It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I want to return to the office but we’re still working from home
My organization has been working from home since mid-March. Luckily, the work we do can be done remotely so we have adapted pretty well to the change. My state has gradually re-opened and will be in phase 3 soon. However, my grandboss has insisted that we will continue to work from home even into the fall. Employees are not to return to the workplace unless they are essential workers.
I’m having a tough time with this. While I am fine with working from home one or two days a week, having to work every day from home until 2021 is not something I want to do. I’d like to suggest something like you shared several weeks ago, about a company reopening well: allowing employees who want to work from home to continue to do so while at the same time gradually allowing employees who want to return to the office to do so. I guess I’m asking for a reality check: am I being selfish? I appreciate my grandboss’ desire to keep his employees protected, but I think there are employees who are having a tough time working remotely and would like to start making the transition back to office life.
Well, every additional person in the office raises the risk for everyone else so from a safety standpoint, if you can do your job from home, you should. I’ve received a lot of letters from people whose jobs require them to be in the office and who are frustrated by other people choosing to come in when they don’t have to — because it’s raising everyone’s risk.
That said, there may be ways to return to work that don’t increase other people’s risk, depending on what the physical space is like. If you can remain relatively isolated without contact with others, it’s more reasonable — but if your reason for wanting to return is to be less isolated, that may not work.
I don’t think you’re being selfish in wondering about this — if you don’t work well at home, that’s a legitimate concern. But when it’s optional, the priority should be what is and isn’t safe right now.
2. How to tell a computer-illiterate coworker I can’t keep helping her
I work at a childcare facility and we have tools we use both on a computer and an iPad. One of my coworkers is an older (60+) woman and is constantly asking for help with technology. She blames the assistant who came before me for not teaching her how to use the technology, but the program offers specific trainings if you need them. My coworker constantly makes mistakes or asks questions about how to do a procedure she should know how to do. I have offered to help her during work hours with the technology, but it’s wearing on my patience. During the COVID-19 outbreak, she has continued to call or text me with questions about technology, claiming our boss won’t answer her.
How do I politely say to her that I don’t want to help her any more, that it’s not my responsibility, and to not bug me when we’re not at work? Should I tell my boss about this or should I just keep helping her?
Say this in response to the next question: “I’ve been happy to try to help, but since you’ve continued to have questions, I think you really need to take the program trainings. Here’s a link to info about how to sign up.”
And then when there’s another question: “Have you taken those trainings yet? I’d ask that you do that because this is a lot of questions for me to field.”
(This assumes, of course, that it’s not part of your job to help her.)
3. Should I tell candidates to stop applying for jobs they don’t meet the requirements for?
I work as an agency recruiter, so I write a lot of job ads, primarily on LinkedIn. They can receive anywhere from 100-800 applicants depending on the role and location. It’s my job to work out what the essentials are, and what the preferences are from the client’s point of view.
I generally agree with the advice that you give that you don’t need to meet 100% of the requirements to apply for a job and often I will still contact candidates who don’t fit the “ideal” candidate but still have the essentials necessary. However, I’m finding that more and more people are applying without having the essential requirements, almost as if they haven’t bothered to read the ad. For example, I recently posted a job where the candidate must speak either French or German fluently, and I would say 80% of the applicants did not meet this criteria. I checked my wording and the ad specifically says “professional fluency in French and/or German is essential.”
Reading these applications wastes my time. Each CV doesn’t take long but when I’ve got 800 to get through, it adds up. Part of me wants to mention it in my rejection email in the hopes they will read job ads more carefully in the future, but this will probably set the wrong tone. Is there anything I can do at my end to limit this issue? Or should I just accept that this is part of the problem of job ads (and if it is part of the problem, do you have any theories as to why candidates do this?).
You’re seeing more of this because of the economy; you have (a) more candidates in general and (b) more desperate candidates. Both those things lead to people resume-bombing, where they indiscriminately send their resume in for anything they feel remotely qualified for.
