Ask a Manager

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

1. Should I try to verify a doctor’s note if it looks fake?

I’m a manager in a service industry establishment where daily attendance is very important because of the nature of the job. Obviously people get sick or have legitimate reasons that prevent them from coming to work – I expect this! However, I am currently dealing with an employee who is beginning to have a serious pattern of poor attendance. I don’t want to be a one-size-fits-all type manager, so I do take into consideration people’s circumstances when it comes to disciplining or firing due to attendance. Our attendance policy is a three-strikes-in-30-days policy, in which you get a written warning after three instances and then escalating disciplinary warnings for subsequent infractions. I actually find the policy quite lenient for most responsible people – most people are not getting sick three times in one month, and each illness counts as one instance – if you are sick with the flu for three days, that counts as one strike. I do not require a doctor’s note or any other type of proof, but if you provide me with one, I will take that into consideration to delay a written warning if it seems like circumstances were really outside of your control.

All that being said … this employee’s most recent attendance infraction was going to result in yet another written warning, quite possibly the last one before termination. So I suggested that she provide a doctor’s note, since she had informed me that she went to urgent care the day before. Well, the doctor’s note looks … exceptionally fake. Since this is already an employee with poor attendance, do I have an obligation here to try to verify the doctor’s note? Obviously if it is fake, that is a fireable offense for the deliberate dishonesty. I really try to treat people like trustworthy adults (when it seems like the industry standard is to treat people like children and “write them up” for the slightest infraction). I don’t want to be the type of manager who’s going to assume your doctor’s note is fake! But … it really is most likely fake. And if I were to go about trying to verify a doctor’s note, how do you even do that?

Employers are legally allowed to verify doctor’s notes by asking the doctor to confirm the note’s authenticity. The doctor shouldn’t disclose the employee’s medical information, but they can confirm they issued the note or tell you if they didn’t. If it looks exceptionally fake, I’d call and find out, because forging documentation is a big deal (much bigger than simply faking sick).

For what it’s worth, that three-strikes-in-30-days policy is a bad one. It’s true that people don’t usually have three separate instances of sickness in one month, but sometimes they do — think flu, sprained ankle, and a sick kid. It’s not going to happen a lot but it will happen sometimes, especially for people with kids or other dependent family members. I understand that the policy is better than most in your field, but just so you don’t let your norms get all messed up, please know that is still a bad policy, and it’s treating employees like they can’t be trusted, and it’s treating managers like they can’t manage or exercise any discretion. It also incentivizes employees to come in when they’re sick, thereby infecting other people. It might be a good policy for your industry, but it’s bad in general.

2. How can I be sure I’m not biased toward my top candidate?

I am currently hiring for a role on my team — a business analyst who will work with our internal customers. They need to be qualitatively-inclined, great with large datasets, and comfortable with specific programs, but also extremely effective communicators and influencers. So far I have interviewed seven people: two external and five internal candidates. Of these candidates, two are of the same gender and race as me. The other five are either a different gender, different race, or both.

I was able to rule out two people quickly as they don’t have the experience/skills I’m looking for. Then there is the middle group: four people who seem perfectly competent and capable but didn’t “wow” me. Last, there was one candidate who stood out among the crowd and really did impress me, as they had a nuanced understanding of many of the intricacies of the job, and was really excellent in their communication skills during the interview.

So what’s the problem? This top candidate is one of the ones who is the same race and gender as me. I’m worried that I’m being unconsciously biased in selecting them because of this. I’ve been asking myself, what made them stand out above the others in the middle of the pack? Part of it is, I think, their personality. On the one hand, this is important for this role: as I mentioned, they will need to communicate and collaborate effectively with people across our organization, and a warm, friendly and pleasant personality is critical. On the other hand, how much weight is okay to give to someone’s “personality” being likeable? I’ve read some of your columns on watching out for people who remind you of yourself in hiring, and I’m worried that’s what I may be doing.

How can I parse this out? I want to hire the best person for the job, and I also want to be fair to all candidates.

