Ask a Manager

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

1. New manager keeps scheduling meetings for Monday mornings

Employee morale is at an all-time low at our organization for many reasons. Our new CEO isn’t helping with the matter. He schedules meetings on Monday mornings. Sometimes these meetings are conference calls, sometimes they’re day-long, in-person, rah-rah meetings. Employees who attend these meetings drive in from far locations.

I’ve not worked anywhere where long meetings are scheduled on Mondays or any meetings are scheduled on Mondays. Mondays are typically the busiest day of the week for us. These meetings make us less productive which in turn has worsened morale. Is this a new management technique to schedule meetings, and especially long ones, on Monday mornings?

I’ve … never worked anywhere that didn’t have meetings on Mondays. Meetings on Mondays are a pretty normal thing — not because it’s a management technique (it isn’t), but because Mondays are a normal work day when meetings might need to happen.

That said, day-long meetings? Day-long rah-rah meetings? That part sounds like a problem for sure, unless they’re very rare.

Why not say to him, “Hey, Mondays are the busiest day for us and it can be tough to fit in meetings; squeezing them in causes X and Y to happen. Is there a different day of the week we could schedule these for?”

2. Should I tell our new director that a board member was a candidate for her job?

I was recently on a hiring committee for the executive director of a small nonprofit. We had several fantastic candidates, and after making our hire, we asked one of the other finalists to be on the board. She enthusiastically accepted.

Here’s my question: How confidential should hiring processes be? Should I tell the new executive director that the new board member was also a finalist? I think I should, because it gives some context and perspective for the new ED, and ensures that the new ED doesn’t accidentally step on any toes because she didn’t know this new board member was also a candidate. I want the new board member to have a great experience, and it will help with the new ED treats her with an extra amount of respect and deference.

If I shouldn’t tell the new ED, should we also destroy the records of the hiring process to ensure confidentiality?

Yes, you should tell the ED, for exactly the reasons you say here: Otherwise you risk putting the ED at a disadvantage and she may inadvertently say something that rubs the new board member the wrong way. But I would not tell the ED to treat the board member with extra respect and deference. The same amount of respect and deference that any board member should get, yes, but not extra — that would be kind of patronizing to the board member, and may put the ED in a needlessly tough spot.

On destroying hiring records, you actually can’t — you’re required by law to keep them on file for one year from the date the application was received, and for two years for applicants who you’re aware are 40 or older, in case any legal challenges are brought to your hiring decisions.

3. We weren’t informed about health insurance open enrollment and now don’t have health insurance

I recently found out that I don’t have health insurance. We were supposed to sign up online during open enrollment but I wasn’t notified. We were supposed to have received an email instructing us. I spoke with several of my coworkers and found they also didn’t get the email to sign up and no one is enrolled because of it. Is there anything we can do?

Yes, go talk to someone in charge of this as a group, and explain that you weren’t notified and that you’re being denied access to health benefits as a result. Say this: “What can we do now so that we can get enrolled? Obviously the company does intend for us to have access to health insurance, so how can we make that happen?”

Don’t go to someone low-level about this, either, even if they’re the one responsible. You want to talk to someone high enough up that they’re going to recognize that this is a big problem and take action to remedy it (whereas if you talk to someone junior, they may not have the judgment or experience to recognize that it needs to be addressed or to know how to address it, and/or may be more interested in covering up the mistake).

4. Bringing luggage to an out-of-town interview

I received a call today that I made it to the third round of interviews. The interview will be in two days, and the company has already purchased my ticket. I will be staying in the area near my interview for 2 nights. There is a small window of time between when I arrive in the city and when my interview begins, which means that I will not have time to drop off my suitcase prior to the interview. I will be meeting with half a dozen people, and am concerned that I may end up wheeling my bag around as go to and fro meeting people. Should I not bring luggage (and purchase items post-interview)? If it is acceptable to have luggage, how do I address it when I arrive at the interview?

It’s totally fine to arrive with luggage, and it often happens when people are in this situation. You don’t need to roll it around with you the whole time. When you first arrive, ask either the receptionist or your first interviewer if there’s somewhere that you can leave it while you meet with people. They’ll take care of it from there.

5. Using notes in a Skype interview

I’ve prepared thoroughly for a Skype interview coming up and I’d like to have my notes on hand. Is it acceptable to look at my notes in the interview? Is it different for when I’m asking my questions to the interviewer?

