Performance Tracking and Feedback

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: The small company where I work offers good pay, generous PTO and other benefits, a fun and friendly environment, and good work-life balance. It also has an excellent product with a lot of growth potential. Generally, it’s considered by employees to be a great place to work. The problem for me is that apart from the good pay and friendly coworkers, I mostly miss out on the perks that others enjoy. To be clear, there is a spectrum within the company: some of my coworkers are more overworked and stressed than others. But I’m an outlier: I’ve been assigned responsibility for a lot of the…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I went on a work trip and thought it went well. On the last day, I woke up to hear my senior teammate bashing me. We shared a wall, and it was paper-thin. I snore, and it’s something I’m embarrassed by, but there’s nothing I can do to control it. My teammate said he hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep for the whole trip and accused me of doing it on purpose so I could transfer off the team. I don’t know where that came from — I’ve never indicated I wanted to leave. He also called me weird and nasty. I was shocked. Up until that point, he had been pleasant, engaging, and polite. My co…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Job candidate’s name is a slur I recently reviewed a job application from a candidate whose given name is a slur. It’s not unheard of for people to be named this and there are still plenty of folks who don’t realize it is a slur. It’s not obscure knowledge by any means, but it’s definitely not as commonly understood to be harmful as more well-known slurs. The thing is, I know that it’s a slur and I don’t think I can address someone by a word that I know is harmful even though it’s their name and what they prefer to be called. The position is still …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2018. A reader writes: I have a problem with a coworker and have been hesitant to send this to you as it seems petty but it has been bugging me for awhile. It started as a pet peeve but has moved into something bigger the more she does it. This coworker, I’ll call her Eleanor, demands you say “please” whenever someone asks her to do anything work related. Some examples would be as follows: “Eleanor, can you email me those forecasts for next quarter so I can get this project to our boss?” “Only if yo…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. I’m off for the holiday, so here’s an older post from the archives. This was originally published in 2018. A reader writes: My company has a ridiculous late fine policy: you will be fined $2 for every minute, starting from 9:01 a.m. So if you come in at 9:05 a.m., that’s $10 you gotta pay up in cash. (This is not somewhere where down-to-the-minute coverage would be essential. It’s just typical deskbound, back-end work. I can see why the receptionist who gets the calls will need to be there smack on the dot, but the rest of us — not really.) I’ve been here for over a year, and have been fined maybe t…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Should I have warned an intern about a bad manager? I am a middle manager in a large organization and I am second-guessing how I handled a situation with an employee whom I used to supervise. From 2020 to 2021, I had the pleasure of supervising an outstanding intern, Anna. Anna was the kind of employee that any employer would be lucky to have. During her internship, Anna expressed interest in staying on with us after her graduation. It can be difficult to secure full-time permanent employment with our organization, and the hiring process is lengthy…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Rental House, by Weike Wang. After the daughter of Chinese immigrants and the son of a white, working class family marry, they grapple with their relationship with each other and both sets of parents over the course of a summer vacation. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s the Friday open thread! The comment section on this post is open for discussion with other readers on any work-related questions that you want to talk about (that includes school). If you want an answer from me, emailing me is still your best bet*, but this is a chance to take your questions to other readers. * If you submitted a question to me recently, please do not repost it here, as it may be in my queue to answer. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. CEO shared family trip photos after announcing budget cuts We just had a company-wide town hall, and the CEO — whom I’ve always known to be even-tempered and generally reasonable — kicked things off by sharing a recap and photos of his recent Disney World trip with 20 family members. This comes shortly after we were told about budget cuts, no bonuses, and rising health insurance costs that are eating into our modest merit increases. Needless to say, vacations aren’t exactly top of mind for most of us right now. Was this tone-deaf? Or am I overreacti…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I work at a barbershop that’s under the booth rent model, so I’m a sole proprietor. How do I professionally tell people to stop coming in sick/bringing in their sick kids? Should I display a sign at my station as well? I don’t understand how a haircut is so important when you’re sick. Not only do I hate how being sick feels, I live with my 86-year-old grandfather and it’s not in my agenda to get him sick. It’s also very inconvenient and puts my job at risk because of having to reschedule clients. I had a parent bring their super sick kid in on Christmas Eve. He sat in the front the …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Just a heads-up that Ask a Manager is on Bluesky in case you’re over there: bsky.app/profile/askamanager.org If you’ve been considering trying Bluesky but haven’t made the leap: I really like it. It has a lot of the stuff that used to be great about Twitter before it imploded, plus cool features like being able to mute posts with particular keywords (so if you just can’t handle hearing anything about llamas this week, you can eradicate them from your feed), there are cool “starter packs” (so if you want to quickly follow a bunch of people who post about science or linguistics or yarn or cats or whate…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Let’s talk about malicious compliance — times when someone purposely exposed the absurdity of a rule by doing exactly what they were told to do. For example: “I had a boss who needed to know via email every. single. time. we stepped away from our computers (we were all fully remote). So I decided to comply 100% with her request. I told her when I’m using the restroom, that I had to put cream in my coffee, that I’m going to put on a sweater because I’m cold, I’m about to open my living room blinds, you get the point. Others did that too and after like two weeks, she said we no longer have to notify her…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. People are bouncing on yoga balls during Zoom calls I’m at an all-remote company. Zooms are our go-to. In the Zooms I organize, I prefer videos off and most people know that. (So I don’t have to do my hair or get distracted, and it just drains me so much!) Obviously I make exceptions where called for. But I’m at the mercy of others when I join their meetings, and a lot of them have videos on as a default. And a few of my coworkers have recently started bouncing on yoga balls and walking on walking pads throughout their meetings. This makes me feel …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: A few years ago, I got a promotion in a different country. The organization I had previously worked at went through a re-structure and my position was eliminated. My good friend Suzie was promoted into a position that was very similar to my former position, but higher on the org chart and with more responsibility. We stayed in touch, mostly as friends, but with cheerleading and mentoring from the sidelines too. This role was a big jump in responsibility for Suzie; she essentially leapfrogged quite a few positions. Complicating matters is the fact that the organization is an incredibl…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I recently had to fire a manager for a belligerent, profanity-laden outburst during a board meeting. He has not been doing his job and has been suspected to be drinking or have been drunk while working (although no proof). To further complicate things, his manager has not done his job by documenting the problems and is now pushing me to provide some sort of severance for good will. However, I feel we have a termination with cause for insubordination. What is your suggestion on whether we need to pay severance in this instance? He is talking to a lawyer regarding a possible hostile wor…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: In 2020, due to the pandemic, my entire company started to work from home. I enjoyed a much better work-life balance and know many others did too, especially because so many people moved further away for more space. Sadly, we’ve been asked to come back into the office. At first it was a loose mandate, so people did it sparsely. I co-lead our department of 13 people with my boss, and at first we were pretty chill about it. Then the CEO started wanting people in three days a week, minimum. This caused backlash among the departments. We decided to try two days to try to be in the middle…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Our HR person helped her mom get hired in secret I work for a small company of 12 people, led by two partners. In the hierarchy of the company, I am the next tier down from the partners. We are not large enough to have an HR department, so our accountant, “Jan,” operates as the HR person as well as office manager. We have been looking to hire an executive assistant for the company’s partners and Jan has been in charge of placing the ads, screening the resumes, and doing initial interviews. Jan also attended the interviews with the partners and cand…