1. How should I handle a past performance issue that has just come to light?
At the end of last year, I was promoted and I now manage two people who were previously my peers. Unfortunately, a performance issue for one of these employees, Robert, has just come to light, regarding something that happened last year before I was his manager.
Part of our jobs involve working with volunteers who support our work (for example, meeting with their elected representatives to explain why our work is important). When someone tells us they would like to volunteer, the request comes to Robert and he sets up a call with them. He talks them through how volunteers can help and answers any questions they may have.
A couple of weeks ago, I was forwarded a complaint by a volunteer, Nicole. She has had some suboptimal interactions with other departments in the company, but her main complaint is about Robert. She said she had three separate calls with him last year about volunteering, and in each call he was completely uninterested and dismissive and seemed keen to get the call over with as soon as possible.
Nicole was very angry in her complaint, asking why she should bother to volunteer if we’re not interested in using her experience (a reasonable question, to my mind), and called Robert “a disgrace to CompanyName.” (Regarding why she’s only complaining now, I think probably she was willing to overlook his attitude at the time, but following her more recent suboptimal interactions with our company — the other departments are dealing with that part of the complaint separately — she was no longer willing to overlook how she was treated last year.)
The thing is, from what I know of Robert, this whole story is all too plausible. He had been disengaged with his work, and very obviously checked out, ever since I started working here (when we were all working for a different manager). When I became his manager, I knew I had to address this, so we had a couple of conversations, and I’m very happy to say that he’s turned it around completely. He is now a proactive, enthusiastic employee who brings ideas to the table and communicates well with coworkers. Other coworkers, including senior leaders, have commented to me on how he seems like a completely different person.
Another factor in this situation is that Robert will only be working with volunteers for a few more weeks. I have just hired someone with experience in volunteer management, so the plan was always for this person to take over that work from Robert. That means that I don’t need to manage his performance in this area on an ongoing basis, but I do need to think about perhaps implementing more oversight of the volunteer interactions.
How should I approach this with Robert? Does this merit an official warning, in the context of his previous performance issues, even though he’s turned it around since then?
I don’t think so. It’s not really new information; it’s part and parcel of what you already knew about and have addressed — and addressed successfully. You should certainly talk to Robert about Nicole’s complaint; he deserves to know there was a recent complaint about him and might need to do some relationship repair with her. But you’ve already addressed the broad patterns with him and he’s turned things around. An official warning wouldn’t serve any real purpose, and is likely to demoralize him.
2. My editors don’t catch any of the mistakes they should
I work at a school and am responsible for updating important community-wide documents for our campus yearly, such as handbooks and calendars. I enjoy the work but find it difficult to edit myself for errors when I am immersed in the document. With that in mind, I ask my boss and three members of my administrative team, which I supervise, to edit my work. I give them a minimum of one month’s lead time, with a clear “ideal” due date and one reminder along the way.
I always get a “looks good” back. But inevitably I find errors, including important things like dates. When I bring these mistakes to everyone’s attention, the response from both levels is a version of “bummer.” Since the first time this happened, I have explained in writing and in person how much help I need in this process, but it keeps happening. I have tried to be disciplined and careful; I just don’t trust myself to find every error, and it causes additional stress to know I can’t really count on help from others. The errors make us look unprofessional to stakeholders who use these documents as resources for a full school cycle. We do not have the budget to outsource this task; it is in my job description, and AI is not an option, either. I recognize this is my responsibility, but I do need help. What can I do here?
Part of the problem may be that you’re asking four different people to edit it; they may feel they can give it a quick skim since there will be so many other eyes on it.
I’d stop asking your boss entirely (unless they need to sign off on it before it goes out, but that’s a different thing than asking them to edit). Instead, pick the person you manage who’s best at writing, editing, and catching details, and ask them to be your official editor. Be very explicit about what that means — like checking all dates, etc. And make it clear that this is a work task that they should take seriously like any other and they’re the only set of eyes doing it. Of course, everyone is human, and sometimes things will be missed — but they should see it as a real part of their job, not a casual favor. Be clear that there almost certainly will be errors so if their first impulse is “looks good,” that’s a sign to go back and read more carefully. And consider giving them a checklist of things to particularly look at (like check all dates, confirm spelling of names, and so forth),
I’m also curious about the one-month lead time — that’s a really long lead time for editing a single document (if indeed that’s for just one document), and I wonder if it’s leaving people to put it off and then race through it at the end.
