference– in the UK those are professional services roles, and academic roles means teaching and research.

    2. Neon highlighter*

      I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s got a lot of the same people in the panel.

      And even if it’s a different department, I’d expect there to be talk about the previous application.

    3. Former academic*

      Universities can be so weird about hiring I wouldn’t read anything into the ghosting. In fact pretty much everyone I know has been ghosted or at least gotten a rejection 6+ months after the search (like, middle of following fall semester for an interview the previous December/January). There’s definitely interpersonal awkwardness about people you interviewed and didn’t hire, thought. Be warm and normal and it will be fine pretty quickly.

      1. AGD*

        This. All of this. The market’s intense, and everyone on the shortlist gets so much attention. In my experience, a lot of subsequent awkwardness comes from “does this person hate us for rejecting them?” – and a bit of private resentment on the part of the candidate is understandable, but if you act like it’s not there, everything will be fine.

      2. Rock Prof*

        I think the timeline can partially come from the university wanting their hired candidate to physically be there in person before sending it rejections and then it just kind of never happens (probably the other part is that the hiring process bounces between the faculty committee and HR, and a lot can get lost in translation there). If you hire in Feb/March, a lot can change by fall semester. My college had a person they’d hired decided to take another job in August when the position started in early September.

      3. Emmy Noether*

        I know someone who was promised a decision in 6 months, essentially got a “please hold” after 9 months, and now it’s been… 16 months and no news, no announcement. I mean, something probably happened there, but also, academia is just weird. He’s not holding out for it, btw.
        He’ll probably see those people again sometime (because academic fields are tiny, tiny worlds), and I’d be so curious to know what happened, but don’t think they’ll tell him.

        1. Dr. Vibrissae*

          I once applied to a job, got called about an interview screen, then several months later got called and asked if I was still interested because in the mean time 3 of the 4 people on the search committee had left or had a serious illness, so the whole thing had stalled, I said yes I would still be interested, and then never heard from anyone again. Piecing things together through the grapevine, I believe the search was suspended, and then the position reposted slightly differently, since suddenly they had more positions to fill. Anyways, academic hiring is slow and can be influenced by weird departmental shifts, so I wouldn’t assume they’ll be weird about it, as long as you’re not weird about it.

      4. Princess Consuela Banana Hammock*

        Honestly, a lot of the ghosting is because they want to keep you in the pool in case their top pick doesn’t work out for whatever reason (even if it’s months or a year later). I meet very few academics who are good about being transparent and communicative during hiring, so I would not see the ghosting as a reflection on your candidacy, but rather, a reflection of the hiring committee’s disorganization or lack of communication skills around hiring. (But note that this disorganization/lack of skills is extremely common in academia and not necessarily a red/yellow flag).

        I agree that if the University is large or siloed, or if you are looking at jobs in different lines (i.e., one where the hiring committee is staff v. one where it’s faculty), then no harm in applying to new job.

        If it’s not sufficiently siloed, I’d consider reaching out to the hiring chair from Ghost Search #1. Honestly, it was part of their job to follow up with you, anyway. Alternately, if you know someone you can speak to confidentially to get their advice on whether it’s safe to apply to job #2, that’s also an option.

        It’s unlikely applying for job #2 will disqualify you or reflect poorly on you—some folks apply for years to the same institution. If job application #2 doesn’t go well, again, I wouldn’t apply to the same unit/department for quite some time, or I would just let this institution go.

        I’m sorry it’s so difficult, OP. Academic hiring is such garbage right now. I’m sending you lots of warm thoughts and hope that it all works out well for you.

      5. Mgguy*

        As an academic, I feel like I can say that as a whole, we tend to attract a lot of shy, introverted, non-confrontational people. In fact working at a couple of different schools, and as FT faculty now at a small school, I feel like there are also a lot of extremely extroverted, overconfident, obnoxious people(I shouldn’t say overconfident-many have the CV/knowledge to back up their confidence) and the happy medium sometimes seems to not exist.

        The faculty position I’m in now is the only one I’ve ever actually applied for(or at least full time-I have done my fair share of adjunct applications), but I have applied for a big pile of staff positions and still run into people after a rejection or ghosting at conferences or other places. I hold no hard feelings toward any of them, but especially if you get far along into the interview process and the end up going another way, many are afraid of interacting with you over fear that you still hold some resentment over the process.

        For people who teach, that reflex may have been made worse by having had students irate over a bad grade. It’s not quite the same thing, but for a lot of faculty I’d say having to defend a grade to a student is a lot more common than being involved in hiring, but it’s also a lot of the same emotions and the “don’t engage” reflex can be very strong especially after the first time a student really lights you up over all your failings for them not getting the grade they think they should have.

    4. Fierce Jindo*

      I’m an academic. We have a colleague who interviewed years ago, got ghosted (oops—chair dropped the ball in the early pandemic disarray) when our university instituted a covid hiring freeze, and then we reached out a few years later and hired them. They’re great and I’m so glad they still wanted to come here!

  6. Orv*

    Re #4: You’re going to have to involve their managers. If their manager says training is a priority, they’ll do it; otherwise they’ll keep seeing it as optional.

    Where I work managers get a regular report listing every employee they’re responsible for who is late on their training requirements. I think that’s a good idea because it lets them stay on top of it easily, and also doesn’t feel like anyone is being singled out.

  7. Untimely Trainee*

    I think I’m a pretty decent employee. Maybe even a star every once in awhile.

    But I always somehow wait until the final “no but seriously complete the training by Friday or you’re dead” to do my trainings.

    On a Thursday, haha.

    2. Allonge*

      I guess this is what a management crackdown on this can help with – the final warning can come much earlier and in more inconvenient ways.

    3. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

      At my last job, I was the same and worse, because of the Management game.

      “Training’s drop-dead due Friday, per HR/Compliance. I have Project Cannae due tomorrow, the Teutoburg Forest retrospective this afternoon, the Ides of August meeting with the Senate after that, and the Aurelian and Anastasian Firewalls need patched due to the Zero Day exploit we found out about this morning. Which deadline do I drop to train?”
      “Training can wait. The priority is keeping ourselves in business.”

      Repeat weekly for 3+ months.

      1. Ally McBeal*

        I really dislike that mindset, because it implies that training is not essential to keeping the business afloat. I’m sure there are many horror stories of small businesses that have gone under because of legal fees resulting from harassment lawsuits, or hackers/phishers stole all their money. I do not envy my coworkers who make more money than me but are stuck in back-to-back meetings all day and can’t even do their real work until after hours.

        1. Sola Lingua Bona Lingua Mortua Est*

          It’s the residue of LEAN staffing, poor planning, no backbone to prioritization, and perpetual fire-fighting mode. I’m sure there are adrenaline junkies who might enjoy it, but I’d much rather be knocking those trainings out a month in advance of their deadlines.

      2. fhqwhgads*

        Zero day exploit, then training that’s required for legal compliance, then everything else.
        If it’s just An Important Training, sure yeah it gets bumped for 3+ months. If it’s a “we are now out of compliance and can be fined $$$$$ or shut down” training, the training beats other meetings and projects, easily.

  8. TheBunny*

    LW#2

    I agree that this is an issue and it needs to stop immediately.

    That said, how old is he? (You mentioned he graduated a year ago so I’m going to guess he’s young but you can also graduate at 70.)

    Taking into account his age, I think the right next step is closer to what Alison said but definitely not as drastic as the first couple of comments on here.

    He’s young. To him, putting everything online is normal. You mention the quality of the videos (on TikTok I’m guessing) is awful… this seems more indicative of him not thinking this is a big deal.

    Talk to him. Tell him this is NOT ok. Tell him why and say the videos come down immediately and nothing else goes up. I’d document the conversation and have him sign the documentation.

    If it never happens again? Great. If it does OR if he seems resistant to understanding why this is a problem, then you really need to consider parting ways.

    (Speaking as someone who has caught everyone from security guards to interns posting videos they definitely shouldn’t have from secure areas after signing NDAs. Should they know? Yes. Is the lure of TikTok content strong? Apparently)

    1. Allonge*

      As one of the more strict commenters above – I guess my thing is, sure, it’s understandable, but maybe a firing or two will lessen the allure of TikTok? Certainly places with an NDA don’t need to baby even young workers about this.

      Just as we (should) fire people who take money from the business safe / tills – I really get that more money is great for everyone and the temptation is there.

      1. Archi-detect*

        I dont think the lure is money- it is interactions and feeling like people enjoy your content. I post pictures of ships on facebook and get a good dopamine rush of people interacting with my content and enjoy when a post does well, even though I make nothing off it.

        I post nothing about work though lol

        1. Hroethvitnir*

          I must say, that’s so cute. I’m deeply sad about how awful social media on general has become, because I have derived a lot of worth from being able to keep up low-key contact with people I don’t see every day in the past.

      2. TheBunny*

        I’m sure plenty of people have been fired over what they post. It still happens. Making an example of the guy will only work for those who actually witness the aftermath. It’s not a group of people, it’s one guy. Firing to make a point is going to do nothing because none of the people watching are part of the issue.

        1. GythaOgden*

          But it will send /him/ the message that it’s not ok to do this ever and even if he’s only 22 he should have the common sense to understand that.

          Ultimately, only one person needs to learn that this is not ok and how people respond when they find out. Firing him gets that point across with no babying — because he’s not a baby, he’s a grown man and he needs to act like one and be responsible like one.

        2. Allonge*

          It gets the business rid of an employee who is putting it in danger for zero business value and has questionable judgment.

          Plus, what GythaOgden says – it teaches him the lesson.

          I don’t think that is a priority – this is not a school, it’s a company.

      3. metadata minion*

        The vast majority of people recognize that stealing is wrong, or at least that it’s illegal. If there wasn’t privacy/confidentiality/ethics/etc. training given during onboarding, the employee may literally not realize that posting about customers on social media is violating any business rules or norms. It sounds like he’s posting about the customers’ public websites, which *IF HE WERE NOT IN A BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM* would be a totally normal thing to do. I’m not surprised that a new employee hasn’t connected the dots and realized that this is a completely different thing from, say, blogging about different businesses you’re interacting with as a retail customer.

        It is a huge breach of ethics, but for a new graduate I’d give them the grace of one “hey, woah, this is not how things work and you need to never do it again” conversation.

        1. bamcheeks*

          Agreed– I mean, I think it’s notable that LW, with presumably significantly more experience, is getting hung up on “he hasn’t SAID he’s associated with our company, soo….” They’ve got the experience and instinct to know this isn’t OK, but still need to check that with someone external to confirm their thinking and figure out what angle they need to take. It’s not hard to see why someone more junior wouldn’t immediately get that.

