boss treats our coworker’s performance issues as team issues, my manager hasn’t announced her promotion, and more

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

1. My boss treats our coworker’s performance issues as team performance issues

I have a colleague, Sarah, who has been in the job longer than anyone else but constantly ignores our processes. Some of these processes were put in place even before I joined almost eight years ago and she helped teach me.

This has resulted in extra work for me and another colleague, Jacinta, who has now been assigned to monitor Sarah’s work and provide feedback. But even worse, our manager does not seem to directly address the issue with Sarah but instead calls team meetings (some in-office when we are all remote) over and over again to address the same issues that via data we know are only regularly made by Sarah.

Jacinta has told our manager that it has not made an impact, but the issues persist (and have for years), along with blatant disregard of any correction Jacinta makes at the manager’s request. How can we get our manager to accept that there needs to be direct conversations from them and not from Jacinta, who officially is in the same role as Sarah?

P.S. I do really enjoy my job. My boss is very nice and knowledgeable. Plus, I work from home which I love. I also really enjoy the company I work for.

Jacinta is the one best positioned to spell it out for your manager. It sounds like she’s overdue in saying to your manager very bluntly, “When you address XYZ via team meeting, it’s not registering with Sarah and the same problems continue. She needs to hear from you one-on-one that XYZ needs to change.” And she also probably needs to draw a line about monitoring Sarah’s work and giving her feedback. As Sarah’s peer, it’s really only appropriate to ask her to do that if Sarah is receptive to feedback and if your manager is, you know, doing the job of actually managing Sarah (and even then, asking Jacinta to monitor her work — as opposed to just providing feedback — isn’t great).

It sounds like your boss is trying to outsource the uncomfortable parts of her job to Jacinta rather than doing them herself … but Jacinta doesn’t have the authority to actually do what’s being asked of her, which is why everyone is so frustrated. This is only going to get better if Jacinta tells your boss it isn’t working and that your boss needs to get more hands-on with Sarah.

Related:
my boss sends scolding emails to all of us — and then tells me I shouldn’t take them personally

2. Handling a manager’s strong negative reaction to a discussion about inclusion

I’m looking for advice on how to handle a difficult situation at work involving a senior leader’s reaction to diversity and inclusion initiatives.

A colleague of mine had a one-on-one conversation with a senior leader to suggest sharing recommendations from our DEI committee to help make an upcoming conference more inclusive. During that conversation, the senior leader reacted very strongly and negatively:
* He talked over her for roughly 10 minutes.
* He repeatedly said the idea wasn’t feasible and was counterproductive.
* He appeared angry and frustrated and shut the conversation down.
* He commented that because the conference audience is predominantly one demographic (white and male), the organization was “already doing a pretty good job representing their demographic.” (!!!!)

The conversation ended unresolved. My colleague is worried about raising the issue further because it could damage her working relationship with this leader. She brought the situation to me because I am the next most senior person on the team.

We both agree that something should be done, as this behavior is contrary to our organization’s stated values. However, HR is not really an option — they handle benefits and employee handbook issues, not interpersonal dynamics, culture, or promotions. The next level up would be the COO, who has shown herself to be responsive in situations like this, but it feels like “bringing in the biggest guns,” and we’re hesitant to escalate to that level. But maybe we should.

Given these constraints, what is the best way to handle a situation where a senior leader dismisses diversity initiatives so forcefully in a private conversation, and the person raising it fears retaliation? We have both already documented these incidents privately, but otherwise have yet to take further action.

Your colleague should talk to the COO. This is a big enough deal to escalate it, and she’s the appropriate person to escalate it to.

When she has that conversation, she should say that she’s worried about retaliation for escalating it, and ask the COO for her help in guarding against that. That’s something people receiving these kinds of complaints should always be thinking about it, but it can help to spell it out and explicitly ask for assistance in ensuring it doesn’t happen. That will often prompt the complain-receiver to be more proactive about guarding against it.

3. Should I tell my manager I know she’s been promoted?

My (excellent) manager has been due for a promotion for a while. Last week I noticed that her Teams label changed from “Job Title” to “Senior Job Title” – but she hasn’t said anything about it! Her email signature, which employees manually create, has remained the same, but things that are controlled by corporate have been updated. She’s been candid with me that she worried she was “mommy-tracked” after returning from maternity leave and has been working hard for this. I’d love to congratulate her and talk about it, but I haven’t brought it up so she can announce on her own schedule. But it’s been close to two weeks and I’m getting impatient!

