It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I lost it and gave relationship advice to my employee
About a year ago, one of my direct reports, “Anna,” had a baby. The company we work for is notoriously not family-friendly (which I have experienced firsthand after my children were born), but she is a very talented and hard-working staff member and as her supervisor I was able to give her more flexibility than the company would offer. She has often complained to me about how little her husband helps with the baby. However, I tried to keep things focused on how I could help her manage her time and schedule at work, and we were basically at the point where she was back to a more normal work situation.
Then this COVID situation happened, everyone has been working from home, and I feel like the lines I made to separate appropriate manager/employee conversations have gone out the window! I know her husband is also working from home, but at practically every meeting Anna is struggling with juggling the baby and participating. There have even been several occasions when she started the meeting without the baby, and her husband came into the video, handed her the baby, and walked away! After several weeks of this, I decided to tell her that she needs to figure out a way to split the child care more evenly, and if he is supposed to be watching the baby during a meeting, he needs to step up and shouldn’t be bringing the baby to her halfway through. I have felt like saying this type of thing all along, but as her manager I knew it was not appropriate to give her relationship advice. Seeing it first-hand and being directly impacted by it made me lose it a little! I have since been stressing that I overstepped, but now I don’t know how to go back.
It sounds like Anna is pretty clear on your feelings by this point. If she’s not acting on them, it’s probably because she can’t.
If it’s absolutely essential that Anna not have the baby during meetings, you should tell her that (without opining on how her husband should be helping) and ask what you can do on your end to make it easier for her (like changing the times of meetings, scheduling them further in advance, or accepting she won’t be able to attend some of them). But I’d also ask yourself how you’d handle this if Anna were a single mom. If you’d be okay with the baby’s presence then, and the main reason you’re not right now is because her husband should be doing his part, then I think you’ve got to let it go. Yes, he should be parenting his child, but if Anna can’t make that happen, you definitely can’t. You’ve got to work with what you have, which is an employee who has significant child care responsibilities right now and a husband who for our purposes is essentially not there.
As for what to do about what you said to her, it’s possible the best move is to just leave it alone now. But if you want to say something, you could say, “I overstepped when I told you how to handle child care with your husband, and I apologize for inserting myself into your private business. I understand you’re in a tough spot and doing the best you can.”
And who knows what’s up with Anna’s husband — maybe he’s a lazy jerk, or maybe there’s something in his situation that he and Anna have jointly decided warrants interrupting her while she’s working. Either way, it’s for Anna to work out; your role is being direct about what you need from her (and hearing her when she tells you what is and isn’t possible), not telling her how to arrange her marriage to accomplish it.
2. Company won’t hire me because I live in California
I applied for an online tutoring position for which I am well qualified. I was told that they are not hiring anyone from California due to having to make them employees per a new law in effect here, AB5, which limited companies’ ability to classify workers as independent contractors.
I make good money, have to maintain a home office and its technical equipment, and have no need of the employee protections. When I apply for a position, can I give a different address so they can treat me as someone living in a different state? It is an online position so where I live does not matter.
Where you live does matter, because the company will be subject to the employment laws in that state. If California law says they’d need to make you an employee rather than a contractor, they can’t violate the law just because you don’t care if they follow it or not! They’d be subject to penalties regardless. You can’t just opt out of the law.
Lying about what state you’re in would be fraudulent (are you going to give them a different address for your tax forms too?) and put them at risk — and would be an unethical thing to do to a company that’s trying to follow the law.
3. How will the move to pass/fail for transcripts this semester look to employers?
My college was one of the first to move online in response to the coronavirus. After a couple weeks of online classes, when it was clear this was going to last the whole semester, they presented a new option for reporting this semester’s grades on your transcript. Essentially you can opt to have any class’s four-point grade system replaced by a binary scale- it’s listed as Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory on the transcript with a note explaining the COVID outbreak and how the switch to online disrupted classes (a lot of professors weren’t ready for it, but that’s another story). The four-point grade is available on request in case the company you interview with wants to know what it is. A lot of students are considering using this, since it has some benefits outside of transcripts, and a lot of grades dipped because of the switch to online learning.