3. Is this a terrible way to hire?
I’m listening to a podcast right now that markets itself to entrepreneurs with ADHD. The hosts operate a coaching business promoted by the pod and seem to have recently added a light HR partner aspect to their services aimed at helping individual operators make their first hires. Around 15 minutes in, though, they started in on a whole riff about why they don’t conduct interviews — they ask for a video with application (which they imply they do to get around AI bots) and then do paid projects. What really raised my ears was her saying that they were making evaluation projects based on things that the business would actually want to use, but were on the back burner, rather than making a fake scenario of a real, critical, day-to-day project. I don’t have a specific question — just more of a gut check on whether or not this is bananapants.
As long as they’re paying a reasonable rate for the project work, I don’t think it’s bananapants. If they weren’t paying or were paying a well-below market rate, it would be exploitative and absolutely not okay, but since they’re paying, it’s a way to get a solid look at what someone’s actual work is like. As long as they pay for it, there’s no reason they have to come up with fake assessment projects; fake assessment projects are for when you’re not paying.
I hope they’re not skipping interviews entirely, because there are people who do great work but are massive pains to work with, to the point that it overshadows whatever skills they have, but the paid projects themselves aren’t an issue! It’s not an approach that would scale very well, but I can see it having benefits for a solo entrepreneur making their company’s first hire.
4. How much work should I do unpaid?
I work as an allied health practitioner in a small healthcare company, in a role like a physiotherapist or a nutritionist. I see patients for their appointment, complete their notes, then see the next person. I am a contractor rather than an employee, and I get paid per client that I see.
The thing is, there is more to my job than just seeing patients. I have to do varying amounts of paperwork for each appointment, some of which I can get done during the appointment time slot and some of which I can’t. Then there is all the other admin work, like responding to client emails, organizing dates and rooms for appointments, and liaising with other clinicians. I don’t get paid time to do this.
I understand that I will need to do a certain amount of work “unpaid” in order to properly care for my patients and complete the required documentation. However I am starting to bristle at the increasing amount of unpaid work. I am becoming involved in some projects, which are exciting but involve more and more time in admin work. While yes, it does mean I get to see more patients and therefore increase my pay, it does also increase the unpaid time.
Recently I was asked to take over managing the Instagram and other social media accounts for the business. I declined because I didn’t want to do it, but felt guilty about foisting the job onto someone else (who will also not get paid to do it). If I was an employee I would gladly do it in my downtime but I didn’t want to do anything else unpaid.
For what it’s worth, all the other clinicians at my company are also contractors paid per patient. The only people who are hourly employees are the two admin staff. The other three “full-time” practitioners are the owners, who have a financial incentive to put in extra work to make the company do well.
How much work is it reasonable to do outside my patient hours? Of course I will do all the essential work I need to do, but the hours of “essential” work seems to be growing and my pay isn’t reflected in the hours that I do. I should note, I am not in the U.S. so this is more about reasonable business practices instead of the legal side.
The big question I’d have is whether the rate you get per patient is enough (market-wise) to reasonably cover all the admin work that’s associated with it outside of the appointments themselves — the paperwork, emails, etc. If it’s not, then you should try to either negotiate a higher per-patient rate, pointing out the additional amount of work that’s associated with each patient, or revisit the payment structure altogether (perhaps moving to time-based pay); either way, the idea would be to ensure that what you get paid is reasonably aligned with the work you’re putting in.
But as long as you’re only paid a per-patient rate, under no circumstances would it be reasonable to take on something clearly outside that scope, like managing social media! If it’s work you are interested in taking on, you could propose a separate fee for doing it. But otherwise, you’d just be volunteering your time for something that shouldn’t be volunteer work. If the clinic wants workers who will take on a broader scope of work, the way for them to get that is by hiring salaried employees or paying hourly.
5. Two jobs, one job title
I worked for four years under one job title, but the initial project I was assigned was an absolutely terrible fit for me and just generally ill-conceived, so that swiftly collapsed and was replaced after a year with different work.
My job title didn’t change but the scope and focus of my work shifted drastically. I had absolutely no meaningful achievements and did nothing I am proud of from the first year, but did a lot of really good things in the subsequent three years. The job title I held that whole time is a reasonable title for all of the work I was doing. On a resume, can I list the full four years I had that job title but only talk about the work I did in the latter three years? If not, how would I express the situation on paper?
Yes, you don’t need to talk about the work you did the first year at all! A resume doesn’t need to be a comprehensive account of everything you’ve ever done; you can just pick the things that most strengthen your candidacy.