          Though I do think a firm warning is a kindness to the employee– “If you’re talking about our customers like this, you don’t have the attitude we’re looking for” would also be a legitimate approach. I’m not so fussed about it when you’re a in B2B situation and your customers aren’t individuals, but some people do this kind of stuff about students / service users / patients and frankly display a lack of empathy and respect for the people they are supposed to be helping which really does suggest they’re in the wrong profession.

    2. Orv*

      Maybe I missed it, but does #2’s workplace have a social media policy? I agree this should be common sense, but common sense isn’t that common or we wouldn’t need a word for it. Having an explicit policy could help in the future.

  9. AnonRN*

    I work in a field with lots of mandatory trainings but also lots of competing needs. All the staff have to do a training but all the staff can’t leave the unit at the same time. Some days we don’t have enough staff scheduled to maintain a minimum number and send people to the training (it’s a safety issue). Some days the unit is too busy for anyone to leave. Before you assume the employees are skipping the training out of disrespect, make sure there aren’t structural reasons why they can’t make it (or feel they can’t make it). Those structural reasons are things their managers need to solve. In my case, that means my manager needs to schedule me for *only* training that day, or needs to schedule extra staff. In other cases, I could see where it means pushing back a deadline or a manager stepping in to reschedule a client meeting and smooth feathers if necessary.

    On the other hand, if no one in this organization does any time-based or coverage-based work, is it possible just to push it onto all of their calendars? Any previously scheduled events will be canceled, everyone gets an all-day meeting.

    1. MissBaudelaire*

      This, too.

      I worked at one job that decided we’d all have to sacrifice our lunches and breaks to get trainings done. It was infuriating.

      At my current job, even if we know trainings are due, if we’re slammed, we’re slammed. I work in a 24/7 industry. Now in this job our managers do approve us to clock in on our days off to do training if need be. But still, we’re not ignoring training because we think we’re being cute. We’re just not time wizards.

      1. Orv*

        Oh man, if someone insisted I give up my lunch to go to training I’d bring a sack lunch and make sure it involved at least one noisy item and at least one smelly item.

        1. Reebee*

          If you’re hourly, you’d get paid.

          If you’re salaried, it’s what – an unpaid hour out of the year?

      1. Susan*

        That’s pretty normal for significant training? Not sure why all day would be an issue (other than if there are structural reasons people can’t be away from their regular jobs for the day, like AnonRN notes)

      3. Bitte Meddler*

        I commented above about required trainings at my prior company for people hired or promoted into certain positions.

        One of the trainings was an all-day thing.

        The other was a THREE-DAY thing.

        So, yeah, all-day training is normal in certain industries / roles.

  10. Yoli*

    At a past job when we had mandatory trainings, we did all the things Alison said and also told supervisors, “We take attendance at 9 and email it to you at 9:30. If someone is not on the list who should be, please follow up with them directly.” This was out-of-contract (stipended) time, so it came out of site budgets, and the supervisors’ supervisor basically told them, we don’t know everyone who’s supposed to be here or whether they have an approved excusal (and it’s not really our job to care), so it’s on you to manage.

    In my current job we use a QR code sign-in that requires your work email address and timestamps for paid trainings. We also have asynchronous mandatory trainings, and HR clearly states in the email that if they’re not done on time you can’t return to the work site until they’re complete.

    1. nerdgal*

      At the job I held for 33 years, there was legally required training. Several sessions were available for different scheduling needs, but it was a firing offense not to attend. (There were a few exceptions like long term medical leave, etc.)

      1. Observer*

        This kind of thing is what needs to happen. The combination or more flexibility *and* real consequences is really the only way to make this work reasonably well.

    2. Ellis Bell*

      Yeah we have a mandatory training that we take attendance for. If your signature isn’t next to your name on the list then you’re in massive hot water.

  11. Coverage Associate*

    Are there really only 2 trainings per year, or are there 2 curricula per year? Because at least, most organizations would give people options for the date or these things would go on calendars at least 6 months in advance. At one of my jobs, even the office holiday party date went on calendars months in advance so people could keep the date clear.
    So for each training, I would set at least a couple times for people to choose from and secretly set a makeup session to offer for the stragglers. (Don’t announce in advance that a makeup session will be offered.)

  12. Kai*

    LW1

    I’d still be pretty upset to find out at the finalist stage. I’d think it a complete waste if my time as well as dishonest & disrespect of the entire process.
    Interviewing/hiring is a leap of faith, in both sides. You’re not holding up your end by withholding this until finalist(or actually hiring).
    Employees dating is hard enough to navigate. Added in they actually hold veto power? I can’t think of anyone who would accept a job under those conditions.
    An ED is someone who has expertise & experience, you’re hiring someone to take command & withholding a vital piece of their job function. Not to mention, they want this job, they applied for it in good faith you’d be honest with them as they would be with you.
    Waiting & hopes up until they are finalists is too long to wait, considering the job is ED.
    Sorry Alison, I disagree to wait that long.
    Tell them so they can decide if it’s a hard line or not. It would be for me, who needs that potential trouble.
    Also, what job even allows that power dynamic?! What a disaster it all is.

    1. Ask a Manager* Post author

      Fair. I think it depends on what “veto power” actually means. I assume it’s not a formal veto, but rather that combined they hold enough influence to stop things neither of them like — which I think a skilled ED could potentially navigate, as long as they have full authority of the board to manage both people. But you might be right that they’d want to hear it earlier.

      1. Grumpy Elder Millennial*

        This was basically my question, reading the letter. What does “veto power” mean and what does this power mean for the authority of the ED? How do the two members of the couple see their own role and authority in the organization? Are they open to change or will they push hard to maintain the status quo?

    2. MissBaudelaire*

      I was only a low level manager when I managed, but it sounds like a messy nightmare to sort and sift. I don’t know if I feel like two people in a relationship should hold that kind of power on a team.

      1. GythaOgden*

        It may be important that the new ED knows enough about this early enough so they can weigh up whether they want the challenge of dealing with these two and potentially the fallout after they get the pipes unjammed, so to speak.

        There are people who may well be up for that challenge who would want to know that they were brought in to clean house: my mother (headmistress for just shy of twenty years over three different schools who consistently knocked it out of the park with her students because she’d grown up in a much more progressive era than her predecessors and had children of her own) would certainly be rolling up her sleeves simply hearing about the situation.

      2. Three Flowers*

        It sounds like Russia or the US on the UN Security Council: the potential for obstruction disguised as wanting consensus is way too high.

        A sign of a good candidate in this case might be a willingness to reorganize the two employees so they cannot act as a bloc.

        1. Three Flowers*

          (Btw I am referring to the permanent member veto mechanism and who historically uses it the most, not commenting on or equating the US and Russia.)

    3. Magdalena*

      Hard agree.
      I wouldn’t even want to work there as a peer. Navigating it as a manager sounds like a nightmare.

      1. Reebee*

        Yes, and also, why hasn’t the dynamic been dealt with already? To push it onto someone new would send me running, unless I was unemployed and truly desperate, and had no other options.

      2. Sam I Am*

        Same. I wouldn’t want to be managed by either of these people, or be their peer. It sounds like a terrible dynamic to bring into a small organization.

    4. Richard Hershberger*

      Their dating seems to me a red herring. Yes, it is something to be aware of, but two employees are in a stable long-term relationship? Mazel tov! But employees having veto power is another matter entirely, regardless of any relationships. They could simply be two employees who saw eye to eye on what to allow and what to veto and the problem would be the same.

      1. bamcheeks*

        Yes, and I also can’t tell whether LW is thinking of raising it in a “this is the situation, nowt we can do about it! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯” or “this is one of the issues that you will need to address”. And it’s absolutely something you should talk about at whatever stage you would normally share information about key dynamics, SWOT analyses, financial health and so on.

      2. Neon highlighter*

        I was wondering if good friends cause the same level of concern. There’s much less of a perception of conflict, but that also often means there’s no control or balance to those conflicts.

        I’ve seen friendship couples/groups operate as mini blocks in workplace many times. I actually think a couple with clear this is how we’re going to manage the conflict could be easier if everyone is professional. If they aren’t – the relationship isn’t the issue.

        1. Dust Bunny*

          You must be new here: There are piles of stories about problematic friendships at work. Usually it’s when someone is besties with a higher-up, but not always.

          1. coffee*

            I think Neon Highlighter is saying “good friends should cause the same level of concern, but businesses often overlook the problems they can cause”. Not that there are no problematic friendships.

            I also think this comment was a little hostile? And not quite in the spirit of the “be kind” commenting rule.

        2. Trout 'Waver*

          In my mind, yes. If a small coordinated group of people get veto power, they are the de facto leaders on the team. Regardless if they’re sleeping with each other or not.

          Also, a huge part of the problem is that if someone has veto power but they’re reasonable, you never find out they have veto power. Veto powers only become apparent when they’re used.

      3. Zelda*

        This! Every company has politics, including the possibility of personal alliances. “Concealing” that isn’t “dishonest,” it’s just taking it as read. If you are horrified that the upper level has politics, maybe an ED position is not right for you. (It certainly isn’t for me!)

        1. umami*

          That was my thought. For that level, you almost certainly will need to navigate issues like that, whether they currently exist or not. If the organization wants to know how a new ED would handle it, there should be an interview question that allows them to address it, and then they can determine if that is the right fit. As a candidate, I would definitely be curious about that question and assume they are asking because there is a current issue in play.

      4. Dust Bunny*

        Yeah, this. We’ve had couples at our organization before but they didn’t work closely together and definitely did not have veto power. Not only would I not want to supervise this mess but I would have big questions about how your organization operated.

      5. Hyaline*

        I had the same thought. I think I read this differently from Alison–that “they have veto power” meant that they EACH had veto power–but even if it’s their powers combined, it doesn’t take dating to produce a problem. They could be close friends; they could be mortal enemies but agreed on an organizational vision; regardless, if the two of them could drive the bus in a direction that those above them couldn’t redirect, it’s something I’d want to be aware of early in the process.

        Basically, to me–if the org chart is clearly “Ok so you’re here at the top…but these people under you can override your decisions” that’s what I really need to know. The fact that there’s already a complicating situation in place makes it extra fun, but those complicating situations could arise out of that org chart at any time due to friendships, alliances, romantic relationships, parlays of convenience to form a bloc to take down an unpopular decision, whatever.

