Ask a Manager

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.

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

1. Can my husband hang out in my office at night until I’m ready to leave?

I am a woman in my early thirties. If I am going to stay late at night at work, would it be possible to bring my husband to stay somewhere in the office until I finish my work? Is it an unusual request to make?

It will vary by office. Some offices would be fine with it. Others have security policies that could make it tricky.

Are you wondering about it for safety reasons or something else (like, I don’t know, you carpool to work and your husband needs to wait somewhere until you’re done so you can drive home together)?

If it’s safety reasons, I’d raise that with your manager directly; if you need to stay late at work, you need to feel safe doing that and your employer should work with you to make that possible.

If it’s more “my husband is bored and needs somewhere to hang out until I can leave,” it would be better for him to find somewhere else to do that until you’re done (especially if it would be a regular thing).

2. How do I get my coworkers to treat me like “the talent”?

I work in an industry where there’s crew (the production peeps) and talent (people in front of camera or behind the mic). I’ve been crew for maybe 10 years now. But I’ve pitched a project of my own and will be behind the mic for it. Exciting!

Usually, the production peeps take a lot of care briefing the talent — what happens when, who’s handling what, next steps, etc., etc. But because I’ve been on the team and am part of the company and someone from outside, they are skipping all these steps with me.

Classic slippery slope. Initially, I didn’t mind, because we were still in my area of preproduction expertise. No need to brief. Now we are reaching post and I feel totally lost and worried about who’s handling what and is somebody handling it at all or must I be sorting it out, etc. It feels dramatic to now hit them with an email saying KEEP ME ABREAST AT ALL TIMES. And how do I transition from being a mellow fellow coworker to a fussy client with lots of pointers about editing and marketing and such? (I don’t go overboard with fussiness, I swear.)

“Hey, I know I didn’t initially need everything talent normally needs, but now we’re at a point where I do need the same level of support we give to people without experience in production. I’m realizing I feel lost about things like XYZ, so going forward, can you give me the same level of briefing you’d give anyone else, even if you think I won’t need it?”

As for moving from a mellow coworker to a fussy client with lots of notes … there’s just some inherent awkwardness in there that you probably can’t entirely avoid, but if you just jump in and do it, it’ll feel more natural in time. That said, your knowledge from being on the other side can inform your approach — be as detail-oriented as you want, but be kind about it. Think of it as taking the work very seriously, rather than taking yourself seriously; that usually helps with humility. (At the same time, I bet seeing the process from the talent side is going to make some things talent does that were annoying when you were crew seem less annoying now. That always happens when you do this kind of flip, and that perspective-broadening can be useful if you return to the crew side at some point.)

3. What feedback should I give to a temporary worker who didn’t get the job?

I became a first-time manager within the past year, so this is all new to me. My first act was to make a temporary hire for my old role until our organization could fill it full-time. I hired someone I knew from a similar org who had recently been let go for budget reasons. I am completely confident she knew it was a temporary position. Within a year, I got the greenlight to hire full-time. She applied and was a finalist out of a pool of several hundred applicants. But she lost out to someone with extensive specific past experience that made them a unicorn-level fit for the job.

I told her that she did not get the job, and that it honestly wasn’t anything she did wrong; we just had a candidate we couldn’t pass up. She has been professional about it but is taking it hard.

This surprised me. Even during interviews, she did not seem very excited, but rather like applying was the expected thing to do. Even so, it was a close decision because she is very good. I have honestly told her I will be a glowing reference for her. I told her, if she wants, she can stay through end of the month. (She doesn’t know this yet but I’m also trying to get the budget to give her some cover for the next month.) We also lined up some short projects that I hope she can use as examples in future interviews. I genuinely want her to do well in a job she cares about.

In our last check-in, she started crying and asked for more specific feedback. Like anyone, she isn’t perfect and I have a couple of things I could suggest. But none are why we didn’t hire her. Do I give her honest feedback? Does that include telling her she didn’t seem to want to be here? Or does that rub salt in the wound? As a newbie manager, I try to start with empathy, but I clearly misread her enthusiasm and am doubting my instincts now.

