Ask a Manager

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

1. Survey asked how my boss communicates about her mental health

My supervisor at work is participating in a company-run training program aimed at helping managers improve their management skills. As one of her direct reports, I’ve been invited to take an (anonymous) survey to provide feedback on her managing style. I get along with her and generally think she’s a good supervisor, so I figured it’d be an easy survey — but then I came to the question where I was told to rate how well she “communicates about her own mental health and wellness in an authentic way.”

This is weird, right? I’m not totally off-base on this? We have a good relationship and chat about things in our lives, but I wouldn’t want to share details of my mental health with my supervisor, and would probably be pretty uncomfortable if she started sharing hers with me. It feels more like it would foster bad boundaries than a professional relationship. But how do I respond to a survey where it seems clear that that’s an important metric to evaluate her performance? I do think she’s a good supervisor and want to reflect that — and I also don’t want her to be told she has to talk more about her mental health because I don’t want that to become a part of our meetings. Do I give a middle of the road response? A “not applicable”? Should I mention in the free response section that I don’t think it should be part of the survey?

Yes, that’s a weird and inappropriate question. I would either give her the highest rating (because for you, the way she is handling the topic is working well) or a N/A. And then yes, explain in the free response section that you believe everyone deserves privacy around their health at work and appreciate your manager for respecting appropriate boundaries.

Unfortunately, employers keep going off the rails with this. Yes, it is healthy to acknowledge that we’re humans with a range of emotions, and it is good to destigmatize mental health issues. But expecting managers to communicate about their personal mental health is invasive and inappropriate, and many people really don’t want to be on the receiving end of those communications. Employers who want to promote mental health have lots of non-invasive ways they can do that: offering good mental health coverage as part of their insurance plans, being flexible with time off, building awareness of what types of accommodations are available, offering strong employee assistance programs, and being thoughtful about much stress employees are expected to take on. But that takes real resources, whereas a survey question like this doesn’t.

Related:
forcing employees to talk about their feelings isn’t good for our mental health

2. Can I wear a brace to avoid handshakes?

In a few weeks, I’ll be attending an in-person meeting with my company’s founder and former CEO. I’ve met him twice before and both times, he’s shaken my hand so hard that it hurts. The second time it reactivated a minor hand injury I was dealing with, which had been from another handshake a few weeks prior. (As an aside, why do people ever shake someone’s hand that hard?)

He’s a nice guy, and I’m a woman, and I don’t get the vibe that it’s a power play. It just feels like the legacy of the “firm handshake” advice and a dude not knowing his own strength. I don’t feel like I have the standing to pull the founder aside and ask him not to shake my hand so hard. Plus, he hasn’t remembered me twice, and I’m very low-level at the company — I’m pretty sure he’ll want to re-meet me and shake my hand immediately, before any aside-pulling can happen. But when I was dealing with my handshake injury before, people reacted weirdly to me not shaking their hand when they went offered it. I got puzzled looks, and people weren’t sure what to do with their outstretched hand. Can I wear a hand brace to make it more visible why I might not be shaking? And what’s a good alternative gesture to do when people try to shake my hand?

You can indeed wear a hand brace if you want to! But it’s also fine to just say, “I’d shake your hand but I’m recovering from a hand injury.” If people look a little puzzled, it’s probably not because they think you’re breaking the social contract in some way; it’s likely just their faces processing “oops, I’ve got my hand out and now need to retract it.”

You’re fine! People have hand injuries. Or they’re sick and doing everyone a favor by not shaking hands. It’s not a big deal as long as you’re matter-of-fact about it and make a point of being otherwise reasonably warm.

Related:
chill out with the bone-crushing handshakes

3. I end up doing more work than my less organized coworker

I work in a team of four. My workmate Lucy and I are both part-time, have the same job description, and are paid the same; the other two are full-time and do different jobs.

Our manager, Sarah, often allocates work to me and Lucy without specifying who will do what, e.g., “can the llama groomers pick this up?”