I also wonder what would be acceptable in an in-person interview.

It’s generally fine to use notes in an interview, as long as you’re only glancing at them occasionally — not reading from them or giving the impression that you don’t know the answers to basic questions about your work history. However, it’s a little different when you’re interviewing over Skype — in that case, looking down a lot can come across differently than it does in person, when there’s a larger context and more cues for the interviewer to get about your interaction. With Skype, I’d try to keep it to a minimum.

However, when it comes to asking your own questions, it’s more reasonable. I’d just say something like, “I have a few notes here about what I want to ask you about,” so that if only your head is in the frame, it’s clear what you’re looking at.

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

1. Being made to sleep on a couch on a business trip

My husband is on a business trip at the moment. He told me they are having him sleep on a couch for this trip. He works 12-hour shifts, at night, and is expected to sleep on the couch during the day! Is this a reasonable accommodation for the company to provide for him?

What! No.

It’s not illegal, but it’s wildly unreasonable. He should say this to them: “Sleeping on a couch isn’t an option for me; I won’t sleep well and be rested enough to work. How can I make arrangements for the company to get a hotel room?”

2. My company messed up my pay and doesn’t want me to tell anyone

Yesterday, I was called into the HR benefits coordinator’s office. Apparently, there had been a mistake in Accounting over the span of about 5 months, and I was being overpaid about $9,000. It had to do with the time that merit increases were taking place, and I wasn’t paying much attention to my bank account other than seeing that a check had deposited (I’ve been beating myself up over not being more vigilant).

She apologized on behalf of HR and Accounting, and wants to meet with me later this week to hash out details of repayment. Then, she told me that the conversation was only to be between her, Accounting, and myself, and to not talk to anyone about the overpayment/repayment.

Should she have told me not to talk about it? What rights do employers and employees have when dealing with an overpayment of this size? I felt kinda weird that she didn’t want me to say anything to anyone at all. It’s possible she meant don’t tell everyone what happened, but she didn’t say that, only to not talk about it at all.

Obviously, $9,000 is a huge chunk of change and it’s going to affect my living situation for the rest of 2015. She mentioned a payment plan that would go to the end of the year- even this is about $1,000 a month. I really want to talk to my supervisor and bring her in the loop – my manager is someone that I could trust to go to bat for me if need be and bounce ideas off of.

The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from preventing employees from discussing wages and working conditions with each other; a request to keep this secret sounds like it would probably violate that law (I’m guessing though; you’d need a lawyer to tell you for sure). But I wouldn’t start there — I’d just say, “Can I ask you about why you asked me not to mention this to anyone? At a minimum, I’d like Manager to be in the loop about this, and was curious about the request more generally as well.”

Regardless of their answer, it’s totally reasonable to bring your manager into the loop here. If they balk at that, I’d just say, “I do feel that I need to bring her into the loop” and hold firm.

By the way, it’s also totally reasonable to say that you can’t swing payments of that size and they need to be lower, and see what they say. They might not agree to it — ultimately the law says that you do owe them that money — but they also might and it’s reasonable to try.

3. Do I have to respond to unsolicited sales pitches?

I have a question about what the etiquette/obligation is in responding to unsolicited cold calls from vendors. I’m in a job where my name and email address are out there in a number of open places so that people can contact me for information; I also seem to have gotten onto a number of lists. I started getting cold emails that were structured like blast emails. That’s totally fine – we all know you don’t have to respond to a blast email, and I’m not opposed to hearing from new businesses or potential vendors. But these days I seem to be getting a lot more solicitations, and they often look like personal messages, even though I’m sure many of them aren’t. I also sometimes get follow-ups from these people and phone messages. Sometimes they are related to my work, but often they are not, and they ask me to forward them to someone in the company who would be more suited.

I know it seems like a small thing, but it feels like such an intrusion on my time, especially when companies I have never heard of contact me more than once selling services that have nothing to do with me. It feels like they want to get their foot in the door at my company in any way possible, so they intrude on my time even though they know I’m not the right contact. I’d actually be more receptive if their tactic was blast email, because they wouldn’t be presuming a personal relationship with me, and I could at least unsubscribe. It’s hard enough for me to get everything done, and I already handle a large amount of email inquiries I’m expected to respond to within 24 hours. Do I have to reply to these unsolicited messages? Return the calls? Can I mark them as spam and be done with it since we have no prior relationship, or do I owe them some kind of response, even if it’s a “No, thank you”?