      6. Smithy*

        I think this is really key.

        Inevitably with a smaller employer, two higher level people who don’t want to implement a decision – for business or personal reasons – can significantly hamper change management. And certainly if the person who leads the company’s financial management doesn’t want a new book keeping system for XYZ business reasons, then it’s relevant to engage there. But if that person is known to have automatic support due to it being their spouse, but their spouse leads sales or another team that doesn’t have financial management experience – then that just seems like all of change management is going to proceed in a really wonky way. One that diminishes other voices, and quite frankly diminishes how that couple is thought of as leaders.

        Now someone might be coming into this space with a lot of experience in family businesses or other smaller employers where those types of personal relationships can change management and leadership decisions. And be less put off by that. But someone going from a more hierarchical and formal workplace environment could see that as an immediate “one of them has to go”, which for this type of business may not be who is best as a leader anyways.

      7. Sloanicota*

        Yeah but I was also assuming the veto power was an unofficial one, not literally a voted upon thing, meaning if you’re the new ED, you presumably have the power to either fire/demote one or both if they don’t get on board with your new directives, or overrule a disagreement through board support if two members of the staff disagree on your new budget or plan or whatever. If the new ED has none of those abilities you definitely need to warn them they’d be an ED “in name only” and you don’t actually plan to back them in achieving their objectives. We just had this at my org.

        1. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

          It sounds like this is a small-to-medium non-profit, and these are long-term employees – so I suspect there may be an entrenched culture of consensus-based decision making. Hopefully an ED candidate would be comfortable with this paradigm and would know how to navigate it.

          But if the point of hiring a new ED is to shake stuff up, then there’s going to be a point where Heloise & Abelard (I had to give them names) push back, just because they can. So will the new ED be able to lay down the law or not?

      8. Caramel & Cheddar*

        Agreed. I wouldn’t care that they’re dating, but I would care that apparently they like to derail things that everyone else wants to do! That’s a management problem regardless. Maybe it’s something LW or others would want to warn an incoming ED about as part of a broader “here’s our culture” or “here’s what needs fixing” conversation, but part of me thinks it’s the dating that’s elevating this issue and not the actual coordinated sabotage.

      9. fhqwhgads*

        It is a red herring. There are only 10 FTE total. Any 2 people could be a bloc. It’s unclear to me if it’s the specific roles of these two employees that give them whatever veto power is referred to, or if it’s just that there’s two of them and being in the relationship makes it seem like they’ll always agree with each other. But any candidate for this type of role in an org that small, I think should not really be shocked by this possibility.

    5. Corporate Goth*

      LW1, I hope you’re able to clarify with candidates what *has* happened and what *could* happen. Are they nefariously working together, or do they hold enough influence to get their way? Are the decisions made with their influence still good decisions for the business, or are they actively blocking things getting done?

      I was in this situation once as part of a couple, but at a much larger organization (several thousand). As part of a reorganization that aligned our skill sets, they briefly but seriously considered putting us in the same unit of about 100 people. While we’d both have been in positions of power, the reorg was to start a new department and we both held expertise in rare fields. It was the one time they might have wanted to actually do that and it was normal to at least one person to rotate out after initial setup.

      We both understood the potential concerns, and had a strict policy of being professional at work. We would have been fine with a matter-of-fact open discussion or checks and balances put into place. Instead, people we thought trusted us instead literally whispered behind closed doors about our supposed conspiring. It severely damaged our trust in the organization; Spouse took another role in the organization, and I ultimately left. The unit in question is steadily self-destructing.

      I get your concerns, I really do. But I can’t tell if what you mentioned is a problem or a potential problem, so I wanted to point out there are additional potential consequences, especially for a small business.

    6. Been there*

      I was in this scenario a number of years ago except that I was not interviewing for the ED role (I interviewed with the ED and one half of the couple who then trained me; the other half ultimately became my boss later on).

      This was not the only piece of relevant info that wasn’t shared with me at the interview stage and it did really have an impact on my work. While I believe they weren’t meant to discuss work at home, that was obviously impossible to enforce, and as both were also close personally with the ED (definitely turned out to be a “we’re a family” type place) it meant that it was very difficult to raise objections to how certain things were managed.

      It would’ve definitely been helpful to know at the interview stage, but even more importantly, I now would want to know what guardrails are in place to prevent the kind of veto power mentioned (we had some around payroll which is also important!). And will the new ED have the power to fire one or both of these people if the dynamic becomes an issue, or are they so entrenched that would hurt the org or upset a board member or whatever.

      This wasn’t THE reason I didn’t last long there — all the other things I wasn’t told when I started showed me I wasn’t going to get the support I needed and I started making plans less than a year in — but it was a very red flag once I understood the full impact of it. So all this to say: Tell candidates early and know that some might see it as a sign of dysfunction and stay away.

      1. Been there*

        And just to clarify: This was also a very small organization and while they weren’t in each other’s reporting lines they may have been when things (quietly) started. So there may also have been questions of judgement there from the beginning, and to me the size of the organization would make this untenable even if the people in question had been 100% professional at all times.

    7. Delta Delta*

      I tend to agree with this. If I’m interviewing, likely multiple times, for a senior position or a management position, only to be told a few interviews in that my work actually doesn’t matter because Ned and Nancy run the show and can veto everything, I’m running for the hills.

    8. umami*

      I was assuming this is the current situation, but that wouldn’t mean the new ED needs to ‘allow’ this couple to have veto power. Which is why I vote for disclosure during the interview process, at the very least to use it as a hypothetical situation to see how the candidate would handle a dynamic like that, if the organization doesn’t want this couple to be able to wield so much influence.

    9. not nice, don't care*

      My org allows two people in a long term relationship to be in the same management chain. There is a thin veil of one level between them, but they effectively tag team to blockade anything useful or decent to the staff they oversee. It’s super gross, but since they also block access to upper leadership, people just suffer.

  13. Martin Blackwood*

    So glad the weird social media influencer wannabe is linked in #2, that is the first thing i thought of after reading this letter.

    1. 653-CXK*

      Yes – the audacity of her livestreaming her 30 day performance review was the capper. Firing her was justified.

    2. Peanut Hamper*

      I just went back and re-read those and wow! What a wild ride!

      I wonder what she is up to now…

  14. Nodramalama*

    For LW4 the way that our government organisations do it is that the messaging is, if you don’t do your training your name ends up on a list, that list goes to the top exec and your general managers and heads of division are going to get a call about why their teams aren’t doing their training.

    1. RLC*

      Career government worker (US), we had same approach. Managers at all levels didn’t want to get that call. At most stringent, completion of training could become a performance plan element.

      1. GythaOgden*

        Same. Having a shortfall on training with information governance in particular puts our access to crucial clinical databases and software in jeopardy. Being the weak link in the chain isn’t a badge of honour in a system that everyone depends upon for public health and safety.

      2. UKDancer*

        Same in my company with the mandatory fraud / cyber security awareness training the company runs which we have to do every year. Management tracks this and if you’ve not done it by 31 March your boss gets notified.

        Ours is e-learning so I tend to do it on the days between Christmas and New Year which are very quiet so I do all the mandatory training then and catch up on admin things.

    2. DrSalty*

      This is how it works at my company. I get emails if my reports don’t do their trainings by the deadline.

    3. Agent Diane*

      Came here to second this!

      Within your no-shows you will have a mix of reasons. I did a research on ours, and found that:

      1. Some people couldn’t attend because it was always on a Tuesday, which was their non-working day

      2. Some people couldn’t attend due to a personal emergency or caring responsibilities.

      3. And some people, like Eric further up the comments, were expressly told by their managers not to attend.

      Number 2 is impossible to control for, as stuff always happens. Number 1 is (or could be) within your control: run the training twice and on different days of the week.

      Number 3 is not directly in your control. But if you analyse the no-shows and find they are all from the same division? Your CEO can give that director a talking to.

      What I do NOT recommend is increasingly sending emails to everyone. Target the ones who don’t accept the invite. Target the ones who still haven’t responded after the first reminder. Target the ones who fail to show. But don’t blast the ones who are showing up with the same “seriously, you need to do this” emails. Else they will think not going is the herd behaviour and that they do can drop out. Their reward for both accepting straight away and rocking up on the day, is less emails about the training. ;)

  15. GythaOgden*

    I’m hoping that the new ED will have some power to stop these two being a roadblock to the company goals. I would definitely want to be aware (at that level, you need to know what you’re letting yourself in for; it’s not like you’re hiring for a receptionist) but I hope you’re not just presenting this as a fait accompli; these two need to be being proactively managed so they don’t wield more power than those above them in the hierarchy.

  16. Jet Blu*

    Not hiring you without getting back to you is not really ghosting. It’s extremely common. If the position is posted, apply for it.

    1. Mainly Lurking (UK)*

      It’s one thing not to contact candidates who don’t make it to the shortlist for interview – I wouldn’t call that ghosting.

      But when a candidate has taken the time to prepare for and attend an interview they deserve some form of communication (even if it’s a standard form email) to let them know they haven’t been chosen for the job. For an employer not even to do that absolutely is ghosting.

    2. Non non non all the way home*

      Agreed. I think it’s just as likely that the hiring person doesn’t remember him and was thinking “That person looks a little familiar, I wonder where I know them from?” or “Why does that person keep looking at me?”

    3. Medievalist*

      I’m in academia and have hired. In our search process, it’s unfortunately easy for for short list/interviewed candidates to feel ghosted… HR doesn’t allow us talk to them or notify them until we have our finalist locked down (e.g., we can’t tell shortlisters who could be acceptable but aren’t top choices that we’re not proceeding with them till we know we presumably won’t need to go back to the list at all). That can unfortunately sometimes take *months* due to bureaucracy, top choice candidates fielding other offers, etc.—and by the time we had our finalist in place, the busy part of the semester caught up with the hiring faculty and we never reached out to the shortlist candidates ourselves, relying on HR to send a rejection. (They are supposed to send at least a bare bones rejection notice.) In an ideal world, would the hiring faculty send a quick email saying that while we found a candidate that better fit our needs, we liked X about rejected person and wished them well? Yes. But it doesn’t always happen in overworked academia, especially at certain times of year.