The promotion won’t affect our team structure, and it’s not a role that anyone else was competing for – just a title and pay bump for people after a certain length of seniority and strong performance. I understand there’s all kinds of reasons that she, her supervisors, or corporate may want to hold off on announcing a promotion. My questions are: a) what are those reasons, and b) would it ever be appropriate to quietly tell her I noticed and offer my congratulations?

I don’t think it’s the worst thing in the world to quietly say, “I saw your title changed — congratulations!” … but first give her a while longer to announce it herself. She might have reasons for holding off.

As for what those reasons could be, generally internal politics of some sort. For example, someone else going after the same title didn’t get it and they’re trying not to rub it in her face, or they’re still working out some details of the new role (i.e., it won’t just be a pay bump) and aren’t ready to share those yet, or they’re waiting to announce it paired with something else, or she’s got personal stuff going on and doesn’t want to deal with even positive commotion at work right now, and on and on. There’s no knowing. If she still hasn’t said anything after a month, I think it’s fair game (they did update the corporate stuff, after all, and you’re seeing it), but give her some space with it for now since she seems to be trying to take some.

4. I was told not to take lunch breaks — but it turns out everyone else takes them

I work at a nonprofit with over 2,000 remote employees. When I started remotely, almost two years ago, I was told multiple times by my boss that I needed to work 40 hours per week, and that the culture was that we worked through lunch from 9-5, for a total of 40 hours. After two years of this routine, I found out that others on my same level and below me have been working 9-5 and taking an hour paid lunch break. I had no idea this was happening! And it feels very unfair. My direct report has also been doing the same as I have, as I instructed her. She is non-exempt and I am exempt. She is based in New York and I am based in Illinois.

After I connected with my boss about it, he said that he would speak with HR. Their response (through him) was that there are no labor laws requiring paid or unpaid lunch breaks and everyone should feel they have the agency to balance work and rest time to perform and tend to their priorities. I feel a bit taken advantage of because, after consulting with a few of my colleagues, I’ve been working an extra ~260 hours per year compared to others on the same level who have been taking a lunch break everyday.

Am I unreasonable wanting clarity on this? Is it legal for me to be working through lunch without a break?

Federal law doesn’t require meal breaks at all; it’s left to the states, so the laws in play are different for you and your employee. For you, Illinois requires a 20-minute meal break for every 7.5 hours worked, and no later than five hours after the start of the shift (if you were non-exempt, it could be unpaid but because you’re exempt, your pay can’t be docked). For your employee in New York, her state requires employers to provide at least 30 minutes of break time if an employee works more than six hours, though it doesn’t need to be paid. So, there’s a second legal issue.

A lot of states don’t require meal breaks for exempt employees. Since you’re remote, I wonder if your employer is based elsewhere and didn’t know about New York’s law — which wouldn’t excuse them from complying with it, but might explain what happened. But most states do require meal breaks for your non-exempt employees, so it’s extra odd that they wouldn’t have known about that. Still, it sounds like this direction was coming from your boss, not from the broader company (since no one else has been functioning that way). But your boss was acting as a representative of your employer, and your employer is liable for the directives he gave you.

As for what to do, can you talk with HR yourself? Point out that the organization has inadvertently been violating both state laws, and that as a result you and your employee have both worked a couple hundred hours more than everyone else. Then say, “I’d like to get this remedied in a way that’s fair to us both” and see what they say. If this had just been an unfortunate accident that didn’t break any laws, they might tell you there was nothing they could do and they’d just ensure it was fixed going forward. But given that they’ve been breaking the law, you have some leverage to push for some additional compensation to each of you to make it right.

5. Can my old manager share info about me with my new manager?

While I was on leave, my manager was promoted and we got a new manager. Before I left, I had a meeting with my old manager and the team lead because there was a miscommunication about the hours I could work. In my interview, because I’m a single mom, we had agreed that the only night hours I would work were if there was an emergency.

Well, this new manager came in and sat me down to say that word around the office is I won’t work nights. She said she reached out to my old manager, who she said I refused to work nights. Is this type of conversation legally even allowed? The meetings within my company are supposed to be protected and confidential. My lead and my old boss apparently spread this around my office, as no one should’ve even known this.

Yes, it’s legal — and generally necessary — for your old manager to relay information to your new manager about your schedule. This is a pretty normal conversation for managers to have. Otherwise, how else would she know, let alone adhere to, what you had negotiated for when you were hired? It also wouldn’t be that unusual for others in the office to know that you’re never available nights; that’s going to come up in a bunch of work-relevant ways that other people may have a legitimate need to know.

Generally the only info you can expect to be treated as confidential in a work context would be private health information — but even then something might be shared with a new manager to the extent that it affected things like scheduling or medical accommodations.

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