Ask a Manager

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

1. I found an ad for my own job

I’m supposed to have a team of four, but one of my employees transferred to another team/office three months ago. I put in a job requisition request for his replacement right away but have had no movement on this front. My team is struggling to meet all of our deadlines and doing a decent amount of overtime, but we’re making it work. I’m getting frustrated that HR has not forwarded me any resumes or set up any interviews for me. I checked our online careers page to see if the job was listed and it is, and I also happened to see that my job is listed too! (At least I’m 95% sure it’s mine because there are particular terms that only relate to my department.)

We just had our annual reviews in July and I was given a great review and a small but better than average merit increase (average was 3% and I got 3.5%). My direct supervisor also told me that I received the largest bonus out of everyone in my practice area (which is about 80 people). I met all of my bonus metrics goals, plus I received a large discretionary bonus, for a total of almost 9.5% annual bonus based on my income.

If they are unhappy with my performance and looking to replace me, why would they give me such a large bonus and praise me during my recent annual review? Why else would they put my job online unless they are looking to replace me? What should I do now?

Ask your boss about this, right now. While employers do sometimes seek to replace someone who doesn’t know it yet (although it’s generally a pretty crappy thing to do), they generally don’t do it by openly advertising the role on the company jobs page. It’s much more likely that this is a different role, or that it was posted by mistake, or some other explanation.But rather than wonder and stress about it, go talk to your boss. Say something like this: “I was just looking on our jobs page to see if the X role is listed yet and I saw a position that looks like it could be mine.”

It’s highly likely that your boss’s response will set you at ease.

That said, I’m being given a tiny amount of pause by the fact that HR hasn’t sent you any resumes for the job you’re hiring for. If they were planning to replace you, they might cut you out of the loop on hiring for that role, or even put it on hold until your replacement is hired. But there are also lots of other explanations for this (including just having a kind of lame HR department, the same kind that would accidentally post a role that sounds so much like yours). But there’s no point in speculating when you can just go ask your boss what’s up.

Read an update to this letter here.

2. My manager tells us to bill the company for hours we didn’t work

My manager has employees record extra hours, and I’d like to know what the possible repercussions to the employees could be.

I work part-time, as does every other member of our department, with the exception of management. To help out the employees, our manager has established the following pay scale:
Task A = 4 hours
Task B = 6 hours
Task C = 8 hours

If we work in excess of the hours assigned to each task, we record the full amount of hours we actually worked. But if we work less, we get a freebie, since we’re told to record the additional time. My manager says that this is to compensate for low hourly wages and vastly varying workloads, and to make everything stay under the radar–if everyone gets the benefit, no one will rat him out. What are the repercussions for the employees for doing this, if any should questions arise from upper management?

Well, you could all get fired. But it’s more likely that your manager would be the one who gets booted. He’s basically defrauding the company, unless he’s doing this with the knowledge and approval of the company’s management (which it sounds like he’s not, given your reference about him doing it for everyone so that no one will report it). And telling you to report extra hours “to compensate for low hourly wages” is pretty outrageous — the company sets the pay scale and if he takes issue with it, he should advocate for higher wages, not enlist you all in fraud.

At a minimum, I’d keep very careful documentation of his instructions to you on this, so that if/when it’s uncovered, you can show that you were following his instructions. But ideally you’d also speak up about it — either to him (if there’s a chance that the company does know, since he could clarify that for you) or to someone above him.

3. How can I ask for regular one-on-one meetings with my manager?

I work for small organization. I sometimes feel disconnected from the rest of the office. My boss and I usually exchange greetings when/if we see each other in the common areas, but some days I don’t see her at all. We rarely discuss what I’m doing unless I’m in her office to ask her a specific question, and she asks, “how are things?” I understand that she’s a busy person and she doesn’t have time to chase me down, and that I need to go to her if I need anything. So I think I want to set up some sort of weekly short one-on-one meetings with her where I could give her a lowdown of what’s going on, ask her questions, ask her if she needs me on any other projects, and also where she can give me a lowdown on things on her end that she feels I should know, but how do I politely bring this up? It was brought up as a good idea at one point a while ago, but it hasn’t been mentioned since. Could I approach her office and ask in person? Or should I send her an email to preface it?