      If LW is facing a situation like that… I think Alison’s advice is spot-on. I’d be interested in meeting and networking with LW at a conference or such, and probably would remember them positively (though usually vaguely—at least in a ‘oh, we liked that person enough to interview them as one of the top 12 of 90 applications—or top 3, if they made it to a campus visit!). I don’t think it would be awkward for the former interviewer and meeting the person again might help the interviewers (if they’re the same ones hiring again) to read the LW’s application more carefully or else comment to a different hiring committee at the university that they’d met LW at a conference and they seemed sane, etc.—both of which things presumably could benefit LW, rather than hurt. (Unless LW is completely boorish and wouldn’t leave a good impression… though the way they write to Alison doesn’t suggest that!!)

      1. Fierce Jindo*

        IMO the most important thing you can do, if you have these awful HR rules, is make sure finalists know those rules before (or at least during) their interview so they can calibrate expectations about communication accordingly.

        1. Medicated Ginzo*

          This would definitely be considerate, especially for recent grads. But as others have noted, post-interview ghosting is really common in US academia, so as much as it sucks I’d recommend OP expect it as a matter of course.

          1. Fierce Jindo*

            Sure, but a bunch of us here are on the hiring side of academia and we don’t need to simply throw up our hands about this.

    4. I should really pick a name*

      Ghosting is common.

      Once they’ve had an interview, I think it’s fair to call it ghosting.

    5. Trout 'Waver*

      Technically it is ghosting, though. Applications aren’t unsolicited or unwanted contact; they are a form of invited correspondence. Not replying at all is rude and technically it is ghosting.

      Being common doesn’t make it correct.

      1. Fierce Jindo*

        Just curious, do you see posting a dating profile in the same light as posting a job ad in this regard?

        1. Trout 'Waver*

          No. The personal safety aspects of dating trump etiquette concerns.

          But in a broader sense dating apps are rude and anti-social on a fundamental level.

    6. Emmy Noether*

      Ghosting being common doesn’t really make it not-ghosting. It’s just not a snub like it could be in a social context, because it’s almost certainly not personal, and it’s also not awkward like it would be in a social context. As Alison says, they probably don’t realize they ghosted you.

    7. Consonance*

      I’ll add that most people on the hiring committee have no role whatsoever in direct communication with the candidate. That likely falls exclusively on a combination of the search committee chair, any admin assistance they’ve wrangled, and/or an HR contact. So seeing the person on the committee who felt awkward probably didn’t feel awkward about the ghosting aspect – they were likely entirely unaware of it. I do have to disagree with Alison, though, because I feel super awkward around candidates I didn’t hire. Hopefully I hide it well, and I try to overcome it by being particularly direct and warm in future interactions (such as, when seeing them at a conference, going up to them directly to shake their hand and introduce myself in person (zoom interviews make this especially awkward)). But others may just be a little surprised to suddenly run into someone they rejected. It’s nothing to read into. I’ve rejected wonderful candidates simply because there’s only one opening and multiple good candidates.

  17. nnn*

    One thing for #4 to talk about with the managers, and possibly with employees as well, is whether there are structures in place to take work off the employees’ hands so they have time to do the training without putting other deadlines at risk.

    (Source: I’m always putting my mandatory training off because they just keep assigning me work, and often the work is urgent and/or important and/or there’s no one else who can do it)

    I don’t know if this is within OP’s power, but if I were the boss of the situation, I’d tweak the logistics and practicalities of the training so they’re a bit of a treat. For example, training starts half an hour after people’s scheduled start time, but ends at people’s schedule end time (and possibly lets out early if you get through everything officially.) So signing up for a day of training can mean you set your alarm later that day!

    1. KateM*

      “Signing up for a day of training can mean you set your alarm later that day!” – I can so easily imagine a perky HR-person to tell me just that, exclamation included. And I’d go “hmpff” under my breath and think that she was out of touch with reality, as I need to get up to get my kids to school anyway. Others may have public transport or carpool that goes only on certain times.

      1. Not like a regular teacher*

        I think this was just one example. Other “treats” could be longer/more scheduled breaks that day (my job does this and it’s great), providing tea/coffee/snacks if it’s in person, etc.

      2. misspiggy*

        Starting training 30 minutes after standard office hours is pretty normal. If someone will be in the office anyway it gives them a chance to get through a couple of urgent emails or calls, get themselves together and turn up at the training in a reasonably good place.

      3. uncivil servant*

        So you can go get a leisurely coffee instead that morning. Or a sandwich – oh wait – not everyone can eat those.

        1. Kribbs*

          Starting the training half an hour later isn’t a bad idea.

          Perkily announcing the I get a half hour lie-in because of the training is a sure-fire way to make me resent the training even more.

          How you present this matters.

          1. Reebee*

            What’s the solution when something is presented in a way that’s acceptable to one person but not another? What is the HR person to do?

            Curious.

            1. Aquatic*

              This is the kind of problem people in many different roles have to navigate. Listening with an open mind, using your judgment to adjust your message based on what you’re hearing, and minimizing perkiness when telling others that you’re taking up their scarce time are good strategies.

  18. Captain dddd-cccc-ddWdd*

    OP4 (people won’t make time for the compliance training) – you’re right, this is just disrespect. They can’t even be bothered to do their part (which must be a relatively small part compared to the compliance functional as a whole) to ensure that the company remains compliant with the needed standards etc. That needs escalating to management just the same as refusal to do any other part of their role without a good reason.

    “oh I didn’t realise that was today” etc tells us that they don’t take it seriously enough to bother to remember it. I know compliance trainings can be a bit of a bore (sorry OP!) but they are a necessary part of working at this company. There must be other parts of their job that aren’t their favourite thing but they have to do it because it’s part of the role, just as much as this is.

    My company has a similar thing where there’s a lot of compliance stuff to keep up with due to the nature of the company and the industry. Anyone not doing those trainings when they should gets a couple of friendly reminders and then it goes up the chain. I have seen it result in an actual disciplinary process a couple of times.

    Yes it is OPs responsibility to ensure the compliance stuff is done, but OP is being set up to fail if they don’t have support from management in doing so.

    1. 653-CXK*

      Compliance training is mandatory where I am, so that’s why I always do it day it’s assigned so I don’t fall into that cramming mentality.

      This year, I had plenty of time to do it as my workload has been much lighter than it has been, so it took me about a day and a half to complete (there are a lot of modules to this training, and some of it isn’t related to my job). My company has introduce progressive discipline for those who don’t complete the trainings on time, including suspensions.

    2. len*

      From what’s written LW4 hasn’t even tried to engage management. That’s on them, trying to enforce legal requirements through guilt is a losing strategy.

      2. Reebee*

        Yeah, guilt is a “losing strategy,” except that isn’t what the LW is doing.

        Also, why does LW have to “engage management”? Why can’t management engage itself?

      3. Orv*

        Management should get a regular list of all their employees who aren’t up to date on training, so they can easily see who needs time carved out to do it.

    3. I should really pick a name*

      Viewing this as disrespect just encourages the LW to take it personally which isn’t helpful.

    4. Florence Reece*

      “just disrespect” “can’t be bothered” “they don’t take it seriously enough to bother to remember it”

      I agree that compliance folks need more respect, largely because I’ve been there. People ignored our trainings and newsletters and information all the time too, and yeah, it sucks. Some people definitely just don’t read or register those communications at all. It’s thankless work, and in highly regulated industries it’s like herding cats to get everyone’s annual certs completed.

      But on the flip side, I’m still referencing an audit that I’ve been working on “for the last month” and it’s been four months. I’m just swamped, my sense of time has been completely screwed up, and every time I whack one of the Emergency Work moles another one pops up. I didn’t remember the training that was due this week, not because I don’t care but because my work life has been an unending churn of urgent, important, high-priority stuff for months and they notified us in June. I registered it as important in June and was sure I’d have time to complete it and, whoops, it’s almost September now.

      The difference is that my manager is actively involved in reminding us, and it doesn’t sound like the LW has leaned on that option. It also helps that my manager doesn’t tell us that we just don’t care enough about our work or are disrespectful colleagues because we forget things sometimes. Folks forget important info from our team (IT) all the time, compliance included, and somehow we manage not to demean them as people for it.

      1. Reebee*

        Couldn’t you put a reminder for training on a calendar?

        Wouldn’t that solve the “Aw shucks, oops, forgot” excuse?

        1. Allonge*

          We are a use-your-calendar organisation and some people still have no clue what is in their calendar.

          They forget to check, forget what they saw, find the reminder distracting than forget the reminder. Basically you need to walk up to them and say ‘training tomorrow, BE THERE’ and repeat it the morning of and maybe then they show up. Maybe. But that is a lot of time and effort and sometimes physically impossible.

  19. allathian*

    LW4, how are the trainings organized? Are they live in-person seminars, webinars, online courses, or what?

    Most of our mandatory trainings are online courses. Some have been live webinars, but for those that are truly mandatory for all employees they’ll schedule at least 5 identical ones to make sure people can participate in one of them, especially in positions that require coverage.

    We have a mandatory cybersecurity and personal data security certification that every employee has to pass once a year. It’s based on an online training, but when you’ve done it once, in subsequent years you can just take the quiz. You have to answer 9/10 questions correctly to pass. If you get more errors than that, you can retake the quiz twice, but there’s a database of more than 100 questions the quiz can ask, so you’ll have to answer a different set of questions on every attempt. If you fail on the third attempt, you’ll have to redo the online training.

    So I wonder if redesigning the mandatory trainings would make them less onerous for employees to attend?

    1. UKDancer*

      Our fraud and cyber security training are e-learning as well and it makes a massive difference because you can schedule them when it suits you. You have to do the training each time though and then do the quiz,

      When the company went this to approach apparently the completion rates shot up because it wasn’t a requirement to do it in person at an inconvenient time. As long as it’s before the end of the financial year you’re fine.

    2. Lady Lessa*

      I just wish that our on-line training would allow us to skip to the final quiz. Our parent company has gone with having us repeat the stuff that we did last year (same vendor, same exact program. We actually have to go to completed and redo it, so that it shows a newer date)

      I also wonder how interesting training on the USE of a forklift was to the office folks that rarely/never go to the production area. Walking around forklifts in use is very pertinent.

      1. Silver Robin*

        For a while before we split off from the larger umbrella org, I was required to do a training on de-escalation with clients that was clearly geared towards people working in medical settings. Very reasonable for folks in other parts of the umbrella, glad that it is part of their rotation. However, my job has nothing to do with clients and everyone around me is a lawyer, so a very different client dynamic. The training was long, it was the same training both times, and I only got through it by laughing about the absurdity of being required to do it.