Give her feedback because she’s asking for it, but frame it as, “I can give you some feedback on things that will strengthen your work generally, but I want to be clear that they weren’t the reasons you weren’t hired. You were a very competitive candidate and the decision was about hiring someone who was an unusually good match; it wasn’t based on any concerns about you or your work.”

I would not tell her she didn’t seem enthusiastic unless she seemed so disengaged that you’re concerned it will be an obstacle for her in future interviews. But it’s useful data that people don’t always wear their hearts on their sleeves in interviews and can be much more invested than you can see on the surface. (Not always! Some people genuinely aren’t that enthused. But it’s good to be aware that there’s a wide spectrum of “normal” on this.)

Related:
how to show passion for your work when you’re not a demonstrative person

4. Can I ask for my own office?

I work for a large nonprofit that is mostly remote, but has an office from the days when folks were expected to come in. The building sits mostly empty. On my floor, for example, there are about 20 cubicles and 15 enclosed offices. There are maybe five of us that come in at some point during the week, and of those, only two of us are in every day. Of course, all five of us are in the same cube area, and the two of us in every day sit right next to each other. This leaves over 15 offices empty and unassigned.

This is frustrating! All of my meetings are on video calls, so I spend a lot of time going in and out of enclosed offices. My colleagues often take their videos and calls in the open area, which results in unnecessary sensory overload and frustration for me. (If it matters, I likely have sensory processing disorder from some combination of anxiety/ADHD/etc.)

I’ve only been here a month, and I’m the lowest role in our structure. Still, with so many offices sitting open, I would love to move into one. Would it be okay to request? How should I approach it?

“I’m spending a lot of time going in and out of the enclosed offices since I have so many video calls. Since it seems like a lot are unused, would it be okay for me to regularly work out of one of them?” They might say no — a lot of offices have intense politics around who gets an office and who doesn’t, even the people they’re assigned to are never there to use them — but it’s reasonable to ask. (Those politics are why my suggested wording is “regularly work out of one of them,” which sounds less permanent than “can I have my own office?” even if that’s what it turns into in time.)

If the answer is no, you could ask about moving to a cubicle that’s further away from the current cluster so that you’re not in the middle of so much action.

Also, depending on how much the sensory overload is interfering with your work, you could also consider going the formal accommodations route — but in a lot of cases it makes sense to start with a less formal conversation first.

5. Should I tell my over-performing employee to leave?

I have a superstar employee. She was fairly fresh out of university when we hired her, but I have never had a regret about her performance. She’s now been working for us for almost two years and doing more work than I would expect someone at her level to perform, it’s at an exceptional quality, and she consistently takes on bigger and newer challenges.

Obviously, I’ve been advocating for her to get a promotion. Recently, HR told us that for her to get that promotion, she’d have to have had three years of experience in her current (or any equivalent) role. But she’s performing at a higher level than what her title indicates! She deserves the promotion. She did get a decent raise, which I am happy about, but I know from experience that the title can make a big difference as well. Honestly she could leave and do so much better for herself. I’ve made the case again for her and hope that HR will change their mind (or find some combined level of experience that will help her qualify for it), but what else can I do?

Do I tell her that she should start looking elsewhere because she deserves a role that recognizes and pays her what she is worth? This is the first I’ve heard of the title structure that bases things off of years of experience, but I assume I should just lay it out for her so that she knows what the logic is? Do I have to make it sound like I agree with this because I am her manager?

It’s not terribly unusual to have experience requirements for promotion. It’s also reasonable for you, as her manager, to argue for an exception to that policy, based on her extraordinary level of performance and the possibility that the company may lose her entirely if you don’t reward that performance sooner rather than later.

That said, what’s your employee’s take on all this? Is she happy to wait another year for promotion or is she pushing for it to happen sooner? If she hasn’t shown any unhappiness with the situation, there’s no reason to encourage her to start looking outside the company. If you had the sense that they’d never promote her, that would be different — and you’d owe it to her to be relatively candid about that — but that’s not the case here. You should still share with her what the promotion timeline is so she has it, and you should lay out for HR why you think her accomplishments in two years are the equivalent of the average candidate’s accomplishments in three (or longer), but the three-year timeline isn’t inherently outrageous (as long as it’s real and they don’t kick the can down the road once people get there, and also as long as it’s not at odds with the norms of your field).