How would this look to someone looking to hire? My sister says it will hurt my chances, since it’ll look suspicious on a job application. She’s also pretty sure the note about the impact of coronavirus will be ignored. On the other hand, both big universities in my state are using this grading method, so it won’t be unheard of. And it’s not like everyone will immediately forget the outbreak happened when it’s contained. Who’s right here?
Lots of schools are doing this and it will be fine. No one is going to forget the outbreak, lots of transcripts will have this, and it won’t hurt you.
4. How can I get my belongings back from the employer that laid me off?
I was working retail before all the Covid stuff started getting crazy. My employer laid off multiple employees in different states. This was not done in person, but either via email or phone call. Due to how this was done, we did not have a chance to return to work and obtain our personal belongings. It’s been about three weeks and aside from being told “we’ll let you know,” we haven’t heard anything further. I’ve tried looking it up, but can’t find any information on any laws that say how long they can go without letting us obtain our belongings. Any suggestions?
If their locations are closed and there’s no one there who can let you in, there’s not going to be a practical way to pursue it. If there’s something there you absolutely must retrieve before they reopen — like medicine or a pet frog or so forth — explain the situation to them and ask for help. But otherwise, you’re probably stuck waiting until they reopen.
If they are still open, then it’s reasonable to say, “I need to retrieve my belongings and will be there on Tuesday at 2 pm to collect them. If there’s a different time you’d prefer, please let me know by Monday.”
They do need to return your property. If they refuse, you can file in small claims court — but your approach needs to factor in what’s going on right now.
5. How can I get people to lay off on LinkedIn?
I am an onboarding program manager for a manufacturing company that has been in a huge growth mode so far this year, and has ground to a half because of our state’s shelter in place restrictions (which I fully support). So, for obvious reasons I am currently being bombarded with networking requests. I sound like I might be involved in starting new people, we’ve been hiring a lot, and a lot of new people are now desperate for employment. I get it.
Unfortunately, I got furloughed. I totally understand why and it makes sense for the company that I was chosen, and I expect to be brought back on as soon as we get started. We will have to continue hiring pretty rapidly once we can go again.
But all these LinkedIn messages are getting me down, even more than the furlough itself. It feels like it’s really rubbing it in while I am trying to make the most of my newfound stay-at-home mom status. I’ve turned off my notifications, I try to check as infrequently as possible, and I am mostly just not responding to emails asking for more information on positions that I really don’t know anything about anyway. I feel like I come across as a jerk by ignoring them, especially since if they do end up getting hired after this, I will be their main point of contact for the onboarding period. But I just … can’t? Is there a better strategy I could be using to deal with this?
Stop checking LinkedIn. Seriously! It doesn’t sound like there’s any need (unless you decide to start a job search at some point), and you’re not obligated to respond to requests there, particularly when it doesn’t sound like you’d be able to send a helpful response anyway. Give yourself permission to be on hiatus from LinkedIn.
If you want, once you’re back to work, take 10 minutes and copy and paste a form reply to everyone who messaged you there about jobs and say something like, “Apologies for missing this message while I was away from work. If you still need help, please let me know and I’d be glad to try to answer (although note that I generally only have info about positions in the X department).”
6. Llamas
I thought I might share something incredibly uplifting that our team did this week. I supervise a staff of college seniors who are all bummed to finish out their college career without the traditional graduation celebrations. When several friends sent me this article a few weeks back, I thought a surprise llama appearance might help cheer them up since it is such a ridiculous thing to do at a work meeting.
Yesterday was finally llama zoom day, and our new furry friends exceeded everyone’s expectations! The students were completely shocked at the special guests (I wish I could share the first reaction picture, but, FERPA…) and laughed for the next 20 minutes as we got to meet the llamas and learn llama trivia (did you know about the communal poop piles? the difference between kissing and spitting?). One student declared it the “BEST WORK ZOOM EVER.” Could not recommend this experience more highly!
Enjoy some pictures of the llamas on the call.
I gave relationship advice to my employee, company won’t hire me because of where I live, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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