        1. Philosophia*

          That’s what irks me about certain of the training demanded by my workplace (even though it’s on line and the may be completed piecemeal, except that the registration system doesn’t always function properly): it has nothing to do with my job, so there’s no benefit to my employer. And then there’s the virtue-signalling stuff . . .

      2. Humble Schoolmarm*

        Agreed! I’ve been a type 1 diabetic for several decades and I still had to sit through 1.5 hours of on-line diabetes care training. Delighted that they have it, but highly annoyed that I couldn’t test out of it.

    3. Hastily Blessed Fritos*

      I’ve only worked one place where the e-learning system let you “test out” by taking the quiz at the beginning. I still remember it fondly more than 10 years later.

    4. Andrew*

      I worked for a place that had mandatory online trainings – there was no limit to how many times you could re-take it if you didn’t get the required 80%. At one point, I realized (duh) that I could 1/ take notes on things that I was fairly sure I’d be quizzed on later (you get a sixth sense about these things once you do them enough) and 2/I could take notes on my responses so that I didn’t repeat the incorrect responses the next time through the quiz. I actually DID learn things which was part of the point of the thing.

      I couldn’t tell how long the mandatory meetings are (maybe I just read too fast and it’s early and I’m still sipping coffee) – if they are just an hour, people just need to buck up and deal with it … if it’s an all-day training, I can see where people treat it like death – it’s not only boring but ‘feels’ like it’s a time management problem on the part of the company. Perhaps the letter writer’s training falls somewhere in between and in that case, I think the letter writer needs to determine how to present it in a way that respects the various other pulls on people’s time with the fact that there will be serious consequences for lack of compliance.

    5. Alan*

      Yep. Came here to say just this. In-person trainings are going to fail for all sorts of people: people on vacation, sick people, people with medical appointments, parents with sick kids/family, people with a critical deadline that can’t afford the visibility of being late. Almost all of my employer’s training is now online and there’s a range of dates when you can take it. And for the training that’s still required in person, yeah, people cancel at the last minute for all the reasons above.

      1. FionasHuman*

        For LW4: How much of this required training is actually pertinent/needed for their work, and how much is CYA BS? My husband had to learn the location of the emergency exists in a building he’ll never visit in a state hundreds of miles away, for example.

        Perhaps you can make this easier: tell people upfront what’s going to be covered, what parts of it actually matter to your work, which are BS — and give them a cheat sheet with the answers to all of the BS questions. It would really help if you can tell them when the BS will be covered, so they can zone out during those segments.

        At the very least, being honest (saying that whatever percentage of this training applies is a bit of nonsense PITA busywork, but sorry, we’ve gotta do it) and perhaps providing perks (for wasting your time like this, everyone who attends gets to leave early this Friday), would go a long way to getting your numbers up.

  20. Teaching teacher*

    I’m just wondering because I really don’t know… would it be normal to tell an executive director about all the difficult people they’ll be managing or are the two dating employees different? Like should they also be told about a receptionist who goes on power trips about ordering office supplies and two best friends where one is incompetent but the other covers for them every time and one employee who is rude.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      These two are described as “long-term” and “key” so I think it is a very different situation to the others you’ve described, who presumably could be replaced without major issues. The fact that these two can also veto things means that the executive director can be knee-capped on initiatives, and I think somebody coming into that position needs to know about that.

    2. Tree*

      I just left a small company and was not told in the interview process or even first few weeks about family relationships in the company. It absolutely would have impacted my decision to rake the job if I had gave know that 5 people in a 40 person company were relatives of the owner. They had different last names and it wasn’t until I was pulled aside and asked to treat one of them differently that I was told.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      I think it’s not so much that the behaviour is unprofessional but that the power an ED assumes they would have as a natural part of the role is going to be hamstrung by this couple. I don’t even know how they’ve been allowed to veto decisions, but if it’s the case you need to let an incoming decision maker know about that.

  21. Anonymously*

    LW3 – I have this condition too but never knew what it was! Doctors always look at me like I have three heads when I tell them I can’t burp, now I know what to mention next time. Thank you!

    1. Gracie*

      I learnt about it from youtuber TreacleTatts, who’s also had procedures to correct her R-CPD (in her case, botox injections). She has several videos about it! Hers can be absolutely debilitating, basically rendering her unable to leave the house after she’s eaten anything – I’m 99% I have the same deal, based on symptoms, but my painful bloating is fortunately an embarrassing inconvenience rather than disabling

    2. NoBurp*

      A lot of doctors have never heard of the condition. My GP never had but she gave me the referral anyway. Check out r/noburp for a list of specialists!

    3. Panicked*

      No burpers unite! It’s a miserable condition (as I sit here completely bloated and in pain). I have looked into botox for it, but I’m also emetophobic and the fear of that is keeping me from treating the R-CPD!

    4. Kelly S*

      I have this too! I just found out why I don’t burp and I’m 58. My daughter doesn’t either. I burp maybe once or twice a year. It always startles me and I’m not sure how I feel about treatment. LOL!

    5. Hroethvitnir*

      As someone who has other gas related conditions (lactose intolerance, massive increase in intermittent pain turned out to be bowel cancer, IBS vs cryptic new cancer post-hemicolectomy -_-), I am very sympathetic!

      I have a high pain tolerance and typically recover ridiculously fast from surgery; I’ve had nurses actually be like O_O at my level of function/low level of pain post-op.

      But gas trapped in my gut somewhere? The remaining gas after laproscopic surgery? Somehow that pain *really* gets me. I’ve definitely experienced it as totally debilitating.

      So: solidarity with anyone whose lack of burping leads to significant gut pain! Everyone hand waves it, but I’ve found it way worse than pain that people take more seriously.

  22. Milothecat*

    Lw4: I have experience in your area. First you can’t care more than the senior leadership of the organization. What I mean by this is you should be bringing the completion statistics and your efforts at achieving them to senior leadership from there you explain the gaps and the potential consequences. As for your efforts you will want to ensure they are broad before you present this dilemma to senior leadership. Try the option of having two training dates so that people can’t claim they had PTO or a last minute project. Alternatively look into options for video/on demand training (if possible in your industry) and give a timeline for completion (we give three weeks and we release it on a Tuesday with completion required end of day friday 3 woks later). To sr leadership you then Propose several options (such as requiring training as part of Kpis, locking people’s computer system. If locking people’s computer screen is one of the proposed options there needs to be a way for them to do the training to unlock it. Anyways the gist of the message is 1) make sure you are making it easy to complete the training – part of your job is to make it accessible and you don’t want people having a legitimate argument that it got in the way of billable work (that always gets attention even if the person could have planned better) so have more than one date available, send out reminders, look into on demand and 2) get sr leadership notified of the gaps and potential consequences. If you need sr leadership so you can create on demand (we create ours in house) then show them the efforts made at in person and why on demand might be preferable. It’s all you can do. Don’t take it personally. Ultimately the buck stops with them and if they care the employees will care.

  23. Hanani*

    LW 5, since you mentioned an academic job that is hard to get, I’m assuming faculty? If so, your interviewer may very well feel uncomfortable because they know how hard the job market is/they’re the one who argued for the other finalist/they have no training or experience in hiring and take everything too personally. If it is faculty, then ghosting after the interview or goddess forbid the campus visit stage would be a huge misstep on their part, though likely a mistake rather than deliberate.

    If it’s a staff position, unless you applied to a large university with a very centralized bureaucracy and a dept that hires a lot, same can still apply. Academic hiring is usually done by the unit/dept, completely siloed from everything else.

    You’ll probably have to take the lead on the relationships with the folks who ghosted you. Be really warm, express enthusiasm in working in this dept/unit (is it the same one or a different but related one?), if it’s the same you can talk about how your previous interview experience only made you more interested as you learned about what they did/how they did it.

    If it’s the same dept and they ghost you again, though, even within dysfunctional academic hiring that’s something I don’t like. Don’t know that it’s red flag level (#becauseacademia), but it would give me pause.

    1. deesse877*

      Agreed that if it is a faculty position they are most like ashamed of the process and how low the odds are for candidates. This is very common.

    2. rural academic*

      I agree 100%. If you interviewed for a faculty position and are now encountering faculty who seem a little awkward, it is probably because of the rejection (and a fair number of faculty are various degrees of socially awkward already). They may not even know you were ghosted. I have been on hiring committees, and once interviews were done, it was either the job of HR or the committee chair to communicate rejections, and I as a committee member wasn’t involved in that.

  24. Yellow rainbow*

    LW5 – reach out to them about the position. If they’re senior enough, say directly you are interested in applying and wanted their take on if it was worth applying given you were unsuccessful in the previous position (given you interviewed, if you’d just applied I wouldn’t say anything).

    Chances are the ghosting came from the admin heart of the place – not the people interviewing. Some universities won’t tell candidates that they were unsuccessful until the chosen candidate has started (you know, 3-6+ months later). They likely are embarrassed because they hate the prices of treating people like that.

  25. Panda*

    For #4, I am also in charge of compliance training at my organization. We have our compliance training in an online LMS and courses are automatically assigned beginning in March with various due dates (a few due in June, a few in August, and one in December). The system automatically reminds them weekly, then daily as we get closer to the due date. I loop in managers and SLT member a week out and the day its due. Maybe this could be an option for you? You could work with a LMS company to create the course you need. People could take the course when time permits.

  26. CoffeeIsMyFriend*

    I’m in Academia and our HR really controls what we can not do surrounding hiring. it’s their job to send out rejection emails but I’m pretty sure they don’t and we can get in trouble if we bypass them

    also most academics are awkward so don’t read into the awkwardness. just be friendly and pretend no one is being awkward

    1. Mo*

      Yup. Academia is full of really weird people. Just chat to them about one of the talks, comment on how much you need the (bad) conference coffee, and go from there.

  27. ecnaseener*

    LW3, can you wear a face mask to work until the burping settles down, so at least you’re not open-mouthed burping into people’s faces? I think that will help signal that you’re doing what little you can to mitigate the impact.

    1. Shrimp Emplaced*

      Ooh, I like this suggestion, if OP is amenable and can swing it. Especially since single burps are often not fragrance-free, so lots of burps could be pretty unpleasant to breathe around and could create lingering invisible clouds folks could inadvertently walk into (don’t ask me how I know).

  28. Fluffy Orange Menace*

    #4
    The mandatory training, are they paid hours? We are expected to put in 8 hours unpaid time every 12 months or so for these. Considering the organisation also lost a landmark case regard to chronic wage theft, the lack of interest is not surprising.