Nope. You’re under no obligation to respond to sales pitches, even when people specifically ask you to respond. These aren’t social requests (where you would have an obligation to get back to them); these are attempts to get your business, and the rules for that are different. You can delete and ignore without guilt. That’s what most people are doing :)

That said, for the ones that are clearly someone else’s purview, you might ask that person if they want you to forward them the messages. That person will almost surely say absolutely not, but it’s worth checking if you’re not sure.

4. Can my resume include programs that I did as a teenager?

I graduated from college five years ago and been working with the same company ever since. I’m ready to move on and I need to tweak my resume.

When I was a teenager (ages 13-17), I was a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol (auxiliary of the air force), where we learned aerospace education as well as leadership. I also attended boat camp from age 12-14, where we made canoes from scratch.

I’ve left these programs out of my resume for years. In looking at my resume, I felt like I didn’t have much experience since I’ve been with the same company. I wanted to know how I could incorporate these programs into my resume or if it isn’t necessary?

You really can’t include anything from before college, unless it was truly extraordinary — like you started a successful company or something like that. So no, but those programs both sound really cool.

5. Listing contract, temp, and freelance work as “Your Name Consulting”

Yesterday I read an article on how to present contract, temp, and freelance work on your resume. The article stated to describe it as “your consulting firm,” like “Jane Doe Consulting.” The article went on to explain how/why this way looks better than listing your freelance or temp work. I thought this was great advice! (I’ve been with a temp company just over a year, and I’ve worked in the past as an independent contractor.) But I’m no expert. What are your thoughts? Are there any pitfalls to this?

If you’re truly doing consulting, it’s reasonable to call it Your Name Consulting. But if you’re doing temp work, that’s not really consulting; it’s temp work. You can, however, group temp work all under one heading so that it’s not a zillion different job listings.

As for whether it helps to do it, not really. It’s a common thing for people to do when they’ve been working for themselves, but it doesn’t really help or hurt. It doesn’t read all that differently than if they’d simply labeled that section Freelance Consulting Work or something like that. What a good hiring manager cares about is the work you did, not how you label it.

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

1. Should I warn my staff about a medication’s mood-altering side effects?

I manage a small department of 3, all of whom work very well together and with me. Whenever I’m in a cranky mood or just stressed out, I do my best to keep it off my staff. Methods usually include shutting my door, asking for particular topics to be discussed at a later time whenever it’s feasible, etc. I recognize that my moods impact my staff.

I am on an anti-depressant for anxiety, and my doctor recently upped my dosage. I am encountering a new side effect where my emotions are more intense. Whether it’s happy, sad, angry, excited, etc (but not to the point where I’m flying into a rage, thank goodness) The meds are doing their job, i.e. I am not an anxious mess, so I am hesitant to come off the drug because of this new side effect.

Is this something I could discreetly let my staff know? I work very closely with them, so it’s not as if I only check in a couple times a week so it wouldn’t matter. I try to be very cognizant of TMI and where to draw the line. This sprung to mind after last week where my reaction to something unpleasant was more intense than usual. I apologized to the employee later, as I could tell he was slightly startled. Or would it be better to just apologize in the moment as I done last week?

I’m slightly torn on this. I do think that it’s TMI to share that with your staff, and ultimately it’s on you to find a way to respond appropriately to staff members regardless; you really have to do that as a manager, and can’t resign yourself to not being able to. But on the other hand, if I were your employee, I might rather know what was up than assume that you were increasingly frustrated with me. I could also see feeling uncomfortable once I knew though.

But ultimately (that bit of wishy-washiness aside), I don’t think the solution here is tell/don’t tell; rather, I think you’ve got to find a way to interact with your staff reasonably calmly. You’re in a position of power over them and your moods will have more impact on them than if you weren’t, and so there’s a greater responsibility to manage those moods than there might otherwise be. That probably means that you do need to try talking to your doctor about the side effects you’re experiencing, because you’re in a role where it could have a real impact.

Read an update to this letter here.