Lucy is a great person and we’re friends outside of work. However, she really struggles with organizational skills (she has ADHD and is very open about it) and I have strong organizational skills. So in practice, when something is assigned to the two of us, I usually end up making it happen. I’ll often ask Lucy to contribute to it in specific ways (“can you order more llama shampoo before Friday?”), but even then I usually have to remind her, sometimes several times. On occasion I’ve just done her part myself (checking with her if that’s okay) because it’s less stressful that way and means the job will happen on time.

I find myself getting resentful of the situation. I’m paid the same as Lucy but organize much of our work. Sometimes I feel like I’m her de facto manager, but I’m not her manager and I’m not paid to be her manager. Meanwhile, our actual manager is quite hands-off once she’s assigned a job to us (I’m sure she’s aware that so much of it ends up falling to me, but this is never explicitly acknowledged). I think I’m taking on too much responsibility for things, both in terms of work and emotionally. How can I change this?

Is the work usually something where an entire assignment can be handled by one of you rather than each person taking different parts of it? If so, it would be a lot easier for the two of you to switch off who takes the full assignments, rather than splitting them into multiple tasks (which you then end up organizing). Ideally when new tasks come in, you’d be able to reply, “I’ll take this one” or “Lucy will take this one” and then wash your hands of the latter entirely. (Even more ideally, Lucy would be speaking up and say “I’ll take this one” half the time, and you can ask her to do that — but if realistically that won’t happen, ask her if you can coordinate this type of system so it’s clear who’s taking what.)

If that doesn’t work, you should talk to Sarah and ask her to assign projects to one or the other of you but not both. Explain that under the current system, you end up feeling responsible for all the work rather than only your share of it.

If that doesn’t work, make the case that you should be paid for the role you’re playing in managing the work (and ideally given a title that recognizes that too).

4. My coworkers want me to tell them why a colleague was fired

I work in the financial services industry, which is highly regulated by multiple self-regulatory and government bodies.

Recently, a senior teammate was let go for gross misconduct with regard to compliance with regulations, in part because I had to report them. I feel terrible because I don’t want anyone to lose their job, but I am legally required to report the misconduct or I could also be fired plus face criminal and civil penalties, including being barred from the industry.

I’m now responsible for telling clients that this person is no longer with the company (without any details, obviously). That’s tough but manageable, and I’m able to navigate that with minimal management-level interaction, save the occasional client that needs a call from my grandboss, who is expecting and willing to take on those difficult clients as part of the transition process as we replace the former coworker.

The problem I’m facing is that coworkers on other teams are … perhaps too curious and, in some cases, active shit-disturbers, and have attempted to corner me into telling them in detail what happened. I cannot, and would not, tell them any details, and have directed them back to management with any questions they may have. Most have taken the hint but several (more than six) have not and have been calling, emailing, sending IM messages, etc., even calling my personal cell phone after hours to ask invasive and inappropriate questions.

I let my manager know about this and they are taking it seriously. However, it’s only been a week but the questions haven’t stopped and I received a text message on my personal phone at midnight on Saturday asking me for “the hot goss.” Should I also go to HR about this, as well? I’m not responding to these messages at all on my personal devices, and I’m continuing to redirect to management for questions, but what in the world?! Any advice is appreciated.

You don’t need to go to HR, unless you want more back-up. You could! It wouldn’t be weird to. But it would also be fine to ignore the messages that people shouldn’t be sending in the first place, or to respond with, “I’m not allowed to discuss it and you’re putting me in a difficult position by continuing to ask. Please stop.”

5. Candidates say I didn’t call for our schedule phone interview, but I did

I am at my wits’ end. Some of the recruiting I do is high volume. Lately, I have been experiencing an increase in candidates claiming that I did not call them for our scheduled phone interview. When I call, if it goes to voicemail I always leave a message. In the past week or two, I have had several candidates state they did not receive a call or voicemail. I feel like it is an argument. How do I handle this? Sometimes it is the second call I’ve made after we rescheduled and they still do not answer.