This is just part of the deal when you hire. There’s no way to avoid it. Don’t add language about it to your rejection email, since it’s not likely to change anything — and besides, sending those people a different form letter than everyone else will take up more of your time! Accept it as something that comes with the territory, and let it roll off you.
4. My manager won’t stop contacting us when she’s on vacation
I work for a small company (36 employees) that has a generous vacation policy. Generally speaking, when people are off, they are truly off. No Slack, email, phone calls, or meetings are expected. It’s lovely!
The only person who tries to work through their vacation is my manager. She leads a team of five and when she’s on vacation she’s constantly checking in on projects, offering up new ideas outside our current workload, and generally getting involved when it suits her. It’s inconsistent when she’ll chime in, leading to plenty of confusion and miscommunication about who is in charge. Her additional ideas feel like a burden when we’re already swamped.
She’s joked before about not having any boundaries, so she’s at least vaguely aware it’s thing, but how do I/we bring it up in a way that shows her compassionately that her sporadic involvement while she should be unplugged sets a bad example for her team, feels like micromanaging (or at the very least, she doesn’t trust us), and leads to a whole lot of headaches? Her vacation should be a break for us, too.
Well, “her vacation should be a break for us, too” isn’t really an established principle of how this is supposed to work, so I’d leave that out of it — but it’s reasonable to raise the points that (a) doing this is causing confusion and miscommunication and (b) she’s modeling bad habits for everyone else and signaling that people shouldn’t truly disconnect from work when they take time off.
Assuming you have a pretty good relationship with her and she’s open to input, you could say, “I know you prefer to check in when you’re on vacation, but it causes a lot of confusion. Because you’re out, you don’t always have the full context about other things we’re juggling or other direction we’ve been given, and it can cause a lot of miscommunication and inefficiency, like (example) and (example). It also worries me to see you always working through vacation — it makes me wonder if it’s really okay for me to disconnect when I’m out, and I’m sure it raises similar questions for other people. Would you be open to experimenting with really unplugging the next time you’re away and seeing how it goes?”
5. Is it weird for my resume to note an internship was full-time?
When the pandemic hit, I had been unemployed for about two years and volunteering for a non-profit for the previous year. Let’s say the non-profit ran a Meals on Wheels programme for the sake of illustration. Well, when lockdown began, it was suddenly responsible for a wide range of services for every elderly person in town. To help deal with the administrative carnage, I was offered two paid days a week. After three weeks (and a large government grant coming in), I was offered to go up to full-time hours for the next two months. We are coming to the end of those months now, and one of the staff members is going on maternity leave, and I’ve been asked to stay on as her cover.
My question is about titles and hours. My pandemic job has the title of “intern” because the board had already approved having a summer intern in the office and it was easier than trying to devise a new hire. I feel a little disappointed putting that on my resume; I’m in my mid-30s for one thing with an advanced degree, but setting my pride aside, I’m worried that it sounds very part-time when I’ve been a full-time member of the team during, well, you know. The maternity cover will be another nine months of full-time work, and I don’t know if the month at part-time will matter much at the end of that but equally I don’t want to seem like I’m inflating the truth. I’m really grateful to be finally working again; I just want to be able to take advantage of this stepping stone as best I can. Can I / should I include on my resume that I was full-time or that going to look silly?
People don’t automatically assume “intern” means part-time as a general rule, but more importantly, part-time versus full-time doesn’t matter much when we’re only talking about a two-month period. Plus, you’re going to have the nine-month interim (non-intern) job after that, so by the time you’re applying for jobs again, no one is going to care what hours you were working for two months nearly a year earlier. I wouldn’t worry about this at all.
That said, if it really bothers you, there’s no harm in noting it as:
Intern (Full-Time)
I want to return to the office but we’re still working from home, a computer-illiterate coworker, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
from Ask a Manager https://ift.tt/3dwE9Kw
0 Comments