    1. GythaOgden*

      I’d assume so. All training of ours, as well as team days and so on, is paid (and expensed, which is why our Christmas party takes place the evening of our quarterly away-day team meeting, so we can expense the rooms at the party hotel). There’s likely laws about it as well, and ultimately I’m assuming that LW would just take that as a given that her company is in compliance with that.

  29. WellRed*

    No. 3, it sounds weird enough that I would totally believe you weren’t making it up, congrats on the surgery and future freedom from all this.

    1. NoBurp*

      This cracked me up, thank you. I pre-warned one of my clients and she said “yeah…that IS weird” lol.

  30. Insert Pun Here*

    Yeah, training is never ever going to be a priority unless (a) completing those trainings is something I am formally evaluated on or (b) not completing the training prevents me from doing the things that I am formally evaluated on. So figure out a way to make (a) or (b) the case in your workplace. (I work in a standard office with no significant safety hazards, and my job/industry does not have legally mandated compliance requirements. So obviously part of my irritation is about bs trainings like “how to use a fire extinguisher.”)

  31. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    2. I’m the one enforcing data security round these parts and sad to say I’ve seen a lot worse. The way I approach it is with a firm statement of ‘this is wrong and has to stop immediately and any offending videos/posts removed’.

    If the person is genuinely apologetic, removes everything and behaves themselves then I’ll gladly wipe it from my memory. Everyone makes mistakes.

    If however there’s any push back, any attempt at justifying it or trying to argue me out of it then it’s disciplinary time. Likewise if it continues.

  32. WellRed*

    For the first letter, I’m just curious what are these awkward ways of finding out about the so-called power couple.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      I was wondering that too!

      On a related note, “ad hoc and sometimes awkward ways” sounds like the name of my band’s next album.

    2. Observer*

      Yeah, I was wondering too. Everything I can think of tells me that they are kind of throwing their weight and coupledom around.

  33. Hyaline*

    Re LW5: “ …people who hire normally don’t feel that much awkwardness about running into rejected candidates unless there’s something else going on…”

    In this case that something is that they work in academia. Most of the time the person hiring for an academic position is also an academic (that is, also faculty, lecturer, research, etc). Look, academics are great people on the whole but can be a socially awkward lot. Assume this person was just awkward about “person I didn’t hire and I feel sorta badly about that and I’m not sure how to interact” imo.

  34. Some Words*

    In the heavily regulated industry in which I work we have mandatory training courses due every quarter. They’re assigned automatically, we don’t sign up for them. There are probably over 20 of them every year. Nobody is enthused to complete these (many are the same every year).

    Anyone who doesn’t complete all the assigned courses by their due date has their computer access revoked. It’s a nightmare to get re-activated in all our systems, for both the employee and their manager.

    Sounds extreme but we don’t have a problem with staff non-compliance.

  35. megaboo*

    #4, you need more than a month lead time. I have this issue with my staff as well. We don’t have mandatory in-person training, but we do have mandatory virtual classes to take with certificates they need. I frankly give them an artificial date to finish these classes about a week before they are due and stay on them until I get their certificates (within reason, I’m not emailing them every minute of the day). I realize that with in-person training that might not be possible, but I would say at least three months before that it’s upcoming.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I was thinking this too. especially anyone who may be client facing or need to travel to clients. Their days can quickly fill up. I’m wondering if there would be a way to either have these trainings multiple times so that people can find a time that works for them, or have it set on a specific day. so for example the first Wednesday of every quarter is dedicated to training.

  36. Gustavo*

    Why is that relationship allowed to continue if there is such a disruptive power dynamic? Work place relationships are fine if it doesn’t cause any issues at the organization but it sounds like these two are impacting peoples work lives in a bad way. They should not have veto power if they are going to team up to use it.

    1. Peanut Hamper*

      Small orgs are sometimes like this. It’s one reason I don’t want to work for a small org any more.

    2. Generic Name*

      I agree. To me the relationship itself isn’t necessarily problematic. What is a problem is that two people put together apparently have more say in company functioning than the executive director. Unless the board fully backs the ED’s personnel decisions, I’d decline this position. OP, I do think you need to disclose this dynamic less from a “coworkers are dating” standpoint and more from a “two employees have been allowed veto power”. Presumably these two have that power because a former ED has allowed that situation. But if it’s the case that the board is allowing those two to wield that kind of power, you need to disclose that as well.

    3. Dinwar*

      My guess is it’s a boiling-frog situation. The duo started out with good ideas, but weren’t sufficiently kept in check (or given roles that matched their de facto authority) and now it’s been going on so long that everyone just accepts it as inevitable.

      This is one reason the company I work for has the rule ” “We’ve always done it this way” is not a sufficient reason for anything.”

    4. I strive to Excel*

      This was my read on the take. The issue isn’t necessarily the relationship; the issue is that these two people have collectively been given enough decision-making authority that they can override the executive director. If what they’ve been doing is working well, maybe your org needs two co-directors instead of one. Formalize what they’re already doing and stop trying to hire someone into a role that’s not actually what fits the needs.

      If what they’re doing and deciding isn’t working, then step 1 to hiring a new ED is to back your new director fully in removing some of that veto power and making their decisions stick.

  37. Peanut Hamper*

    At my company, 98% of our training is online. There’s a due date, but you usually have 2-3 weeks to complete the short trainings and 2-3 months to complete the long ones. Training is one of the KPIs that we get evaluated on each year.

    I used to do my trainings immediately when I was notified of them, because I used to be in charge of that at my old job, and it was a pain hunting people down and getting them to do it.

    Our KPIs goes from 1 to 5, with five being the best. I always rated myself a 5, because I got them done immediately. But that always gets changed to a 3, because management says they have no way of easily knowing how quickly I am getting them done. (They could figure it out, but they’re right, it wouldn’t be easy to do for a ton of employees, given the amount of training we have to do in a year. We’re a heavily regulated industry, and this is typical.)

    And now, I just don’t care. I’ll never get more than a 3 on that metric, so why bother. I do them just before they are due and I’m not bothered in the least. I’m going to get a 3 and that’s it. (And yes, this gets averaged into an overall score which affects raises and bonuses, and I am livid over this aspect of it.)

    All of which is to say that if you do figure out a new carrot and stick to get your employees to do their training on time, make sure it is one for which they will actually be rewarded appropriately for doing it on time.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      wait, they mark you with how quickly they get done? That doesn’t make much sense. Why would you want someone to rush through the training?
      Any platform I’ve used for trainings had a time stamp. It showed when you logged in and when you finished. They could also put a time tracker to see how long people are staying in the trainings. At one place we had to stay on each page X amount of time or it didn’t count.

      1. Peanut Hamper*

        It’s how quickly they get done within a 2-3 week time frame, not how many minutes it takes you to get through each one.

  38. HonorBox*

    I think in regards to the first letter, I’d disclose the relationship at the finalist stage. That might help all of your finalists figure out what kind of additional questions they might have for board and staff. While the relationship itself isn’t the major issue, though it could be (see below), I think the alliance is the potential issue. Someone coming in to lead the organization should know what they’re stepping into. So I’d also suggest that there’s a little more detail in the conversation about what that “veto power” looks like. This isn’t any different than two long-term employees who are closely aligned simply as coworkers, so that they’re in a romantic relationship isn’t as big an issue. But I think the details of how this veto power has come up, and if there have been any major issues that the board has seen, would be good to share. The finalists can determine how they’d like to proceed and your new ED can have an eyes wide open perspective as they hit the ground running.

    The relationship could be an issue depending on how it is discovered by people. The letter uses the term awkward. If there are situations that you’d describe as awkward, it would be worth giving someone a heads up. Also a romantic relationship versus a coworker alliance is different because there’s always the potential of a breakup. Maybe there’s never going to be an issue, but people who are senior might be harder to replace or situations are harder to deal with if there’s some sort of relationship conflict.

  39. Dust Bunny*

    OP3, I’ll see if I can find it: There is a post on here somewhere with advice about burping quietly. Basically, don’t tense your abdomen and force it out–relax and just let the gas vent. It won’t help you burp less but it will make the burping less conspicuous.

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I don’t know if that would help if it happens every time they open their mouth or turn their head.

    2. NoBurp*

      That isn’t possible after the procedure for a while, as my throat will be kinda frozen open. But good once the medication wears off and I’m doing it normally!

  40. strawberry lemonade*

    I had a coworker and good friend who burped pretty continuously for (I think) a month or two due to a different medical condition. A couple other coworkers asked me quietly about it and I believe I just said that it was a medical thing he’s dealing with.

    People were extremely normal about it. I know it’s gonna feel embarrassing but everyone has a body and (most!) people are aware that sometimes bodies do weird stuff.

  41. el l*

    OP1:
    Short version, yeah, you need to tell them. It doesn’t matter when you do, and you may end up losing candidates because of this. The more pressing question right now is: What powers will the new ED have to fire them or otherwise resolve the situation?

    Long version – Because you don’t have an HR issue, you have a Governance issue.

    That’s what it boils down to when non-C or Board-level people have an effective veto over strategy. And that’s why someone on the hiring team – perhaps OP and/or legal – needs to really work through pre-interview exactly what options the new ED will have for dealing with these 2. If they have an effective veto and ED can’t fire them, your ED needs to know that upfront – as you’re going to have to hire for someone who can manage that.

    Oh, and OP2 – check your policies because at lots of places what they’ve done is an automatically-fireable offense. Especially if you have an Investor Relations department, you may work at that place.

    1. Trout 'Waver*

      I 100% agree here. OP#1 is burying the lede. This is a governance issue that a seasoned manager is going to avoid. A reasonable manager is going to see this as a major structural problem. If OP#1 doesn’t disclose it early, any candidate in this role is going to feel like they were lied to when they do find out.

      I once took a job as a manager over an untouchable technician and it was hell. He was completely out of control and I was refused any tools to bring him into control. In fact, I believe the only reason that management job existed at all was because nobody could control him and senior leadership was scared that they’d be personally liable if he got someone killed through his negligence. What an absolute disaster that place was.

  42. GoosieLou*

    As someone who’s in a pretty small academic field and so sees people who didn’t hire me often at conferences, I find that going up to them with a warm greeting and a question or comment about our shared field defangs awkwardness pretty quickly. It could just be the personalities in my area, but asking about the position and the person hired for it in a small-talky, I’m-the-same-polite-level-of-interested-as-any-other-acquaintance-who-knew-you-were-trapped-on-a-hiring-committee way has always been successful for me in signaling “I’m not going to make this weird and didn’t take it personally, let’s consider each other contacts now.”