First, when multiple people are telling you that an odd technical thing is happening, especially in a short amount of time, it’s always smart to confirm that there’s not actually a problem on your end (including checking your call history for the possibility that you’ve called the wrong person, especially since you’re dealing with lots of calls). But assuming you check and it’s definitely not you, you don’t need to argue with people. You can say, “I’m sorry to hear that! I did log a call to you at 4:30 pm yesterday, but voicemail can be strange. In any case…” What comes next is up to you. If you’re still willing to interview them, suggest a time to reschedule for. If you’ve moved on (or if they’re handling the call in an unprofessional way that leaves you uninterested in rescheduling), you can say, “We’re no longer interviewing for that role, but I’ll reach out if that changes.”

Also, when you confirm a phone interview time, you could include language like: “If you haven’t heard from me by five minutes past the scheduled time, please call me directly at (number).” Or you can ask that they email you, or so forth — just something that lets them know how to handle it if they don’t hear from you when they expect to. That will put a rest to the debate about whether you called or not, since it will move the ball into their court with a clear action and timeline for them to take that action. And if they’re just forgetting about the call, that will make it clear. That might be more complicated than you want or need; if so, just stick with the advice in the first paragraph and ignore this one.

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

1. Is the term “junior” derogatory?

I recently had a minor dust-up at work that surprised me. I had a contract service scheduled to happen on-site at a vendor. Two of my coworkers expressed interest in attending in person with me to learn how it is done. These two coworkers are relatively new grads, about 10 years less experienced than me, and have job titles below mine, though I don’t supervise them. I sent a note to the vendor requesting permission for them to attend and in doing so referred to the two coworkers as “junior colleagues” of mine.

The coworkers were hurt. One brought it up to me.

I apologized for any hurt feelings and explained, sincerely, that I didn’t have or intend any negative associations with the word “junior.” I had used the word because I needed the vendor to be prepared for inexperienced people on the job site (they need physical monitoring). I also wanted the vendor to be prepared to answer more than the usual number of questions, and though I doubted they’d refuse the visitors, I wanted to give them a polite out if they didn’t want this particular job to be used as a learning opportunity. I also needed the vendor to understand that I still was the point of contact on the project and to some degree (by virtue of being there) was responsible for the conduct of my colleagues in a sensitive location not accessible to the public. I wasn’t just mentioning rank for funsies; it was relevant.

I spent a long time in academia, and there “junior” and “senior” were very normal words to describe grad students, postdocs, researchers, fellows, etc., of varying levels of experience. Usually, you literally were just referring to how long that person had been there. It was also very common for informal mentoring and teaching relationships to exist between “junior” and “senior” people within a level; I guess I thought that was part of what was being asked of me in having these coworkers attend this service site with me.

I certainly won’t use the word again now that I know these coworkers have a sore spot with it. Is this just them, or does this term have a broader connotation I’m not aware of? Is there a better way I could phrase things when I need to communicate a difference in seniority—oops!—I mean, in title, level of responsibility within the organization, or experience?

It’s completely normal to use terms like “junior” and “senior” in a work context! Sometimes it refers to how long someone has been there (particularly with “senior”) but more often it’s a reflection of the level of the position and responsibility the person holds or their amount of experience in the field overall. Sometimes, too, it’s a description of relationships relative to each other; you could be senior to me/my position but still junior to your boss.

Assuming “relatively new grads” means your colleagues graduated a year or two ago, they are junior; you’re not required to pretend that they’re not, and you had relevant reasons for mentioning it. (And in some fields they’d be considered junior far longer than that; it’s pretty field-dependent.)

If they weren’t actually junior, it would be understandable for them to feel like you minimized their expertise and competence, but that doesn’t sound like the case. You used a normal term in a normal way.

Related:
my coworkers say I should hold back because I’m early-career … but am I?

2. All-female staff at women’s health offices

I was recently at a gynecologist appointment, and noticed yet again that all of the staff who work there are women. This has been the case at several different OB-GYN offices I’ve been to, as well as at the women’s center where I’ve had my mammograms done.

