1. My employee’s request for conference travel makes me suspicious of her child care accommodations
My direct report, Anna, recently asked HR to increase her work-from-home arrangement from two days per week to four or five days per week for the coming year. She explained that she is going through a divorce and that her soon-to-be ex-husband is not a reliable co-parent. Her main concern is being available to pick up her son from school. She says she has no other support system and needs additional remote work days to make that possible.
For the last couple of years, it has been apparent that she has been dealing with significant personal challenges. She frequently takes unplanned leave and often seems to become ill on days she is scheduled to be in the office. While details haven’t been shared publicly, management has been understanding and flexible, though attendance has become an issue. Anna herself recently said that she wants a formal arrangement through HR so she is no longer relying on informal accommodations or favors.
Our director is not someone who grants exceptions easily. My manager and I advocated strongly for Anna’s request, arguing that it was both reasonable and compassionate under the circumstances. HR and senior management are still considering the request, and no decision has been made.
Then something happened that left me questioning my judgment. Today, Anna applied to attend an annual conference that takes place on another continent. Attendance is optional, and applicants are selected based on business needs and other factors. The event would require being away for seven or eight days, plus weekend meetings and intense preparation work beforehand.
My immediate reaction was: if she is asking for near-full-time remote work because she cannot be away from home to manage childcare, why is she pursuing an optional opportunity that would require more than a week of travel?
I realize there may be explanations I am not aware of. Childcare arrangements for one week may be very different from managing a daily commute all year. At the same time, I can’t ignore that this creates an optics problem. If senior management learns about the conference application while evaluating her remote-work request, I suspect it could hurt her chances. As a manager, how should I think about this? Is it fair for me to see these two requests as contradictory, or am I conflating two very different issues? More broadly, how much weight should managers give to apparent inconsistencies when evaluating accommodation requests based on personal circumstances?
I don’t think it’s inconsistent at all! Presumably if Anna is away for a week, her ex has custody of her kid for that week (or someone else, like a relative, is taking care of him for the week and will handle school pick-up). Her child care issues come up during the times when she has custody — so they’re two completely different situations. It shouldn’t even be an optics problem; that would be like saying “It’s suspicious that Anna’s child care issues disappear for the summer while her kid is at camp”; it makes perfect sense that when when circumstances are different, her child care issues are different.
2. I need to tell an employee he’s not getting a raise
I work for a government agency. I am writing to discuss my approach for a performance evaluation for an employee, Diego, scheduled for next week. While Diego is a competent employee who excels at specific technical tasks, he continues to struggle with other core requirements. We’ve spent extensive time trying to teach him, but he has not improved. I intend to provide a balanced evaluation that honestly reflects these strengths and weaknesses, resulting in a “middle of the road” rating across all categories.
However, Dora, our interim CEO, has a poor impression of Diego’s performance and has explicitly directed me to withhold a merit increase this year, despite Diego having no documented performance issues. Given that the majority of the agency will receive merits, Diego is likely to notice this discrepancy. Dora tends to develop a harsh impression about some employees and does not change that impression. She has done this with Diego and, despite my best efforts over two years, I’ve been unsuccessful in changing that. She is now in a position of more authority so it is impacting Diego.
Since Dora is well-established and unlikely to leave the organization, Diego’s prospects for promotions or financial advancement are effectively stalled under her leadership. While there are currently no grounds for termination, it may be in his best interest to explore external opportunities where his career progression is not obstructed. I am seeking guidance on how to transparently communicate these limitations to Diego during his evaluation without exposing the agency to legal liability.
Well, wait — if Diego struggles with core requirements of his job and you’ve spent extensive time coaching him without any improvement, how is that there’s no documentation of those performance issues, and how is that you plan to give him a middle-of-the-road evaluation? If someone isn’t meeting core requirements of their job, they shouldn’t get a middle-of-the-road evaluation; they should get one that makes it clear that they’re not meeting expectations. So I’m with Dora here, and it sounds like the issue is that Diego’s manager (you!) hasn’t been clear enough with him about the problems in his work. Now is the time to be honest with Diego that the problems are serious ones, he’s not working at the level needed for his role, and you need to see improvement in XYZ.
If you haven’t documented your previous conversations with him about the areas where he doesn’t meet expectations, you should talk to someone (either Dora or HR) about that reality, and get their guidance on how to handle that with this evaluation. That shouldn’t mean “pretend he’s meeting expectations when he’s not”; it may just mean, for example, that you explicitly acknowledge that you haven’t been clear enough about how serious the problems were, but that you want to take the opportunity to do that now.
Related:
how can I stop softening the message in tough conversations with my staff?
3. I report to a much more extroverted manager
I am a mid-career manager and well-established in my industry and organization. I work on an all-remote team that reports up through an all-remote larger office (stating this up-front because it may be a contributing factor).