Two things: you need to get as objective as possible about the criteria you’re evaluating all your candidates on — so not just “pleasant” or “good personality,” but what that really means for this specific job. Is it the ability to quickly establish rapport with new people? Is it leaving people feeling listened to and welcomed? Staying warm and professional and not becoming flustered or impatient? Saying no in a way that leaves people still feeling good about the interaction? Whatever it is in your context, spell it out as explicitly as possible because you can’t assess it clearly if you don’t define it clearly; “I just know it when I see it” is dangerous if you want to fight bias.

Second, however you define it, you presumably want to ensure they connect with others and quickly build trust across all demographic groups, not just with you. So you could have other people meet with your top two or three candidates and ask them to assess them on specific criteria too. (Of course, you need to do this in a way that doesn’t tokenize your colleagues. Ideally you’re working somewhere diverse enough that you can easily assemble a diverse panel without tokenizing anyone. If you’re not, this is trickier.)

3. Employer is dragging out the hiring process without answering my questions on salary

I am currently in a job application process that began seven months ago. Following the initial resume and cover letter, I have had (1) a half-hour introductory call with the internal recruiter, (2) a half-hour call with the hiring partner, (3) a one-hour in-person interview with two people from a different team, and (4) a second call with the hiring partner plus another partner in a different team. There have been roughly six weeks between each of these steps.

The whole process has been quite disorganized, and has so far given me precious few details about either the company or the role (mainly because all the interviewers apart from the recruiter are brand new to the firm).

During the last call, the hiring partner seemed keen to proceed, but suggested I have a fifth meeting, this time with a partner who just relocated to my nearest office (all my other interviewers have been based at the company HQ). This local partner also sits within an unrelated department, so again, is unlikely to be able to provide details about my potential role.

I had previously been told that the fourth meeting would be the final one. I see the value of meeting the leader of the local office, but I am reluctant to invest the time for this without more knowledge of the basics, such as salary. When the recruiter asked me for my availability for this fifth meeting. I replied that I would check my upcoming availability and come back, but that in advance of that, I did have some practical questions that we had not yet had a chance to discuss, such as salary, and I asked: “To make sure that we are on the same page ahead of this next meeting, are you please able to advise me of the salary range that is in mind for this position?”

The recruiter replied the next day, with: “Thank you, [Name].” That was it — no reference at all to my question about salary. That was a couple of weeks ago.

I think I know enough now to say that this isn’t the role or company for me. But I don’t have any other job offers, so it feels uncomfortable withdrawing. That said, it seems that if there was still a viable role, it wouldn’t be taking this long (I suspect the lack of urgency is down to the immediate need for support being supplied by other teams). I keep bouncing between the following options:

1. Emailing the recruiter to withdraw my application, “to pursue other roles that are more in line with my current goals.”
2. Emailing the recruiter as above, adding some reference to either my outstanding question around salary or the protracted recruitment process.
3. Pretending I’m still invested in the process and emailing a reminder about my outstanding question.

That’s way too many interviews and way too many months — especially when you don’t even know the salary. It could turn out to be wildly below anything you’d accept, so it doesn’t make sense to move forward without getting some answers now.

Since your alternative is simply withdrawing, you might as well bump the question for the recruiter: message them again and say, “Are you able to give me an idea of the salary range before we move forward? I’m reluctant to schedule another meeting without making sure we’re in the same ballpark.”

If they ignore you again, I’d hold firm on not investing more time in yet another interview until they’re willing to give you the basics. If that kills your chances, that’s a sign that there’s no great loss here. (If there even is a job here! Right now the opening doesn’t seem particularly concrete.)

Related:
can I set a limit on how many interviews I’ll do with a company?
I’m stuck in endless interviews with a company that can’t make up its mind

4. Haven’t been paid in months

My husband is a salaried employee at a business and has only received one paycheck since the middle of March. He has not received four regular paychecks. He did receive one regular paycheck on May 3. None of the other members of his team have been paid either, so this is not just an individual issue. Obviously this is illegal and should be reported to the state labor board where we live. However, my husband is afraid of retaliation since the industry is fairly small (which is also illegal, but they don’t seem to care much about that). His boss is dodging everyone who has pressed the issue, and upper management just keeps giving empty promises about how it will be deposited next week, but they’ve said this every week. He is frantically job hunting and has had multiple good interviews and requests for second interviews but it’s a slow process. Do you have any advice?