While male OB-GYNs do exist, there haven’t been any at any of the practices I’ve been a patient at. But even beyond the doctors themselves, all nurses, medical assistants, ultrasound techs, phlebotomists, and even the receptionists have all been women. I know why they do this — many women don’t want men in the room during a pelvic exam or a mammogram. But how can they legally get away with only hiring women? Especially for non-clinical roles? I doubt the law prohibiting hiring discrimination based on sex has an exception for female-target health care. Is it really that men just tend not to apply at gyn offices?

The law prohibiting gender discrimination includes an exception for what’s called “bona fide occupational qualifications,” which allows employers to make a job single-sex-only if it’s truly necessary to the work. The law recognizes this exception in three circumstances: privacy (for example, you can preference women when hiring a women’s locker room attendant), “authenticity in the arts” (like in casting for movies or TV), and when the qualification “relates to the normal operation or essence of the business” (like the mandatory retirement age for pilots for safety reasons).

However, customer preference for men or women in a particular role doesn’t normally qualify.

I suspect what you’re seeing is largely self-selecting — for example, men tend not to go into mammography at all, and I suspect they apply for other jobs at women’s health centers in lower numbers too — but it’s probably mixed in with at least a bit of the people who are hiring giving preference to female candidates and no one having challenged that.

3. Can I address my struggling employee’s use of PTO?

My office has a generous time-off benefit, with about five weeks of vacation and 2.5 weeks of sick time, plus all the usual holidays and a two-week winter closure (paid). Most people end up needing to take 1-2 days a month just to stay under the vacation cap, but I have one employee who has the opposite problem and often uses up his accruals immediately. He takes many vacations each year, and needs additional time off for external commitments. This means he usually hovers around a balance of 2-3 days banked (compared to most other people who have 15-20 days available at any given time).

I’ve always believed that a person’s PTO is a compensation benefit and wouldn’t make anyone feel guilty for taking the time they are owed. But lately this person’s performance is starting to dip, and a few balls are being dropped because he’s overwhelmed. Would it be reasonable as a manager to say that he may have an easier time staying on top of things if he was around more often? It feels unfair that I may need to adjust projects and reassign work to others in the office to make up for his extensive travel schedule.

Yes, it’s reasonable to say, “The expectation is that you’ll manage your time off in a way that ensures balls aren’t dropped and doesn’t require others to regularly cover for you.” It’s also reasonable to point out that an especially demanding period isn’t the right time for optional time-off (that’s why some teams have vacation black-out dates or all-hands-on-deck periods) or to say, “I can’t approve a week off next month because it’s right before the major event you’re responsible for / you just came back from a week off and you have an accumulating backlog that needs to be processed by October 1 / or so forth.”

It wouldn’t be reasonable to say either of these things if they meant a responsible person would have a tough time ever taking vacation; if the guy’s workload is such that he’s never going to get time off without you adjusting projects and reassigning work, then adjusting projects and reassigning work is what you do … but otherwise, yeah, you can say this. But look at his workload first to make sure.

It’s also pretty common for companies not to permit unpaid time off at all, or to put limits on it. If you offer 7.5 weeks off per year, you presumably hired assuming the position would be staffed 44.5 weeks a year and it’s reasonable to require that (with flexibility for extenuating circumstances). So you might take a look at how the additional unpaid time off is playing into this.

Note: I’m assuming you know these are actual vacations and he’s not using the time off for medical reasons, which would be a different thing.

4. Stuck in the middle of a conflict with my employee and my manager

One of my staff members and my direct supervisor recently had a bad interaction on the public floor (both seem to be at fault). Both reached out to me after the incident. My supervisor asked me to bring my staff member in to have a meeting with the three of us. Is this appropriate?

It’s not inappropriate. But if at all possible, you should talk to them each individually beforehand and hear about what happened from their perspectives, plus find out what your manager’s goals are for the meeting so that you’re not walking in unprepared. Your manager should be willing to to prep you for what the point of the meeting is and, since you manage the staff member, should be open to hearing your input on the best way to handle it.

