1. I’ll be fired if I don’t quit — how much time can I ask for?
There’s a lot wrong for me about my current job, but the biggest is that I had a major health crisis that significantly impacted my memory, making it almost impossible to stay on top of things. I didn’t pursue any accommodations until it was too late and ended up on a performance improvement plan (PIP) shortly after returning from medical leave. While I passed the PIP, the job has also significantly changed, with a new manager who started working with me during the worst part of my health crisis and with whom my professional relationship is unrecoverable. Instead of telling me there are problems, she reports them directly to my supervisor, often omitting critical information like the fact that I explicitly confirmed with her the specific actions she had a problem with.
As a result, this past Friday my supervisor explicitly asked, “Is this the right job for you?” The answer is obviously no. But with my health situation, I can’t go without insurance and I don’t know how long it will take me to get another job given my local market.
You’ve recommended before asking for a structured transition where we set a date in the future, more than the standard two weeks’ notice, to help with transitionary tasks and give me time to find a job. But, especially since I’ve already gone through disciplinary proceedings, how much can I actually ask for? There are significant work tasks two months and three months away that I can point to as wanting to stay on to support. Is that too long? I’d like to ask for at least a month, but is even that unreasonable? Can I ask, in a more eloquent way, “Hey, realistically how much time can you give me?” or is it better to go in with a specific ask, even if it’s more than they’re willing to offer?
My worry is that initiating the conversation could mean you end up unemployed faster than you might if you leave it in their court — and if you need the job for the insurance, that could make it the wrong way to go, even if it could make sense in other circumstances. In theory you could propose a planned transition of a few months — but there is a risk that they will propose a shorter timeline (and if you base it on it wanting to see out some specific tasks that will take a few months, they may simply thank you for that offer but tell you it’s unnecessary and that it makes sense to wrap up sooner).
If this is a company that does PIPs before firing people, my questions become: How long are those PIPs typically (and are they longer than the amount of time you’d likely get by approaching it this way)? And since you passed the previous PIP, would they put you on another before moving to fire you, or would they not? (Some companies will do multiple PIPs and others won’t.) If they’re likely to go through another PIP process, it might be to your advantage to stay for that, just for the extra time.
2. My coworker is telling people I don’t deserve my promotion
I have a coworker, Tim. Tim and I have been working in our current role (we have the same job on the same team) for the same amount of time, and we have very similar industry experience. Tim also applied to the role I recently got and was rejected (which sucks!!) — however. I’ve learned from a coworker friend that he’s been insinuating to other coworkers that I’m not qualified for the position, duped the interviewers into thinking I’m more knowledgeable than I am, my work in my current position is below par, and he “wishes he was ignorant to that but he isn’t.”
I’m not too miffed that he’s saying these things about me because I know they’re untrue, and the people he’s saying this to also know they’re untrue. Also, comments like this are not unprecedented from him, nor are they singularly directed to me. Any time a coworker other than him gets recognized, he will comment on how he deserved the recognition instead. He is very good at his job, is frequently recognized, and has management aspirations (he has been tapped for a lot of management development programs due to this, and I imagine will get a role in management one day).
Are these comments something my current manager should be made aware of? He is careful to only comment when management is away or in a manager-free chat. I just … don’t want to sound like I’m tattling on him, but I do worry that his attitude will continue to go unchecked and that he will eventually get a management position.
Do you have a good relationship with your manager? If so, I think there’s room to mention the pattern — not just that Tim is trash-talking you, but that Tim has a pattern of trash-talking anyone who gets recognition. You could frame it as, “I’m thinking of this right now because he’s been saying it about me since my promotion, but it’s a pattern where he speaks badly of anyone who gets recognized and says he deserves the recognition instead. I think he does good work, but it’s such an odd lack of generosity toward other people, and since I know he wants to manage people at some point, I thought it might be something to talk with him about.”
3. My company sent me to a conference that was heavily religious
I work for a large global company and recently received an email from an employee resource group offering five tickets to a leadership conference. There wasn’t any additional information about the conference but I thought it could be a good professional development experience, so I replied, expressed interest, and the ERG got me registered to attend.
Upon receiving more information about the conference, I discovered it was happening at a mega-church and some of the speakers were religious leaders. I was skeptical but decided to give it the benefit of the doubt and joined the livestream on the first day. Within five minutes, the conference organizer company’s CEO had talked about God and what God wants to see from us. I chose to no longer attend after that. I personally felt very uncomfortable as I prefer to keep religion and work separate; however, the other employees attending have expressed excitement about how much God has been featured (though they did say they were surprised by it). I am concerned because I work for a company with employees located all over the world, and there are many diverse beliefs and potentially complex feelings around religion. Would you recommend I reach out to someone at my company about this, or let it go?
Report it! It’s wildly inappropriate for them to encourage employees to attend religious conferences, particularly without any warning ahead of time that that’s what it would be. I’d guess there’s a decent chance they didn’t even realize that’s what it was, particularly if it was marketed as leadership, not religion.
Talk to someone in the ERG and say, “I was surprised to discover that this conference was heavily religious — it was hosted by a mega-church, many of the speakers were religious leaders, and the first session I attended focused heavily on God. I didn’t attend any sessions after that since I’m not comfortable mixing work and religion. Were you aware that the conference was religious in nature?”
4. Can my employer require me to install an app on my personal phone?
I work at a high school. Our administration recently announced that we’ll be using a new emergency management platform that uses an app to communicate announcements to staff during an emergency. Everyone who works for the school is required to download this app.
On the one hand, this will probably be an improvement over our current practice, which relies on an aged, staticky PA system that is inaudible in many parts of the building. On the other, I looked the app up, and it seems to be glitchy as hell. Either way, I don’t plan on spending capital on this, but I was curious whether I’d have any legal standing to push back. My school doesn’t issue phones to any of us; can they stipulate what I do or don’t install on my personal device?
Yes, an employer can require you to install specific apps on your personal device.
There are a handful of states that require employers to reimburse employees for a “reasonable portion” of their cell phone bills if they require their use for work (with California and Illinois having the strictest laws), but they can all require you to use them (including making it a condition of employment that you own a phone capable of running specific apps).
5. Is my resume format a problem?
I just saw your post about hybrid resumes being disliked by hiring managers, and I’m wondering if I shot myself in the foot for an internal position I just applied for. A full-time job in my dream role just opened up internally. I have been doing this work at my company with official approval and support, but as separate work on top of my regular job, not reflected in the job duties or title, for six years. In fact, I’ve been doing this work for my division over the course of three different jobs within the company, over two promotions.
In applying for this role in a specialized field, I grouped my work in this area for the company together at the top, along with my recent certifications in this area, under a “(specialist area) at (our company)” heading, then included my chronological work experience after. My thinking was because the work would be hard to break up role by role, and it would be hard to see my total impact on this area in the job by job format.
When applying for a similar job externally, I used the chronological work format and highlighted achievements in the skill area under a subheading for each recent role. But internally that felt more confusing.
Wonder about your thoughts on this approach in a situation where ongoing work for a skill area crosses multiple roles in the same company? I’m just a bundle of nerves on this one!
That’s completely fine. What hiring managers hate are functional resumes, which simply present one long list of achievements without tying them to specific jobs, thus making it impossible to see where and when those things happened. You didn’t do that, and you didn’t do a hybrid resume either. You did something very close to a normal reverse-chronological resume (listing what achievements go with what job), just with the most relevant work separated out at the top. Yes, that section covered multiple roles but they were all at the same company.