our employee misses too much work, boss is different in person, and more

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

1. Employee misses a ton of work and we don’t know what to do

I manage the manager of a newer employee. We’re outside the U.S., where everyone has generous paid vacation and sick leave. The problem is that she takes long vacations at inconvenient times and far more sick days than average. Taken together, these absences are creating real strain on the team. Because some of it may be health-related, I’m not confident about how to address it.

Since starting a year ago, she has taken far more (five times more) sick leave than her peers, often on Fridays or Mondays or on days with important deadlines and presentations. Her work gets done, but only because her colleagues scramble to cover for her. She points to meeting deadlines as proof of excellent performance, without acknowledging the team’s role in meeting those deadlines when she was not in. At least five times she has called out sick on the day of a major presentation, leaving others to step in. Yet in her annual goals she asked for more presentation opportunities, not demonstrating awareness that she has missed several. She also missed a pre-vacation handover meeting by calling out sick. My manager and my superior have both remarked that they suspect some of her sick days may be chosen to extend vacations or recover from late nights out, which has made this a reputation issue as well.

We have tried to be supportive. Conversations have asked what we can do to help, whether she needs accommodations, or whether she is receiving adequate medical care. She insists she just gets sick a lot. Once she mentioned she may have a serious condition, but she has not followed up with a doctor.

Vacations have also caused disruption. Twice she has claimed her partner booked surprise trips without consulting her, presenting them as non-negotiable. Even if she didn’t plan the trips herself, the timing still disrupted the team and required coverage. We approved the time off but stressed that she remains accountable for deadlines and handovers.

Her metrics look fine only because others are compensating. She doesn’t show urgency when she does return, and her new manager, who is task-focused, is already struggling with her lack of accountability. How do I balance compassion for her situation with the need for accountability and reliability on the team?

The lowest hanging fruit here are the surprise trips. You probably felt backed into a corner and like you had to approve those because of the way she presented them, but actually you could have said, “Unfortunately, no, we can’t approve that time off. You’ve been out a lot recently and have deadlines during that time and we need you here to cover XYZ.” It’s nice to accommodate this kind of thing when you can, but when someone is already struggling with not being at work enough, you can set limits and say no.

Beyond that, if she’s not there frequently enough to get her work done at the level you need or if the burden of covering for her is falling unfairly on coworkers, you can address that too. This is really country-dependent, but in the U.S. you could say, “We can accommodate the X days of sick leave per year that’s part of your benefits package, but beyond that we need to be able to count on you to reliably be here. If there’s a medical issue in play, we can start a discussion about accommodations and see how to make this work, but otherwise we really do need you to be here reliably.” You’d also start holding her to meeting deadlines and other metrics, and holding her accountable when she doesn’t and when others have to cover for her — to the point of considering whether or not she can do the job you need done, because right now it sounds like she’s not.

Since you manage her manager, you likely need to coach her manager through all of this; what she’s doing now isn’t working.

Related:
how to deal with an employee who takes too much sick leave

2. Why is my boss so different in person?

I’ve been at my current job for three years, and I still can’t figure out why my boss’s personality changes so drastically when in-person compared to on the phone or in virtual meetings.

He is stationed at a different office than me. If we’re talking on the phone or in a virtual meeting, he is very chatty and will laugh and make jokes. When we are in person, however, he becomes very short-tempered, does not laugh, and can be somewhat condescending. Why would anyone change so much when face-to-face?

Good question! It’s obviously hard to say with any certainty, but I can think of a few possibilities. He could be socially anxious and when he’s in person it comes out by seeming cold and distant. Or he could be kind of a jerk and can hide it better when he’s not face-to-face. Or — I’m completely spitballing now — when he’s in his own office, he could share space with someone he wants to make a good impression on, but he feels no such compunction when that person isn’t around. Or the opposite also could be true; there could be someone in your office who sets him on edge and so he’s crankier when he’s there. Or hell, maybe the commute puts him in a bad mood, or they just have better coffee at the other office.

It’s a weird pattern, though.

3. Can we discuss personality when evaluating job candidates?

I understand that academia is its own beast in terms of job searches and procedures, but I’ve been running into a frustrating issue when my department discusses job candidates. Our job search procedures involve Zoom interviews, and then invitations to day-long campus visits. In the last few years, various department members have requested that we avoid discussing “personality” attributes and focus simply on their qualifications. On the one hand, I understand where they’re coming from as we know this could potentially work against neurodivergent individuals, and there’s a lot of coded language that can convey implicit biases. But it seems impossible to not discuss and evaluate candidates based on personality. I mean, if the decision was based solely on qualifications, we’d just hire based on their portfolio and the actual interviews would not be necessary, right?