Ideally, if they were really both at fault, your role would be something like a translator — “Jane’s concerns were X, which is why she said Y / Rupert was coming from a place of concern about Z / here’s my take on how we can move forward.” But that won’t work in every situation; it depends on exactly what happened.

5. Still no photos on resumes?

I was wondering if your “no photos on resumes” (in the U.S.) ruling has changed at all since 2012? I’m curious because my friend asked me to review her resume, which she had created with a snazzy online tool. It looked nice, but it had a spot for a photo, which I always thought was a no-no. Have norms on this changed since most people have photos on LinkedIn or other easily-findable places?

Nope, it’s still the rule. Photos do not belong on resumes.

What’s happened, though, is that there are a number of truly terrible resume templates online  created by people who know a lot about design and absolutely nothing about resumes, and so you end up with awful templates that don’t suit their purpose at all. (See not only photos, but also templates with hardly any room for the stuff employers care about most, like job history and accomplishments.)

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

1. Our communal music is too repetitive

I work in a creative department at a fairly conservative company and am in the office four days each week. My coworkers and I share an enclosed space with individual cubicles. Much of my job involves writing. Though I can often write without “locking in,” “getting in the zone,” etc., sometimes I do really need to focus with minimal distraction.

Recently, a coworker brought in a small bluetooth speaker, and we have taken turns playing music to liven up the space a bit. My manager is fully on board. To make it easier and spend less time fiddling with bluetooth, we’re using a shared device to connect to Spotify. My coworkers – understandably – are not taking too much time to find and select music to play. They come in, press play on the device, and let the playlist roll.

I love listening to music. I don’t love listening to the same playlist over, and over, and over again. But it apparently only bothers me to hear the same songs day in and out. I will try and put on other music, which helps for a bit, but eventually we find our way back to the “default” playlist, which I guess is based off what you have played previously on the platform (It’s only about 150-200 songs). When this happens, I can barely focus on what I’m doing. I’ll pull out my own ear buds, but they tend to mix with the music on the speaker and make the problem worse.

I really don’t want to be the person that needs to turn off the music. This seems like something my coworkers really enjoy, based on how often they’re finding their way back to turn on the speaker after it’s been off for the day or after a meeting. But it’s beginning to make me hate certain songs that I had no feeling about previously, let alone the effect on my productivity. I guess the solution is just to get up and change the music when it starts bothering me — but I worry I’ll come off as overly concerned about playing DJ when really, I just don’t want to listen to “Bittersweet Symphony” for the fifth time this week!

If it really becomes a problem, I know that I would be able to just say I need some quiet for a bit and turn it off. But do you have any suggestions for how to handle that without being the office spoilsport?

I think you’re overthinking it! Just say, “Y’all, I love having the music on but I can’t take so much repetition, so I’m going to take charge of switching up the playlists unless someone else wants to” and then do that. It shouldn’t be a big deal. If anything, people will probably appreciate it.

Alternately, spend some time this weekend making a ridiculously huge 30-hour playlist and then never think about it again.

But it’s also okay to say that having music on all the time isn’t working for you! Having to write while subject to someone else’s musical choices would be rough for a lot of writers.

2. Coworker is taking advantage of our WFH flexibility

I lead a highly engaged team of exempt employees that work remotely ~90% of the time. Our department is very supportive of work/life balance and doesn’t penalize for things like doctor’s appointments or getting kids off the bus. As long as meetings are covered and work gets done, it’s all good. We have a few required in-office days each month which occur on a regular, predicable cadence.

One team member bends this flexibility more than anybody else. Although their work output is good, there have been several instances of this person sending the team a list of sporadic upcoming times that they may not be available during the day due to their child’s daytime extracurricular activities. This once resulted in a last-minute scramble to move an important meeting that had been scheduled weeks ago. Another time, they asked our manager to be exempt from all in-office days for a couple of months to accommodate a different voluntary, child-related activity (manager said no). This employee recently called into another important meeting but couldn’t be heard over the background noise. They were out of the house on an errand that could have happened at another time.