What specific kind of retaliation is he afraid of? “After they didn’t pay us for several months, we asked the state for help getting the money we were owed” isn’t really retaliation material since anyone who hears that is going to be on your husband’s side. And sure, they could badmouth him to others in the field — but if word gets out that they haven’t paid employees for months, criticism from them isn’t going to carry much weight. He can also neutralize a lot of it if he and other coworkers act as a group; that way, the employer can’t single out any one person.

He really should file a wage complaint with the labor board; this kind of thing is generally taken seriously, and he’ll get his overdue wages and in some states they’ll have to pay him additional penalties too. You could point out to him that it’s important to take action while they still have the ability to pay him. If he waits and the business never recovers, his chances of being able to recover that money go way down.

Read more:
how to get money an employer owes you

5. We won’t get severance if we don’t return to the office two days a week

I’ve been remote since the pandemic, and our parent company may soon require us to be hybrid (roughly two days a week in office). In one of the communications, they mentioned that those who failed to meet minimum in-office requirements each month might be subject to lose certain benefits, including severance. Can a company deny you severance based on an in-office attendance policy?

Yes. No law requires employers to offer severance, so they can attach conditions to it like that if they want. (One exception: The federal WARN Act requires most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 days notice if they’re laying off 50 or more people at once or pay the equivalent amount of time in severance.) In theory, they could also offer different classes of benefits to different classes of workers — so they could offer X vacation days to remote workers and X + 5 vacation days to hybrid workers, etc.

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

1. Working from a one-bedroom apartment with a baby and nanny

I work in tech and have worked remotely for my whole career. I live in a one-bedroom apartment and my desk is tucked into a corner of the living room. This setup has worked great for the past five years, living with my husband. We had our first child three months ago and my maternity leave is ending soon. We have in-home childcare arranged (combo of nanny and grandparents).

I want to continue breastfeeding my child and I’m wondering what you think of trying to work from home in my situation. The (maybe ridiculous) logic is that pumping would take at least as long as just feeding him directly, and would be much less fun. Of course we would have backup options for when meetings conflicted with feeding times. My job is less than 20% meetings, and I can take calls from the common spaces in my building.

The two downsides I see are: it would be harder to get deep focus time, which is part of my role, and I’m not sure how unprofessional it will seem. I started this role three months before my parental leave and made a good impression, but I know I’m kind of starting fresh after being out for so long.

I do have other options for workspaces, but they are far enough away (5-10 minutes) from home that I would have to figure out other milk logistics.

I would very much appreciate your thoughts — are there other important downsides I’m missing? Is it just postpartum hormones convincing me that this is reasonable?

Oooooh. It’s going to be really hard to work in a one-bedroom apartment while your baby and nanny/family members are there. Maybe if you could work in the bedroom with the door closed and a clear agreement not to disturb you … but it’s going to be pretty tough. Working from the living room with that set-up sounds nearly impossible, unless they’re going to be away from home for most of the day every single day. It’s not just noise; it’s the close proximity and being aware of everything that’s going on (some of which you are going to have Opinions on).

If you’ve got an option for a workspace five minutes away, that seems pretty good in comparison.

2. I’m a new manager and people keep quitting

I’m about four months into a new executive role, overseeing a small team of knowledge workers. When I started, there were 12 of us. Today, we’re down to eight.

The previous team lead had a very different style than I do. More hands-off, from what I’ve heard. People were frustrated with the lack of guidance and team development. So that’s what I’ve focused on. All the feedback I’ve received from my team has been positive or, at worst, constructive. But I realize they may not be totally forthcoming with complaints.

The first couple of resignations were easy to blame on my predecessor. They were probably already job hunting when I took over. But now, I’m starting to worry that it’s my fault. I know there aren’t enough details here for you to confirm or deny that fear. But, I wonder if you were in my shoes, how would you figure it out? What would you do to preserve the team that’s still standing?