2. Should I get paid for freelance work that wasn’t completed?

Recently I was contacted by a new client (through an online tutor-student broker company that I’ve worked with for several years) who wanted me to deliver PowerPoint training for several people in his company. We had a couple of conference calls with another person at his firm to talk about the details of the training, and I had started working on the content. I spent about 5-6 hours on the project so far. They seemed very happy with my plan for the training, and it was scheduled for a couple of weeks from now. I got an email a few days ago saying that someone in their office is going to train their people on PowerPoint, but they want me to teach an Excel class for them in a couple of months.

Should I ask them to pay for the time I already spent on the PowerPoint project? On the one hand, I don’t like not being paid for my work, but on the other hand, there was no agreement that they would pay for my time whether or not the training went ahead. Also, I want to do more work for them in the future. I’m also wondering if I should let future clients know that there’s a cancellation fee if a project is started but not completed.

Yes, absolutely. You started work on the project after they gave you the go-ahead, and they should pay you for that time. You weren’t putting in that time out of the goodness of your heart; you were doing it because they hired you to do it.

Ideally as soon as they canceled the project, you would have said something like, “I had done X hours of work on this so far so I’ll submit an invoice for that and won’t do any further work on it.” (You can still say that now, of course.) Also, yes, it’s a good idea to note in your contracts that you’ll still bill for your time if a project is canceled before completion.

This is totally normal and standard, by the way, so you shouldn’t worry that it will get in the way of getting future work from them. I mean, that’s always possible, but it would be incredibly odd for them to balk at this; a good client isn’t going to do that.

3. How to explain I got fired for refusing to do something unethical

I got fired today for what is a kind of dumb reason (refusing to do something that I found to be unethical). My boss asked me to add the email addresses of people contacted by cold calling to email lists without having them consent first. I explained to him why this was a bad idea, but he ignored my reasons and insisted that I do so. I set up an email autoresponder to gain that consent and to explain the expectations of what we’d be sending people, and when asked about it, I said that I did so. And thus got fired for “insubordination.”

When applying for new employment, what’s a good way to say, “I got fired because I worked for a crazy person who assumed I was an idiot, and when he demanded that I do something unethical, I did not do it”? I know this isn’t on the order of “creative accounting” or any other blantantly illegal practices. It’s kind of small potatoes and I was definitely wrong. But I will say that he’s also a terrible boss who manages through fear and paranoia, and might be clinically insane. I want a good way to not necessarily absolve myself of blame, but to point out that I was in a bad situation and that this guy is nuts. There may not be a good way to do that.

I’d frame it this way: “My boss wanted to ignore the anti-spam emailing laws and fired me after I attempted to get people’s consent before adding them to our email list.” That’s honest and concise and doesn’t get into whether or not your boss is crazy or a terrible manager, all of which are too subjective when talking to a stranger who will be acutely aware that they don’t know the other side of the story. Short, professional, and factual is what you want here.

4. Checking about pre-scheduled vacation time when applying internally

There is a job posting for a position that is almost in complete alignment with my interests and skills in another part of my organization. I asked to be put on a specific project so I could work with this subject. The project culminates in July (my part will have been complete for a while at this point), and it would be a busy time for the people in the other department. The problem is that I have scheduled a vacation for the month of July. My family is going to Europe, and the tickets are purchased. Because this is within the same company, I would still have the vacation accrued, so that isn’t an issue. Would it be out of line to reach out to the hiring manager before I even apply to see if this would be a deal breaker?

No, but it’s probably unnecessary. Apply, see if you get interviewed, and if things progress beyond that, you can raise it then.

5. Am I being overly neurotic in waiting to tell people about my new job?

I have a written offer letter for my new role with all the details, have confirmed my start date, and they have confirmed that my references are in order. I have given notice at my current job, but have been waiting to tell people (my colleagues, other industry contacts) until I have an actual written contract in my hands. Am I being overly neurotic? My new job says they might not be able to get me a contract for a couple of weeks (I don’t start for 8 weeks) and it’s getting weird that I’ve resigned but haven’t told anyone.

What’s your guidance? Should I stop worrying and just tell people already?

I don’t think it’s crazy to wait until you have the written contract, if you’re more comfortable with that. If anyone asks you later why you didn’t tell them sooner, you can always just explain you were waiting for the contract to be finalized.