I report to a director who seems to be very extroverted. It is not uncommon for them to initiate and carry multiple group social chats across various channels in the span of one workday, along with frequent attempts to start group icebreaker-type chats, networking, activities, “share a picture of your favorite X or Y.” This has been consistent over the few years I have reported to them.
I have voiced directly to my director that I need to set boundaries around reading/responding to group chats in order to focus on work, and that was met with complete support and kindness. I muted many of the social channels. However, the social chats are now popping up in work channels and work meetings, along with more planned social time at required events and meetings.
I enjoy working with my colleagues and certainly don’t mind spontaneous conversations and stories from their home Iives, but I am exhausted and overstimulated by what feels like constant forced socializing and distractions. I miss being able to focus on work while at work. I realize that this is my own work style and preference, and I am not sure how to move forward when I report directly to a person with a completely different preferred work style. Do you have advice on how to address this situation, or do I need to either accept it or find a new role?
The last time you talked to your boss about the group chats, you were met with “complete support and kindness” so speak to them again! Say this: “I’m finding it really hard to focus on work with so many social conversations popping up in work channels, but I need to check those in case it’s work related. Could we get back to keeping the social stuff in the social channels like we used to? It would really help me focus.”
The socializing at meetings is less avoidable, although if it’s regularly making meetings longer, you can approach it from that angle: “I’m finding our meetings are stretching on longer than they used to because we’re building in more social time, and it’s impacting how much time I have for my projects. Could we move the social time to the end so that anyone who needs to excuse themselves can?”
These are both pretty small tweaks and it sounds like there’s a decent chance your manager would be open to making them if you spell out why it’s become a problem for you.
4. I keep getting questions about something that isn’t my job
I work for a company that sells cosmetic products directly to businesses. Part of my job is essentially sending free samples of new products to existing accounts to see if they would like to add them to their orders in the future. These samples are processed through a system which I have a lot of knowledge about (let’s call it LlamaCare).
We are also able to send samples of our existing products to potential new accounts. These requests are made directly through our website, reviewed by a team that I am not a part of and don’t work directly with, and are processed through a different system, LlamaPro. We’ve had a lot of issues and complaints regarding LlamaPro and it seems like it is costing us new business. Personally, I have never interacted with it — I have zero knowledge regarding these samples or LlamaPro beyond what I have just stated.
Despite this, I am frequently bombarded with questions and complaints from leadership regarding LlamaPro. Two months ago, a biweekly meeting was implemented to discuss our free samples and update the policy surrounding them. There is nobody from the LlamaPro team at this meeting. Instead, leadership complains about LlamaPro and asks me questions about it. In every meeting, I state very clearly that I don’t handle any of the LlamaPro requests and suggest adding someone who does. They seem surprised by this every time.
I went out of my way to figure out who works with LlamaPro and let leadership know who to direct questions to. They’ve basically ignored this and just asked me to figure it out and let them know the answer. I’m wasting a lot of my day going back and forth with the LlamaPro team and communicating their answers back when leadership could just ask them directly or add them to the meeting. I also don’t feel like my answers are very satisfying because I don’t have any context for what I’m saying.
I feel like I’m going nuts having the same conversation so many times and still not being heard. I don’t know how to get it through their heads that I basically have as much to do with LlamaPro as they do. My role is pretty junior so I don’t want to be disrespectful, but this is becoming comical. What should I do?
Let your manager know what’s been happening, and ask her to talk to the LlamaPro team about sending a rep to the meetings. (Or potentially you could ask them yourself, but you noted you’re pretty junior and your manager should be in the loop about what’s happening regardless, so it makes sense to start with her.) If the LlamaPro team refuses to send anyone, then ask your manager to come to the next meeting with you and see if she has any better success explaining the situation than you’ve had.
5. How can I update LinkedIn without looking like I’m job-searching?
I’ve been at my current job for two years. I’m not currently looking for a new position, but if certain aspects of my role don’t improve by the end of the year, I plan to start looking then.
I never put my current role in LinkedIn. If you check my profile, the history ends with the end date of my previous role. I rarely use the site, and I never post, but I do accept new connection requests from people I know. My boss and a half-dozen current coworkers are connections.
How do I update my LinkedIn with my new role – two years into it – without my boss and my coworkers thinking it means I’m looking for a new role? A friend suggested I wait until December and blame relatives asking about it at a holiday gathering, but by then I might actually be looking, so if someone at work asks, I’d have to lie about not looking, and I have a terrible poker face.
You’re overthinking it. Just go ahead and update it now. Doing that doesn’t mean you’re job-searching; you could have received a connection request there and realized your profile was out-of-date. In fact, if that’s what actually had happened, you almost certainly wouldn’t worry about it looking weird; you’re only worried about it now because you know the real reason you’re doing it. (But if you do want to use the question-from-a-relative excuse, there’s no reason you can’t use it now; you presumably talk to relatives in months that are not December … or at least it wouldn’t be weird to imply you do.)