Talk to people! A lot of people won’t give candid feedback to their managers even if it’s explicitly requested, so you have to shape the questions strategically to draw it out of people. For example: If you could change one thing about your job or your team, what would you change? If you could change something about our workflow, what would it be? How would you improve the way we do X? Etc. The more specific you can be, the more likely you are to get honest and useful answers. Also, if you have any gut feelings about areas that might be problems, ask about those; for example, if you’re worried people think you’re too hands-on, ask about that: “I know when Jane was here, people were frustrated that they weren’t getting enough guidance. When trying to address that, there’s always a risk that the pendulum could feel like it’s swung too far in the other direction. How are you feeling on that front?”

Keep in mind, though, that it’s possible that a lot of the team started job-searching while the old manager was still there, and that could be producing offers now — in other words, it might not be that they’re fleeing you, but that this is a natural part of the aftermath of a difficult manager.

Related:
how to get your staff to be more honest with you

3. Video interviews with a group of competing candidates

What fresh hell is this?

Fortunately, it’s not a hell that I myself am living in, but a dear friend of mine is.

She’s applying for highly paid, highly skilled, fully remote sales roles and she told me that it’s now standard practice in this industry for the early interview rounds to be via video call (okay so far), as a group (NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE).

The usual format appears to be eight candidates, each answering four questions (not sure if they all get the same questions; I presume they do) over three minutes. And when it’s not your turn to talk, you sit and listen to the other candidates answer their questions whilst you wait for the sweet release of death.

The kicker? These companies are selling it as a bonus because it allows candidates with a less traditional background to “shine” beyond their resume and experience, which is absolutely impossible to achieve in any other format than a group video interview. They then whittle the pool of candidates down to three, at which point you’re allowed the privilege of a personal video call. Am I right in thinking that this is totally bonkers?

Anyway, I must be off as I have a busy day. Rather than going on separate dates with the men I matched with on dating apps (who has the time?), I’ve invited them all to the same bar at the same time so that I can quickly whittle the pool down to the ones that are worthy of a solo meetup.

Yep, utterly bonkers. And the alleged rationale doesn’t make any sense — there’s nothing about answering questions in front of a group of competitors that would allow non-traditional candidates to “shine” any more than answering those same questions in a one-on-one interview. It’s just faster for the interviewers if they can block off a single time slot and force all their candidates into it together. It’s ridiculous.

Mildly related:
I was held hostage and insulted at a group interview of 45 people
should we have job candidates do group activities with each other?

4. Should I apply for a job with the possibility of a large pay cut?

I’ve been in my current job for over a decade. It’s a good job, I like and get along with my boss and coworkers, I have PTO and medical insurance for me and my spouse. But I am burnt out​, and would like to be doing almost anything else as long as it’s something​ else.

My very first job fresh out of college 20 years ago (sigh) was in a field that I loved. But I did not want to go right back to school and get the graduate degree that might have helped me in that field, and so drifted into my current job after a few years. Now a full-time position in my original field has opened up near me, the first one I’ve seen advertised in years, and I am excited at the thought. From my past experience, I know the job would offer PTO benefits more or less equivalent to what I have now, and probably medical insurance for my spouse and I would be cheaper! However, the salary listing starts at $10K less than I’m currently making, and goes up to only slightly more than my current annual salary. The listing also mentions that any hires will start on the lower range of the salary, and be eligible for merit-based raises and bonuses every year depending on their work.

Is this worth applying for? Even if I’m able to argue for my past experience, that was long ago, and I doubt they would immediately jump to the higher end of the salary spectrum if I asked. We have a mortgage, we have bills to pay, everything is expensive right now, and I don’t know if the benefits would outweigh the serious pay cut.

Apply and see. Part of this depends on what you’re earning now; a $10K paycut is very different if you’re earning $45,000 than if you’re earning $145,000. If you’re closer to the latter, I’d say that cut is absolutely worth it to get out of a field you’re burned out on and back to a field you love. If your salary is closer to the former, it’s probably not — but it’s still worth applying and seeing if you can get them close to your current salary. Maybe you can’t — but if this the first opening in the field you’ve seen in years, it seems silly not to apply and at least see what’s possible.