  43. el l*

    OP4:
    I’m going to assume you’ve confirmed the mandatory training has to be in-person, one-date, and a meeting – if it isn’t, you need to get the flexibility of say a mandatory webinar, or a make-up session. Because it sounds like it’s impossible to expect 100% attendance. You’re going to need some backup plan for flexibility.

    That said, you do need to have conversations with the managers, and that conversation has to be, “We are currently non-compliant, and here are the consequences for the company if our current state was ever found out. Something has to change so we can get compliant. Help me.”

    1. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      I can’t fathom any regulatory body demanding that the training be done only one day with no make up option. It’s just not going to work. Someone is bound to be sick, out of town, late, etc.

  44. Captain-SafetyPants*

    LW4 – This has been the story of my life at times in the past. However, consider: unless you are the head of the company, it’s not actually your job to keep the company compliant. If your job is anything like mine (or that of any of the other regulatory folks I know), you don’t have nearly the authority to do that. It’s your job to know what the company needs to do to be compliant, and to provide the services (like training) that will facilitate it. But it’s still *the company’s* responsibility to get it done, and that has to come from above. From management on up. It’s a subtle but important change in perspective, and it may help you feel better about pulling in management to enforce the requirements. My favorite manager that I ever worked with (not MY manager, but manager of many of my clients) was a joy to work with, because she took employee health and safety so seriously, and if her employees did not, she was absolutely. Not. Here. For. It. If they didn’t complete their mandatory safety training after a certain number of warnings, she would have their employee badges deactivated, so they literally could not enter the building until they did the training. Likewise if they didn’t wear the mandatory ppe after being warned, or if she saw them making other egregious safety errors after being trained and warned. She really got it—it’s the company’s job to provide a workplace free of recognized hazards, and it’s the employees’ job to maintain the conditions of compliance the company sets forth. If they’re preventing the company from being compliant, they don’t get to be employees. Of course not every set of company leadership sees it like that, and they will give you a lot of drivel about leading and influencing without direct authority, and try to offload all the responsibility on you. But in the US, at least, the courts tend to disagree with that kind of management, and it’s executives that end up on the wrong side of prosecution (see: Boeing). You give them the means to be compliant. It’s management’s job to enforce it.

    1. Generic Name*

      All of this exactly. OP, you do not have the authority to make everyone do the training, so you need the backing of management. If they tell you that it’s your job, they are abdicating their obligation as company leaders. I used to work at a company that had a real laissez faire attitude towards managing, and this exact scenario played out over and over. Owner loved having all employees (small company) in one room for an annual training. Inevitably, not everyone would make it. Nobody thought to involve these peoples’ managers apparently because there would be lots of wheedling all-staff emails about attendance.this type of scenario is a symptom of poor management. Last I heard this company is circling the drain and has a hiring freeze and is laying off people due to lack of work. They’ve lost several contracts they previously held for years.

  45. She of Many Hats*

    LW4

    Can you get leadership to offer some sort of carrot that would be meaningful to employees to encourage participation? Such as if there’s 100% attendance or compliance (barring sick leave) everyone gets to leave an hour or two early the following Friday or a nice, free item from the company swag store? Or only the people that complete the training get the reward.

    I also suspect that there’s a handful of repeat offenders. Work with their managers and get it into their employee review as a significant failure on the employee’s part.

  46. Ready for the weekend*

    OP1: The hire must also have the support of your company and be effectively in charge. Not this couple.

    1. Hyaline*

      Yeah, isn’t that the actual issue here? Fix your overall org chart and leadership structure, and then hire someone, maybe?

  47. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    #2 Yes this needs to be taken down now. Even if he doesn’t say he works for your company if anyone recognizes him as your employee and he says things about work then those customers are going to be angry. You risk them leaving you over this. And honestly what is his end game with these videos. It sounds boring and dumb, like he just wants to rant.

    #4 I work in higher ed and there are always trainings we have to do every year. You might not have control over this but I think you should not only loop in managers but loop in executive level people. Because if you ever get audited and found not in compliance they will want to know why you didn’t bring the issue of people’s trainings up sooner. In the places where I’ve worked the trainings were tied to your raises. You don’t complete the training by X date you don’t get a raise. In one place they pulled people who hadn’t completed training as they came into work and mandated that they complete it then before they could start work.

  48. Contracts Killer*

    LW4, is upper management/senior leadership attending these trainings? People should be attending no matter what, but I think it can help with morale and help people to see it really is a meaningful training when they see that even the CEO is attending.

    1. Dinwar*

      Interesting. My experience is the opposite. When the training includes only the people doing the job people tend to buy in more, in my experience–the good teams use the training as a vehicle to discuss potential issues on the job (safety, scheduling, options for how to do things better, that sort of thing). If the Big Boss is included in the meeting it comes across more as a punishment, or at the very least has a chilling effect on the sorts of discussions that normally take place. Probably because the managers only attend routine training if they’re telling field staff to do it because of issues onsite.

      Not saying that you’re wrong. It’s just interesting to see how different experiences are in this.

  49. Looper*

    LW4- I have a similar responsibilities (ensuring 150+ employees complete compliance training) and what has worked best is:
    1) more than one training session
    2) heavily involving the managers by making them the point person for their teams who is responsible for getting their people in the sessions
    3) publicly posting which teams have had the greatest buy-in (“Sandra’s team is at 85% for compliance training, Sam’s team is still only at 35%, just a reminder, final session is tomorrow!”)

    We still have stragglers but also have support to make refusal to complete compliance training something that gets a “talking to” by their manager and managers under a certain team completion threshold are also held accountable.

    You can’t do this on your own, and also it’s not a personal “disrespect” that people don’t do it. It’s just a boring thing people don’t have interest in. Get as much support as you can in getting the message out so you’re not just emailing into the ether.

    1. Reebee*

      I dunno…I and a colleague do find such training interesting, particularly as it relates to our work.

      I don’t understand appointing one’s self as arbiter of everyone else’s feelings about something.

      1. GythaOgden*

        Yeah. One of the big differences in attitude coming from one team to another was the enthusiasm with which training and development was received. I like training as a break from the norm, and am much happier in a division where it’s seen as something that engages people and helps them achieve what they want to achieve rather than a necessary evil.

  50. Observer*

    #1 – Dating employees.

    I don’t want candidates to be taken by surprise by these dynamics once they get the job, but also want to respect people’s personal lives and work/life boundaries.

    Well, you don’t do that by lying – which you would be if your response to someone who asks whether this is something to be concerned about is “we just wanted you to know.” Because that implies that it’s not something to be concerned about, while it actually most definitely *is*.

    Also, while it is very good to respect people’s work / life boundaries, you don’t owe it to them to protect their personal life more than they are. The fact that they are dating is common knowledge, so there is no reason to try to keep it s secret from new people. In fact, since it does affect what goes on, it would be *wrong* to keep it from people, because it legitimately affects them. That’s exponentially true when they actually use their status as a dating couple to exert power and affect the direction of the organization. At that point, they have absolutely no expectation that anyone should ignore their dating. They have firmly brought their personal life into the office, and it’s not fair or *responsible* to keep that from people who are going to have to manage this as part of their job.

    Sure, even they have a right to privacy, so assuming that they don’t, for instance, talk about their intimate activities at work, it’s no one’s business what those look like. Same for their diet choices, relationships with other family members, or any other personal issue that they don’t brong to work / does not affect the workplace.

  51. Hamster Manager*

    #03 First: I’m glad you’re getting relief! However, as a person with misophonia (strong involuntary physical or emotion reaction to certain sounds, for me this includes belching, slurping, and others), the idea of being in close proximity to someone constantly belching is setting my hair on end. It might be worth trading client visits with someone else for a while until things calm down for you, if you work with a population that has sensory issues. I like the mask idea someone had too, that would help me. Thanks for being so considerate about this that you wrote in to Alison, I for one appreciate it. :) Hope things go well with your surgery!

    1. NoBurp*

      It should be ok at the client house visits, as I’m mostly doing work independently from them. It’s more the office set up that mortifies me!

  52. Observer*

    #2 – Posting client videos.

    I haven’t read the comments yet, so I realize this could already have been answered – and I’m going to check. If not:

    Why would you think that you can’t stop him from doing this? I’m not being snarky, I really don’t understand. Because it seems to me that he’s violating some pretty basic and major norms (and possibly legal issues). It’s not for nothing that Alison recommends both looking at his overall work *and* firing after a *single* warning. She doesn’t usually jump to that.

    How did you find his social media posts? How easy is it to tell who employs him, even if he doesn’t mention your name? It seems to me that it can’t be that hard to find him if you did.

    1. Hyaline*

      I think one unclear element is what, exactly, the employee was posting–if it included information he gleaned from being an employee or even actual privileged information, if privacy was breached, if the videos were negative or unflattering. Barring actual breaches of privacy or disclosing privileged info, I can imagine the LW might worry that shutting down their employee’s personal posting on their personal social media could be a violation of free speech. I can see why the LW would want reassurance that they have the standing to say “you cannot post this kind of material while an employee here” and it not be a free speech violation (I’m assuming US here).

  53. Dinwar*

    #4: It’s also worth looking at the nature of the job and the timing of the meetings. I’ve missed mandatory meetings before because I was required–at the same time–to be on a jobsite with no internet access and no cell phones allowed. Since showing up wasn’t an option without shutting down millions of dollars worth of work, I had to miss the meeting.

    One way we’ve found to work around this is to schedule the meetings either first thing in the morning, in a location where we CAN attend them. “Meet here, we’ll go over some mandatory training where it’s got AC, then we’ll get you started” goes over pretty well (especially if there’s coffee and doughnuts). The other way is to provide lunch for the meetings. You can get any blue-collar worker to attend a meeting if it 1) is comfortable, 2) includes free food, and 3) doesn’t overly-interfere with the work.

    1. Reebee*

      Why single out blue collar workers as though only they need incentivizing? Don’t many white collar workers respond well to comfort, free food, and a lack of barriers to completing one’s tasks?

  54. Smurfette*

    OP4, at my current workplace we are locked out of our email and other systems if we don’t complete the mandatory training on time. It’s extremely effective. (Reports are also sent to senior management.)

    The company has also started emphasising the risks (including financial penalties), which has made people take it more seriously. Generally people aren’t aware of the impact of not doing the training.

    I think you need to be clear on what your role is actually responsible for, and that’s probably facilitating the training and reporting on it – NOT single-handedly ensuring that all staff comply. Maybe discuss this with your manager.