This is a totally reasonable thing to ask for, and even more so since it’s actually been suggested in the past! Asking in person or via email is fine. I’d say something like this: “Would it be possible to start scheduling short weekly check-ins with you? I’m realizing that I don’t have a great mechanism for updating you on my work, getting your input on things, and making sure I’m in the loop on anything you need from me, and I’d love to get short weekly meetings on your calendar (or even every other week if that’s easier on your schedule).”

4. I’m going to start telecommuting, but my employer wants to change me to a contractor

My husband recently received a once-in-a-lifetime job offer that requires relocation. My employer – a nonprofit organization – is allowing me to work remotely, but they want to change my status from a full-time employee to a full-time contractor. The expectations communicated to me so far would be that I’m available during business hours and that my job would not change, except for my location. The only reason I received from my employer about why my status would change is a fuzzy answer about liability of some kind (something about insurance the employer would need to carry for having employees in another state). My organization is about 70 people, and I would be the only full-time remote employee.

As I think about this, and as I’ve learned more about the distinctions between contractors and employees, I feel pretty strongly that what I would expected to do would be in the realm of an employee. Obviously, the change has a lot of implications for me personally (taxes, benefits, etc.). I’d like to go back to my employer and discuss keeping me on as full-time remote employee, as I think their expectations of me are going to be more in line with that of an employee.

Do you have any advice on how I might handle this, or what the merits of being a contractor v. employee might be (particularly from an employer standpoint)? I know lots of people work remotely as employees (instead of contractors), so I’m trying to understand my footing of how I might approach my employer on this matter.

It’s true that having an employee based in another state will sometimes require your employer to get additional workers compensation insurance (even if you’re working from your own home), which they might not consider cheap. But it’s also true that your employer can’t just decide to treat you as an independent contractor because it will be more convenient to them; whether or not you qualify to be treated as a contractor is a matter of law, not of preference. It’s possible that your role could meet that test with a few minor changes, but they shouldn’t take it as a given.

And yes, there are disadvantages to you in that arrangement: You’ll presumably lose your paid time off, health insurance, retirement contributions, and other benefits, and you’ll be responsible for paying self-employment tax, which is about 12% of your income (although that can also be offset by your ability to deduct more business expenses). That said, if you’re the one pushing to work remotely, you might decide that those trade-offs are worth it to you. But go into it with your eyes open.

5. Following up on networking emails when you haven’t received a reply

My question is about networking. After you reach out to a new person you want to connect with professionally and they don’t respond, is it appropriate to follow up in two weeks to see if they would be interested in connecting or is that just pushy and annoying? And what’s the most appropriate way to frame that email?

I just moved to a new city and have been emailing a lot of professionals who work in the area I’m interested in (nonprofit and government work). Most of the emails I send are because another connection of mine recommended I get in touch with that person. Thus I start off all my emails with some sort of line like “X recently suggested I reach out to you,” and then give a brief explanation of who I am and why I want to connect with them. I have a very high response rate to these emails (maybe 1 out of every 10 or 15 people I reach out to do not reply) so I don’t think the problem is that I’m sending a lame networking request.

However, the people who haven’t replied are some of the people I am most interested in connecting with. I really want to send a follow-up email to those people, but I don’t want them to label me as that annoying person who keeps harassing them. I was thinking that maybe I should contact the person who originally recommended I reach out to the non-responders, but I also don’t want to harass that group of people since they are also new connections and I don’t want to appear like I can’t even email someone without help. Please advise on what the best way to handle this situation would be.

It might not be a coincidence that the people you’ most want to connect with are the ones who haven’t replied. The people who others are most interested in connecting with are often the people who are especially busy and who field a lot of these requests. That means that you might need to resign yourself to simply not getting a response from them. There’s nothing wrong with one polite follow-up after a few weeks have gone by (so a total of two emails to them) — but after that I’d move on.

