It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Boss wants us to use our personal social media for marketing
I work for a very good company. We’re all proud of the work we do. I’ve worked my butt off and I’ve been recognized and rewarded. I’m not a partner or owner, just an employee.
The director has asked us all to put our business card as our WhatsApp status and to otherwise use our social media to promote the company and gain clients. And a lot of us are just quietly not doing that. There are a lot of reasons I don’t want to do this, but to be honest the main one is just a gut feeling of “No.”
I don’t want to badmouth my company to real-life friends so I would love to hear your take on this. Is this cool? Why or why not?
It’s not cool. Your personal social media is your personal stuff. The company shouldn’t try to hijack it, just like it shouldn’t demand that you stand up at every dinner party you attend and deliver a pitch for the company.
It’s okay for an employer to say, “If you think someone in your personal network could use our services, here’s info you can use to pitch us” — and then leave it up to you. But just issuing blanket requests to promote the company in your personal life is crappy. People have a good sense of whether their social networks want to hear this stuff or not, and they rightly worry about seeming pushy, annoying, or tone-deaf by injecting sales pitches where they’re not wanted. (Moreover, these forced pitches usually aren’t even effective, since they’re half-hearted and not targeted to a real need in an appropriate time and place.)
2. Should we let an employee pay their own way to a conference in an exciting location?
I work for a large nonprofit in a field that has a few large relevant conferences that staff regularly attend and present at. Staff obviously love getting to attend conferences, especially when they are hosted in fun or exciting locations, which they frequently are. This year, one is in an exciting international location (we are US based). We try to be fair and equitable about who gets to attend based on several factors, and this year one of our managers is slated to go to this one.
Another employee of a similar level attended last year (it was at a less “exciting” location, which the employee commented on at the time, but location is dependent on who is willing to host each year) and really wants to attend again this year. This employee has said they are willing to pay their own way to attend. Our director is fine with this, but conversation is ongoing. My main concerns stem from an equitability standpoint. Most of our staff would never be able to attend any of these big conferences if they had to pay themselves (even at a US location these conferences are expensive) which means that this employee will receive opportunities that their peers will not. I’m also slightly concerned that if this person attends and tells attendees from other organizations that they paid their own way (which could realistically come up based on my own experiences at these events) there could be an optics issue. We might want to recruit some of these people one day and I don’t want them to think we don’t pay people to attend conferences, we do! We just can’t pay for everyone to attend each year and this isn’t their year. And no one attends every year, not even our director, we really do all take turns.
We obviously can’t entirely prevent someone from attending on their own, but it just doesn’t feel quite right to me. If it matters, I am at a high enough level and have the capital to push back if that makes sense, but I can’t decide if I’m being reasonable or not. I voiced my concerns gently once and it didn’t go anywhere, should I leave it alone? Is this even something I should be concerned about? If it’s worth addressing, how do we frame this for the employee?
Ugh, I see your concerns here and I’m torn. You’re right that you don’t want people to think your organization makes staffers pay their own way to conferences. You’re right that it’s not good for your org if people who are willing/able to pay their own way have extra access to opportunites that other people don’t get. You’re right that it’s reasonable to have a system where people take turns going. (I’m assuming these are the sorts of conferences that aren’t essential to people’s jobs, just a nice perk.) And I can also understand an employee who feels like, “Why should I be denied an opportunity that won’t cost the company anything?” The answer, potentially, is that it does cost you something — in other people’s morale and sense of equity in how the organization operates, and maybe in reputation. Ultimately I think where I come down is that it’s not an absolute outrage if you let this person pay their own way, but it is reasonable for you to say that internal equity means you can’t let people buy their way outside of your system of taking turns.
3. My company will only let me take one week of vacation at at time — but my family is overseas
This year I am to receive three weeks of vacation as stated in our benefits package. Although we have a few other international teammates and they were able to take three weeks at once for vacation last year, as of this year we were told that no one can take more than a week at the time.
Last year I was a part-timer and these benefits did not apply to me, but I accepted full-time hoping I can use the three weeks to see my family overseas. My dad will turn 90 this year and I cannot miss this, have not seen them in five years, and I cannot stay less than my entire three weeks that I am allowed. The flight is very expensive and my time with him is too limited. I can be insincere and invoke the FMLA option, but I would like to believe that I have a good relationship with my manager and although a negative answer will be devastating, once I attempt to be honest and get denied, it will be too late to use the FMLA option.
Don’t lie and say you need FMLA leave if you don’t. There’s documentation associated with FMLA, and you are highly likely to get fired if they find out you lied.
A lot of companies restrict vacation to one or two weeks at a time, but some will make exceptions for special circumstances, such as people whose families are overseas. Talk to your manager, explain the situation (family overseas; long, expensive flights; and a 90-year-old father) and ask if they’d consider making an exception since otherwise this would be a significant hardship for you.
4. Who’s responsible for planning maternity leave coverage?
I am a few months away from getting prepped for maternity leave, but I’m wondering whose responsibility it is to arrange coverage while I’m away? I work on a specialized team of only three people and we’re all really busy with our own duties. Am I responsible for doing all my work ahead of my 14-week leave or does my manager ultimately need to figure that out?
You’re definitely not supposed to get 14 weeks of work done ahead of your leave! Instead, sit down with your manager, say you want to start getting things ready for your leave, and ask to talk through what you should do to prepare. Typically that would mean things like leaving projects documented, transitioning key responsibilities to someone else temporarily, possibly training a temp, and so forth. But it should be a conversation with your manager to sort through everything and hear what she’s thinking about who will cover what. Different managers will lean on you to different extents to help with that planning, so it’s good to start the conversation now.
That said, the more senior you are, the more expected you’ll be to make arrangements yourself. If you run your own team, for example, you might pick someone to fill your role in the interim and make all the arrangements yourself. (But even then you wouldn’t be doing the work ahead of time — you’d just be the one making the plan and making sure everyone knows what pieces they’ll be covering.)
5. Asking for LinkedIn recommendations
I currently have no LinkedIn Recommendations from others, though a lot of people I went to college with do. Is there a good way to ask for someone to write a quick recommendation on my LinkedIn Page so I stand out? Or is asking for that too much?
People do make that request, but honestly, I wouldn’t spend the capital on it. LinkedIn recommendations just don’t carry much weight at all (because they’re public and written for you to see, so employers know they don’t necessarily give the full picture). The stuff that makes you stand out is having a track record of achievement, writing a great cover letter, and interviewing well. LinkedIn recommendations don’t really matter — save that capital for when you need real references.
boss wants us to use personal social media for marketing, we can only take one week of vacation at a time, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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