  55. yep*

    On the burping, just tell them…but please tell them.

    I once had to ride from OKC to Tulsa with a new boss, and he burped the whole way there and back. He never said a word about it, and I was so uncomfortable. When we got back, his second-in-command casually asked, “How’d you enjoy your ride? Lots of gas?” and then SIC explained that the boss had some sort of condition that made the burps happen. The SIC thought it was hilarious. I really wish I’d had a warning.

  56. Observer*

    #4 – Compliance training.

    I agree with everyone who says you need to look management in. Both to make sure that staff are seeing that it actually *is* a priority, but also to get Management buy in and *cooperation* in terms of making sure that staff can do the training without being penalized or over-scheduled.

    But also, why is there ONE apparently live training? As you say, it’s 2024 yet you don’t seem to be using any of the myriad tools available to do this asynchronously. So instead one meeting where if someone does have an emergency, or make a calendar mistake, or is just overwhelmed on *that day* there are options. That doesn’t have to be a free for all – there are validation methods that work just as well as “signed in to the meeting”.

    Believe me, I get how frustrating this is – training is not my primary job, but it comes up and it’s like pulling teeth. But doing it this way has *really* improved our compliance and reduced the need to threaten / impose consequences. Although that should be part of the mix, as well.

  57. Peter the Bubblehead*

    In regards to #4: I work for a company in an industry where we have over a dozen required trainings every year in order to maintain access to government data systems or remain in compliance with government requirements. If we don’t have 100% compliance with the training, either those employees lose their access to data systems they need to do their job (which renders them useless to the company) or the company risks being removed from our government contract and being blackballed from ever regaining it in the future.
    In either case, not completing the required annual training – no matter how repetitive or pointless it seems – is a fire able offense.
    Sounds like OP needs to take this up to company management and name names.

  58. Bruce*

    LW1: I had a manager who was married to another manager at the same level, they were sometimes known as the “”tag-team” since they could gang up on people in review meetings (that company had a lot of formalized reviews). Individually they are both great people and I’m still in touch with my ex-manager 30+ years later (she went on to become a VP at another company after hitting the glass ceiling). But if I was being hired into their level or then next one up I’d have wanted a heads-up.

  59. Ginger Cat Lady*

    At the hospital where I work, if you don’t complete the mandatory trainings, your badge and credentials are disabled. You’re not allowed to do patient care. It’s a BIG DEAL.
    And they mean it! It happened to me, though it was an edge case. I was out for surgery for 6 weeks and when I came to work my first day back, my badge wouldn’t let me in the employee parking garage. I thought it was probably a “hadn’t been used in a while so disabled” issue, so I texted my manager that I was heading to HR to work it out before I went to my desk.
    HR told me I was unable to work and they were processing paperwork to fire me over noncompliance! Apparently someone missed cross checking the FMLA list when taking disciplinary action, and my manager didn’t worry about the emails she’d been getting about my noncompliance because I was on FMLA. She figured HR would just have me do it when I came back. It took half the day to get it worked out enough that I could get everything working again, and I had a week’s grace period to make up the training.
    Apparently there were two other people at the hospital also on FMLA who were in the same situation, I just happened to be the first one to return to work and expose the issue.Hopefully their return to work was smoother.
    So companies can absolutely take compliance training very seriously.

  60. R*

    #3: My coworker also went through this. If it’s anything like his experience: I don’t think a lot of people will really notice. My coworker just had an upbeat “I’m really excited to get this done but for a week or so I’m going to be burping a lot” and no one commented on it past then

  61. Beth*

    LW#5: I’m betting your interviewers feel weird about having hired someone else over you, and awkward about approaching you as a result. Academia is such a small field, especially when you’re talking about your specific niche–any given specialty is made up of a small group of people who expect to keep seeing each other forever, because you all go to the same conferences, compete for the same job openings and research grants, publish in the same journals, maybe even went to grad school together. And while many academics find themselves on hiring committees when a job opens up in their department, but they’re not trained or very experienced in hiring. All of that is a recipe for feeling very awkward around the people you rejected!!!

    If you happen to run into one of your interviewers at an event again, I’d suggest going up to them and opening some small talk e.g. “hi, it’s great to see you again, how’s [project] going?” The easiest way through awkwardness is just to show that you’re not going to make this interaction weird for them. Once you establish that, I bet they’ll relax.

    If you’re not going to see them in person, you can do the same thing over email: “Hi, I hope you’re doing well! It was great to see you at [event]–I enjoyed your talk on [subject]. I saw [job] posted, and given how great [university] was last time, I’m thinking of throwing my hat in the ring. Maybe we’ll run into each other again in the process?”

  62. SometimesMaybe*

    #1 – The candidate does not need to know there are two employees in a relationship, so much as the company structure is such that the ED can be undermined by a consensus of some others in leadership. This could be true regardless of whether two employees are dating, friends, or simply share a view different than then director. I have managed married employees before and the potential for catastrophe was never realized. OP’s non-profit needs to decide if it wants to keep a more democratic and collaborative structure, which any ED candidates need to be aware, or change the culture completely taking away the veto power of any employee, which would negate the need to worry about fraternization,

  63. anon, the guilty party may read here*

    Academic ghosting:
    Sometimes the hiring committee/hiring officer/department is not allowed to contact rejected candidates. It has to come from HR (which may just update the online applicant info) or from some specific person in the department or from the dean’s office or whatever. I chaired one committee where the hiring officer told me that since I had forwarded our short list to them, they would take care of any further communication and I was not to communicate with any candidate at all whatsoever, no, not even to refer them to the hiring officer. (Hiring officer was a faculty member with….issues.)

  64. Alternatives abound*

    LW #4 – Wanted to add to what others are saying.
    Please schedule multiple sessions of the mandatory training.
    My org just gave 2-weeks notice of mandatory training that will take place during my vacation (which was scheduled and paid for 6 months in advance). On another occasion they scheduled mandatory training during an essential community event.
    I was able to attend one of the alternative dates.

  65. Jaina Solo*

    LW4–this has come up in my job and in some instances, the company will put consequences in place, but that always comes from another department like HR, Legal, or Compliance. If you’re not already, I’d recommend downloading the attendance report from your Teams meeting, and (if you can) cross-reference that with everyone you did invite. Then give HR/Legal/Compliance/whoever the list of “these people didn’t attend this mandatory training” and let them handle it. (If you can’t cross-reference, then just send over who did join.)

    Also, 1000% on what Alison said. Managers are key here too, and many will probably assist if you communicate with them. But ultimately if your company is going to be audited or otherwise have to prove compliance with the training, that’s not on you to chase everyone down. Find the person/dept who can and empower them with the attendance info.

  66. R-CPD, Me Too??*

    OMG, OP #3. I have always said that I cannot burp and that my chest “gurgles” instead, and no one has ever believed me. I cannot believe I did Google to find out that this was A Thing. Best of luck with your surgery and recovery!

  67. Just Thinkin' Here*

    OP #1 – you have two significant management issues going on. The first – and the one you didn’t ask about – is that two employees can veto and override their manager, the Executive Director. Without knowing more about this organization, I don’t see why someone’s direct report would be able to do this – there is an issue with authority here.

    Secondly, people who are on the same team should not be dating. They won’t be able to call into question each others work or lack thereof. Not to mention what happens if they breakup. Ideally these people would have separate reporting chains or, at minimum, should not be working on the same projects.

  68. Trainer*

    OP#4–I work in Corporate training and have to corral folks around compliance training. By far the best thing to spur action is to send out a regular report on completion percentages by division/department or other organizational grouping like manager. If trainings are all in person with limited delivery, instead of completion percentages, report on enrollment and then completions. It becomes a competition for the leaders and no one wants to be on the naughty list.

  69. AnotherSarah*

    Re academic job market:
    1) Our HR is supposed to send rejection letters–the committee chair relays the info to them. I’ve never, as a hiring committee member, been able to follow up on them. A chair MIGHT be able to know if you’ve been ghosted (if she followed up with HR) but maybe not
    2) Getting ghosted is so common on the academic market, as everywhere. It sucks. I’m sorry. But it also doesn’t mean anything. Someone might be acting oddly towards you…but they might just be odd!
    3) If the new open position is in the same department, you might run into the same people on the committee…but I’d doubt it! Most people in my university don’t serve on search committees in consecutive years. And personally, I’d love to see some folks reapply if we had similar open positions (if only).

  70. McS*

    LW4 I think this must be the main reason companies go to online trainings. You can send it out with a deadline a month in advance and then by a week in advance, you should be targeting your reminders to the people who haven’t done it yet and their managers. The deadline should be before your legal deadline so you can come down on people who are late before you’re legally liable. And if at all possible there should be a clear consequence of not being able to access work tools after the deadline until the training is complete.

    1. Hermione Danger*

      As an agency Instructional Designer, I agree with this. I would also add that most compliance training delivered live is not designed to be at all memorable. I’ve created a LOT of compliance training in my time, and the thing I’ve noticed is that compliance subject matter experts seem to think every word of the policy is this precious thing that needs to be shared. However, the unfortunate results of that are that nobody wants to take the training, and when they do, it all goes in one ear and out the other because nobody is actually paying attention. And in the end, you need people to do (or not do) something specific, or the policy wouldn’t be a policy.

      My unasked for recommendations for building training that “sticks” are:
      1. Focus on the results you want to see. What do you need employees to do as a result of the training? How can you help them learn those things? Anything that doesn’t help trainees get to that end goal is not need to know; it’s nice to know, and should be cut from the training.

      For example, your financial services organization has enacted a new policy to help with fraud protection. What do employees need to know and to be able to do to remain on the right side of that policy? What procedures must they be able to follow? If there are people who should be contacted when possible fraudulent activity is occurring, who should they contact and where can they find that information? How can you help them remember all of this after the training? Who can the contact if they have questions?

      2. Right at the top of the training and periodically throughout, help employees understand how the training benefits them. How will it help them do their jobs better ? I’ve seen too much compliance training delivered with the What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) being, “You need to know this. Because it’s required.” If people understand *how* they will benefit from the training, they will pay attention.

      For example, your construction company needs to get more employees to abide by the safety policies. “Everybody needs to wear the appropriate PPE and follow the correct procedures to prevent asbestos exposure because those are the rules” is important and necessary information. But helping employees see how not following proper decontamination policies can lead to carrying asbestos home on their clothes and exposing their children and spouses to a known carcinogen goes a much longer way toward ensuring compliance.

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