I reported this to our manager (who agrees with me) but can’t help wondering if I’m being unfair. If this person was working around something more necessary and immovable, like healthcare needs, I wouldn’t think twice. I don’t care if people work from a public place like a coffee shop or library as long as they can be fully engaged in meetings. I don’t have kids myself but have never encountered anybody else who has required this level of daytime flexibility for non-essential activities. Nobody else on the large-ish team does this.

I understand that if this person had just quietly blocked their calendar without providing any details, I would probably not be writing to you … but here we are. Is there any way to equitably standardize what appropriate flexibility looks like, or should I just erase the details from my brain and pretend they’re shuttling the kids back and forth from doctor’s appointments?

Extracurriculars are different from medical appointments. It’s reasonable to say that while your team tries to allow employees flexibility with life stuff that comes up during the day, including kid-related needs, people are expected to prioritize important meetings, participate in in-office days, and take work calls from a quiet place where they can focus and without disruptive background noise, in all but the most unusual/unavoidable of circumstances. And it’s reasonable to define “unusual/unavoidable” as medical things or rare personal emergencies.

Since your manager seems to agree with that, she needs to clarify those expectations with your coworker, who seems to be translating some flexibility into total flexibility.

3. HR has implemented a screening test for applicants that nobody can pass

Several months ago, our HR department implemented a screening test for all applicants that they must pass before being hired. This is a timed test, and the questions and acceptance criteria are the same for all jobs. None of the hiring managers had seen the test or knew anything about the questions when it was implemented.

Only about 5% of screened applicants have passed the test. As you might imagine, this is causing issues with hiring managers as they are unable to fill open positions with candidates they have already evaluated and identified as good hires.

There has been such disruption that HR decided to have all current employees take the test and use the average score to consider adjusting the acceptance criteria (individual scores are supposed to remain anonymous). This was the first time any of us had seen the test questions, and now it is clear why applicants are not passing. Most, if not all, of the questions do not pertain to the jobs we are hiring for. There are math word problems, word analogy problems, inductive reasoning pattern problems used to screen engineers, logic puzzles, etc., all with a big timer counting down the available time at the top of the screen.

I see a LOT of issues with this. The aptitudes and abilities being tested are not relevant for all positions, and some are not relevant for any positions at our company. (Nobody here needs to know the exact definition of “obfuscate” as part of their job.) It is biased against candidates who are functionally fluent in English but use it as their second language. It is biased against candidates who would perform their jobs well but do not perform well on timed tests. It may not be illegal, but I can’t see how it is useful.

I raised these concerns with HR, and also told them that if this test had been required when I applied to my position several years ago, I likely would have withdrawn my application. I would have seen it as a huge red flag that my performance would not be evaluated objectively based on the job requirements but on random criteria instead. I suspect many applicants are either not completing the test or choosing answers at random because they have similar concerns.

Am I off-base that this is a bad practice? Is there anything else I can do as a hiring manager to convince HR to change this practice?

You are not off-base; this is ridiculous. It’s a fundamental principle of hiring effectively that you screen based on the must-have’s and nice-to-have’s for the role you’re hiring for, not on factors that have nothing to do with someone’s ability to perform the job. Coincidentally, that also happens to be a fundamental principle of ensuring you have a diverse workforce with diverse perspectives.

HR shouldn’t have this kind of power. You and other hiring managers should push back hard, pointing out that HR’s job is to support managers in hiring people who will perform their jobs well, not to throw up roadblocks to finding and hiring those people. Insist on hearing a justification for the test and why it should trump your own assessment of what you need in candidates, insist on seeing data about outcomes, and escalate it as high as you need to.

4. Adult photos at work

Is showing a coworker a nude pic of a celebrity considered sexual harassment?

If they don’t want to see it, yes. If there are people nearby who don’t want to see it or hear about it, yes.