And I wouldn’t try enlisting the original referrer for help — that’s too much like saying “can you please nag this person who has already had a clear opportunity to respond to me but who has chosen not to,” and that’s way too big of an ask for anyone who you don’t know extremely well and where the stakes aren’t more urgent than just wanting to make additional contacts.

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

1. Can I suggest a candidate to replace my low-performing boss?

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed that I rarely see my boss performing or producing much of anything. As his employee, I was assuming (and hoping) there was a lot going on at a higher level that I was not privy to that was consuming his time. However, last week, while I was working late and he had already left for the day, his boss came into my office and vented about how poorly he is performing, and how frustrated she is with his work. While it was inappropriate, it made me feel better, because it validated my feelings. She later apologized profusely for speaking about it to me.

I like my boss personally, and he’s been very easy-to-work-for, so I do not want him to leave and be replaced with someone I do not enjoy working for. But I also happen to have a former colleague who might be looking for a new position, and who I know could do the job at a much more efficient level. I would like to suggest this person have coffee with our director, but I don’t want to cross over a boundary or imply that I think my boss should be fired. Is this inappropriate? Is there a way to do this without seeming presumptuous? (We are too small to have an HR office that I could submit a resume to, so it would have to go directly to the director.)

Normally there would be zero way to do this; the position isn’t open, and you’d essentially be saying, “Hey, fire my boss and replace him with someone I like better.” But in this situation, your boss’s boss opened the door to the conversation by complaining to you about how bad his performance is. Given that, you could potentially pull off saying something like, “I feel really awkward about saying this, but in light of our conversation the other day, I know someone with an amazing background in X who’s actually looking for a new role — is there any scenario where it’s not horribly presumptuous for me to put you in touch with her? If I’m being wildly premature in mentioning this, I’ll forget we ever had that conversation, but I wanted to throw it out there.”

This is only workable if you have a pretty good rapport with her, but I’m taking the fact that she vented to you as evidence that you do.

Also, in doing this, you want your own mental framework to be that talking to others who can do this work well might help your boss’s boss realize that the organization can do so much better, not that she will hire the specific person you suggest– since if she’s going to replace your boss, she should go through a full hiring process and talk to a number of candidates. But sometimes talking to one great person can help push a manager to realize that it’s time to search for a replacement.

2. How can I find out a prospective employer’s policy on fragrances and toxic cleaning products?

At my current office job, I am forced to sit in a cloud of air fresheners, cleaning products, and perfume, all of which bother me intensely, aggravate my allergies, and lower my morale. I’ve tried asking the people who sit near my cubicle not to use air fresheners, but one of them refused, and honestly the problem is so pervasive that we would need an across-the-board policy to make a difference. In this big bureaucracy, it’s a lost cause.

My question is, when I search for my NEXT job (which will be soon), how can I ensure that I work at an organization that cares about indoor air quality and puts restrictions on air freshener use? This is extremely important to me – I do not want my health to be compromised by my workplace. I simply can’t sit in an office where air fresheners are constantly being sprayed or where my desk is doused in toxic cleaning products. Do I bring this up at the offer stage? How can I suss out an organization’s culture when it comes to air quality, chemicals, and employee health? To me it’s a no-brainer that toxic aerosols should not be sprayed in an office, but most people don’t seem to notice or care.

You could certainly raise it at the offer stage, like you would any other health-related accommodation that you wanted to inquire about, saying something like, “I’ve found that air fresheners and some cleaning products (although be more specific here about what types of cleaning products) aggravate my allergies. I know many organizations are taking measures to minimize the use of those. Any chance you could tell me about the working environment in that regard?”

However, only a minority of employers have taken this issue on in any meaningful way, and so I think you’re unlikely to find many with a satisfying answer. That means that you might need to look into whether your symptoms are severe enough that you’d be covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act; if they are, that opens up new avenues for addressing this.