Both the Zoom interviews and campus visits are incredibly informative in terms of a candidate’s capabilities (they do research talks, teaching demos, in addition to interviews). I think it’s unreasonable to not be able to mention that a person was really enthusiastic, energetic, invested or whatever descriptor. I mean, being a professor involves being able to connect with students, convey information accurately, and work alongside collaborators and colleagues, all of which would get conveyed through behavioral and/or personality traits. I plan to request a department meeting to discuss specifically what people mean by “personality” and what should (or should not) be discussed when evaluating candidates. There’s a part of me that thinks it’s unreasonable to avoid discussing “personality” of candidates, especially as relevant to the job, but am open to the possibility that I’m wrong or missing something. Do you have any thoughts about how to disentangle these issues or discussion points I can make during a department discussion?

Connect those descriptors to the work itself so that you’re demonstrating relevance. So it’s not “she was really charming” — it’s “she had a warm and energetic presentation style that kept the audience engaged with the material.” And it’s not “he seemed kind of boring” — it’s “during his presentation, he read off his slides and didn’t engage with the audience and my sense was people were tuning out.” So it’s not about who they are; it’s about drawing connections to their actual work.

Related:
how do I ask references about a candidate’s personality?

4. How much can I share with a new job about my horrible old job?

I am a former federal employee (I had the flexibility to be able to choose to leave rather than be fired) who will be starting at an analogous state agency this month. [Insert huge sigh of relief for landing a job in my always competitive field in this job market.] My new position will interface with my former federal agency.

The federal workplace has been notoriously difficult this past year. However, there are some specific circumstances that led to my choosing to leave the position that a year ago was my dream job. In addition to the general instability caused by full-time return to office, “5 things” emails, threats of reductions in force, firings, repeated rounds of resignations, and partner employees losing funding and being laid off (things most people are aware of), my last months of federal employment were particularly awful. I had a member of my immediate team die by suicide. This would have been traumatic enough, but it was exacerbated by state-level leadership’s decisions prior to their death and my being assigned their duties on top of my own with minimal support. I cried at my desk every day after until I was able to leave. A year ago, I was on a team of ten experienced federal servants; only three are still federal employees.

This has caused a lot of trauma and turmoil in my private and work life. For the past six months, I have been working outside of my field (and going to therapy), which has given me some time and space to heal.

I am unsure how much background to share when starting my new position. The general nods to how bad things are on the federal side don’t really capture the depth of what I’ve experienced. I will be moving forward with any interactions with federal partners with particular care knowing all of this context. Any advice on how/when/if to share my personal experiences with my new team would be greatly appreciated.

I wouldn’t get into it in any level of detail any time soon. Rightly or wrongly, when someone new starts complaining about their old job right off the bat — even when those complaints are warranted and they’re 100% in the right — it can come off strangely and make people think you lack discretion (at best) or will be difficult to work with (at worst). The current situation with federal jobs is a little different because everyone knows what’s been going on there, but I’d still err on the side of discretion about the details.

Once you know people better and have established yourself as someone competent with good judgment (at least six months down the road), there’s more room to share with people you’ve gotten to know well, but even then you should use some restraint about who you share with, when, and how much … because you don’t want it to be the thing you’re known for, if nothing else, and you don’t want to seem mired in it.

5. How do I refer one former employee but not the other?

I managed a tight-knit team at my old company and, like a lot of people in my field, the whole team got laid off last year. We’ve all kept in touch and so I know that one of them, Alex, is still looking for work. We’re about to have a job available at Alex’s level, but I wouldn’t recommend them. They were lacking some basic skills and despite coaching, if the company lasted longer, they might have been on a PIP.

But another one of my reports, Jen, is someone I’d love to work with again and this role would be a step up. I’d be happy to refer her, but she might ask if I’ve referred Alex since she also knows his situation. It feels inappropriate to tell her his skills aren’t up to snuff for the role. (I also know he’d be offended if she got a new job working with me and he wasn’t even approached, but that’s a different matter of talking to him when it comes up.) Is there a way to refer her in without lying or violating his privacy?

If she asks if you’ve referred Alex, you can say, “I don’t think he’s as well-matched as you are with what they’re looking for, but I’m keeping an eye out for anything I do think he could be good for.”

The post our employee misses too much work, boss is different in person, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager.