2 of my employees don’t get along, are gift cards taxable, and more

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

1. Two of my employees don’t get along

I am a manager of a few different groups, including a group of customer service representatives. This team seems to always have tension between two people. They both feel that the other isn’t doing enough or doing things incorrectly/not up to standard. They get in passive-aggressive arguments on Teams about very minor things like who will do the mail and who highlighted something on a sheet. I had to create a mail schedule and remove their access to items.

Now they are both refusing to speak with each other and continue to complain about each other. I have told them both that I can see what both parties are doing and will address high-priority items. I have asked them what they want the outcome to be when they come to complain to me about these petty minor complaints, and they don’t have an answer. I have explained that even though they don’t like each other, they still have to work together. Now the entire team’s production has gone down and this tension is taking over.

Any advice on how to handle it as a manager? Neither are doing anything outright that I could escalate to HR but this underlying tension is destroying morale, including mine.

You don’t need to escalate things like this to HR, even if it were worse. It’s squarely in your purview to handle as a manager, rather than being something HR should need to intervene on (although you could certainly ask HR for coaching to help you handle it yourself). But it’s definitely at the level where you need to act. Aside from the morale impact, it sounds disruptive and like a huge distraction.

Meet with each of them individually and tell them that they can feel however they want about each other privately, but effective immediately they need to treat each other with respect and professionalism. A good litmus test is that no one else on the team should be able to sense negativity from one of them toward the other. They don’t have the option of not speaking to each other; it’s a requirement of remaining in their jobs that they do not freeze out colleagues and will treat everyone with kindness and respect, period. The complaints about X and Y need to stop (be specific there rather than saying complaints need to stop in general, because at some point something might happen that you need to know about, but you can give examples of the types of petty complaints you don’t want to receive anymore).

And then you need to hold them to that, which means that treating this like a performance issue like any other where they’re held accountable to conduct expectations and there are consequences if they don’t meet them.

More here:

how to solve a conflict on your team

two of my employees won’t speak to each other

how do I manage petty behavior between two employees who dislike each other?

two of my employees don’t get along — is it just a personality conflict?

2. Are gift cards taxable income?

Your recent question about corporate gifts got me thinking … I’m a manager, and my current employer has forbidden me from giving gift cards as corporate gifts because apparently they are taxable income!

I was so surprised, every other place I have worked has given out gift cards freely. Is this a new thing? Does it apply to some places and not others? Do some companies just not care about tax law?

My employees are so disappointed, they love gift cards. :(

It’s not a new thing! Gift cards from employers to employees are indeed taxable income. The IRS considers them cash equivalents, regardless of the amount, and employers are supposed to include them on the tax forms they issue employees.

As far as I understand, this is at least partly because if it weren’t the case, employers could try to restructure how they compensate employees, with a larger piece coming through (untaxed) gift cards. It’s also because it’s your employer essentially giving you cash, gift card or not.

3. People using “rape” metaphorically

Twice in the last six months — and in entirely different and unrelated professional contexts — I’ve had men use “rape” metaphorically. Things like, “XYZ Company is raping me” or “This is exactly how we get raped by ABC client.”

Like many women, I have been sexually assaulted. The man who raped me later spent months stalking me, vandalizing my car, and threatening to kill me. He is the reason I now live in another time zone, far from friends and family. Although it has been many years, the impact of this event is understandably lifelong and significant. I deeply resent being reminded of it in such a casual, thoughtless way, and especially while at work.

Both times, unsure of what to say or how to react, I just pretended it didn’t happen. I was stunned the first time it (in person, talking with someone senior to me), and I honestly cannot believe it has now occurred twice (the second time was over Zoom with a large peer group; I’ve never met the man who said it). How should we handle this if and when it happens?

It can be really hard to know how to respond to something like that on the spot — not only figuring out what to say, but also juggling all the power dynamics and politics that can be in play in a work situation. But if it happens again, it’s perfectly reasonable to say, “I don’t think that’s the right language to use” or “That’s not the right word to use” or “I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but that’s not the right language to use.”

4. How do you learn to manage people?

How do you learn to manage people? My boss and I recently talked about my taking on managing duties as our team expands, but he didn’t have any suggestions when I asked how best to prepare for that. It would be my first time in that role — is it a learn-by-doing kind of thing or can you actually learn in advance? (Or is my anxious perfectionist brain making it out be a bigger adjustment than it really is?)

Ideally from good mentors who can support you and who you can bounce situations off of … but, with or without them, often from messing it up and then learning from your mistakes. The people who go on to become good managers are the ones who know they’re going to mess up but commit to reflecting on the lessons they learn from doing that and incorporate those lessons going forward.

You can learn the basic “what does managing look like day-to-day” and “how should I navigate situation X or situation Y” ahead of time through classes and reading, but nothing comes close to what you learn when you’re actually doing it. (A lot of books and classes on management are more theoretical, so to the extent I could, I tried to make my book for managers focused on the nitty-gritty “here’s what this conversation sounds like” as much as I could, so that could be one place to start. If you happen to be at a nonprofit, the Management Center also runs classes based on the book.)

5. Contacting references if I’m not actively job-searching

I have a question about contacting references and when the appropriate time to do so is. You’ve advised that people should do it before they start a job hunt. However, do you have advice for someone who isn’t actively job hunting? Occasionally I’ll apply for a one-off job or two because it looks like something I would enjoy, but I am not regularly searching or desperate to leave my current job. In this case, is it okay to contact potential references after I’ve received a request for a first interview? Or should I do it on a regular basis (i.e., at the start of each year) just in case I end up needing a reference later?

It would be weird to do it at the start of every year whether you were job hunting or not, but it’s fine to wait until you’ve been invited to interview. The vast majority of the time, employers aren’t going to be contacting references before that.

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