3. Applying for jobs right before going on a three-week vacation overseas

In the last week, three jobs that really excited me were posted – I’m dying to apply. I live in a small city where jobs in my field aren’t that frequent so I don’t want to pass on them. But I have a three-week overseas holiday coming up that begins three days after the closing date for all three applications. I don’t want to put something in my cover letter that immediately puts me in the do-not-interview pile, but I don’t want people to call me to arrange an interview and get a sorry-I’m-overseas-try-emailing-me voicemail, which seems both a shabby thing to do to HR and likely to look bad or thoughtless. Is there a non-off-putting way to phrase this in a cover letter?

I know (having perused similar in your archives) that by not cancelling the trip I’m showing where my priorities are, but it’s a big financial investment for me and I’ve saved up a lot of leave for it. So I guess it is my priority, I just want to mitigate its effects as much as possible!

I don’t think it’s so much about “showing where your priorities are” — it would be crazy to cancel a trip just because you might get called for an interview while you’re away. You should proceed with your plans, and no one should find that odd. But yes, it might end up being the case that you’re away during the period when they’re conducting interviews. If it’s a hard-to-fill job or you’re an especially ideal candidate, they might be perfectly willing to wait for you to get back, but you risk that they’ll move forward while you’re away. There’s not really anything you can do about that though; you certainly shouldn’t alter your plans, particularly since you don’t know if they’ll invite you to interview anyway, or whether they’ll even be scheduling the interviews for before you’re back.

It does make sense to include a note at the end of your cover letter saying something like, “While I’ll be traveling overseas from DATE to DATE, I’ll be checking email regularly and would love to set up a time to speak for any time after DATE.” You should also make sure that your voicemail is clear about the situation, and that you do check email while you’re away (ideally at least every few days if you want to be able to respond to an employer quickly).

4. I don’t find out my schedule until the night before I’m supposed to work

I just got a new job. We have one supervisor who is scheduling the whole animal hospital (boarding, reception, technicians, doctors, retail, etc.) — at least 40 employees. I usually don’t even find out my Sunday-Saturday schedule until Saturday before the Sunday of the coming work week (for example, I found out mid-day on 9/1 what my schedule is for 9/2-9/9). This makes it hard to plan any kind of doctor visits, plans or any errands I need to do. I’m used to knowing my schedule for the next two weeks. The past two days, my supervisor has texted/called employees at almost 11 pm telling then what time they work the next day.

I feel like this isn’t right, especially if I don’t know what time I should be in bed or am not able to plan my day because I’m not sure if I work the next day or what time I work until it’s almost midnight. I don’t know what to do or say. I don’t think it’s fair but I can’t seem to see any laws against it.

Yeah, it’s not illegal, just really, really bad practice for the reasons you mention. All you can really do is point out the difficulties it causes and ask if there are alternatives. For instance: “Jane, is there any chance of getting our schedules a few days earlier? When I don’t hear until midnight before a day I might need to work, it makes it really hard to plan.” You could also talk to your coworkers about speaking up as a group; presumably everyone else is frustrated by it too, and speaking up as a group can sometimes carry more weight.

If that fails, you should at least be able to fight back on the midnight thing — as in, “I need to know no later than X if I’m scheduled to work the next day. I’m often asleep by the time you send the schedule.”

5. When should I mention my visa status?

I’m a Canadian citizen in the U.S. on a employer-specific work visa. I’m looking to change jobs but stay in the U.S., and am worried about how to disclose that to prospective employers. At what point in the process should I disclose my visa status? And in what form? I don’t want to be deceitful, but I also don’t want to be dismissed before they have a chance to look at my qualifications. I’ve heard the advice of putting it on my resume at the top as “Current U.S. Visa status: would need sponsorship” but that feels quite brusque. For context, I’m planning on applying to large organizations that I know have some level of sponsorship program.

Yep, you should put it on your resume. If an employer is set up to do the work of sponsoring you, it’ll seem normal to them to see it there, and if they’re not, it’s useful (and considerate) to alert them to your status ahead of time so that they don’t start the ball rolling with you only to find that it’s an obstacle.