It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Everyone has ideas, but no one wants to do the work
I belong to an all-volunteer organization that does a lot of good in our community. However, most of the work is done by a small core group of volunteers. There are several others who serve on the board or committees who “contribute” primarily by generating lots of ideas for projects or approaches, but never step up to implement their ideas. They take up a lot of time in meetings and send lots of group emails that only lead to anything concrete if others do the work; if asked to help, they are always too busy. We don’t want to discourage people from participating or squash creative thinking, but we don’t want to waste time or take up the group bandwidth on ideas with no commitment behind them. In my experience, there is never a shortage of good ideas; the limiting factor is always the available volunteer time and energy. Can you suggest a way to convey that without sounding sour or hurting feelings?
One common way to do it is to require that ideas be accompanied by at least a rough outline for how they’d be accomplished and what resources would be required. That alone tends to squash a lot of pie-in-the-sky thinking. Another approach is to require that people on your board and committees commit to X number of projects per year — which would both get you more help with the actual work and drive home the point that ideas take people to implement them.
Or when someone submits an idea, you can respond with, “Sounds great! Are you able to take the lead on implementing it?” Obviously you don’t want to say that unless you really want the person to move forward, but that response can make your point pretty effectively.
You can also just be really direct about it with your members: “We are overloaded and are receiving way more ideas than we have workers to take on. Our projects for the year are X, Y, and Z. To take on anything additional, we either need to cancel one of these or have more people step up to help.”
2. Company invited alumni to “celebrate” laid off staff
A company I used to work for just laid off five people. I found out because I received an email with the header: “130 Years of CompanyName Wisdom: a Farewell Celebration for Departing Senior Employees.” The body text read, “We are saying farewell to some long-standing and treasured colleagues as CompanyName right-sizes for the strategic future we see. Departing this fall will be colleagues Sansa, Cersei, Joaquin, Wakeen, and Bob. I hope you can join us for an online celebration of their work and many impactful years with us.”
Some alumni sent reply-all responses: “I’m sorry to hear about the transitions” and “I decline to participate in an Orwellian right-sizing, transition CELEBRATION of five top human beings who have been summarily fired during a pandemic.”
What do you think? Are the reply-all responses right, or harsh? I think I’d feel humiliated if I were Sansa, Cersei, Joaquin, Wakeen, or Bob (unemployment notwithstanding). I would love a reality check from you.
The email was pretty gross. It’s worded as a celebration of “right-sizing” (an awful word which on its own deserves a harsh response). And they apparently just cc’d a whole list of people (rather than bcc’ing or using mailing list software) so that everyone’s email addresses were shared and people could easily reply-all to the whole list? That more or less guaranteed this response. Your old company bungled this in multiple ways.
3. My company won’t call me Doctor or Lord
I was hoping that you could help me with a question I have regarding the use of honorifics in workplace documentation. I have recently acquired a new honorific, and my employers are refusing to use it on the documents that I have requested it be used on. I have legal documents that also show that my title is a fully legal one and can be used on official government documents up to and including my passport. Is there anything that I can do to get my employers to use it?
Specifically, I have a doctorate and I am also legally a Lord, meaning that I should therefore legally be entitled to either go by Lord LastName or Dr LastName. My employer has already referred to me as Lord LastName in several documents as well as Dr LastName in others, but they are now refusing to use either of them in any documents and on a display board that displays pictures of members of staff and their names underneath for visitors to familiarize themselves with. My passport actually also has my name as Lord FirstName LastName, which irks me that it can be used on important legal documents and yet, my employer refuses to acknowledge it.
It’s up to your employer to decide which honorifics they use across the board. If they use Doctor for other people with non-medical doctorates but not for you, you have a valid objection. If they don’t use it for anyone, that’s a choice about their culture that they’re allowed to make. The same goes for Lord.
I’m guessing you’re not in the U.S. and I can’t speak to how this would play in another country’s culture, but I can tell you that in the U.S. continuing to push for this would mark you as out-of-touch and pompous. I’d let it drop.
4. Recruiter missed a video call with me
I am a senior nursing student graduating next May. I have started my job search since new grad nursing residency programs (year-long programs to help you adjust to the workforce and slowly let you take on more patients) fill quickly. I was contacted by a recruiter through my school’s job search engine website. There was a Q&A session that I couldn’t make, so we scheduled a one-on-one video call. From internship Q&A session calls I’ve experienced, it is basically a job interview so I made sure I dressed professionally and was prepared. I was supposed to receive an email with the meeting link over a week ago and the meeting was supposed to be 30 minutes ago but no link was ever sent. I messaged the recruiter to follow up to see if it was sent to the wrong email but I haven’t gotten a response yet. I wasn’t super interested in working for this hospital but figured it would be a good learning experience and that I might actually want to work there. Is there anything I should have done differently? The meeting was confirmed over messages and I know the time zone is the same.
It sounds like you did everything right: ensured the meeting was confirmed ahead of time, checked the time zone, and were ready and prepared. Unfortunately you encountered something that’s not uncommon in job searching: recruiters no-showing. It’s rude and inexcusable, but it happens a lot. Many recruiters just don’t prioritize candidates — and especially early-career candidates — the same way they’d prioritize other meetings. Recruiters who do this think they hold all the power and thus don’t need to be particularly considerate of candidates; they feel like they have something you want and don’t consider that, if you’re a strong candidate, you also have something they want.
All you can do is follow up (as you did) and then move on. I’m sorry it happened!
5. When’s the right time to ask about a permanent work-from-home schedule?
I am applying to a job that is currently operating remotely in an area fairly hard hit by COVID. If other organizations in the area are anything to go by, this organization will not return to normal, in-office operations until July 2021. Assuming a hiring process a few months long, I wouldn’t start working there until the end of 2020 or beginning of 2021.
I have quite enjoyed working from home. I don’t want a 100% work-from-home job, but I’d love to only go into the office 2-3 times a week. Is that something you would bring up in the hiring phase – when everything is already work-from home – or wait until things start to return to the office, and you’ve had 6+ months to illustrate what you can do when working 100% remotely?
It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but I’ve never tried to negotiate anything other than salary. I’m not sure whether it makes sense to bring up something like that at this stage, given the circumstances. (For what it’s worth, the role would report directly to the executive director/founder of the org.)
It depends on how much capital you have. If you’re skilled and in-demand, you have more standing to try to negotiate it as part of your offer before you accept (and get it in writing if you do that!). If you don’t have much of a track record yet, you might be better off waiting until you’ve proved yourself for a while — although of course if you go that route, there’s a risk that their eventual answer will be no, so it also depends on how much of a deal-breaker a no would be for you. Basically, though, it comes down to how much they want to hire you. If they’re strongly motivated to get you to accept, the best time to ask for the schedule you want is while they’re trying to get you to come onboard.
office won’t call me “lord,” everyone has ideas but won’t do the work, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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