Performance Tracking and Feedback

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I took over as the director of my former team about a year ago. I inherited an ongoing HR issue between one of my direct reports (Tammy) and her direct report (Beth). Beth hates Tammy. Beth had applied for the promotion to Tammy’s position when it was last open but my predecessor hired Tammy from the outside, and Beth had strong feelings about being passed over. Tammy was not the best hire; she is not a strong manager. But we are a government agency, and while Tammy isn’t my best employee, she is not so bad that there would be any chance I could fire her. I have worked on coaching 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. Is swiping on a coworker on a dating app grounds for an HR meeting? Asking for a friend: They absent-mindedly swiped on a coworker in a dating app (whom they asked out once two years earlier). Said coworker was uncomfortable with that and went to HR, and they all had a sit-down about leaving said coworker alone. I am all for not harassing people you work with romantically, but I am also conflicted — is swiping right on a coworker on Bumble or Tinder grounds for an HR intervention? They are both on a dating app, after all — a place where you are op…

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 marketing team refuses to do projects for us, then complains if we do them ourselves I’m one of several who create new educational resources for our target audience. Like most companies, we have a graphic design/marketing department that designs and approves anything that’s going to be seen by the public. Well, they’re supposed to. Most of my work is in response to current events, so I might make a new guide for our customers who want to learn more about XYZ. I’ll do the research and most of the formatting, and I’m supposed to send it off to th…

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: Three Junes, by Julia Glass. The story of three generations of a Scottish family, across three summers. It’s about the expectations and obligations of family, as well as marriage, love, and loss. One of my favorite books of all time. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. The post weekend open thread – May 10-11, 2025 appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: The last time I was searching for jobs was pre-Covid, and while the job market and world have changed in many ways, one of the ways I’m most concerned about in my current search is the rise of employee monitoring technologies. I work in a field that has been primarily remote since well before the pandemic and has not been subjected my recent waves of return-to-office for that reason. I also live with a number of serious but very well-managed mental health issues that would quickly spiral out of “very well-managed” under the pressure of surveillance technologies. This isn’t just a pref…

A reader writes: Does HR-mandated manager training actually work, ever? I had a director whose behavior veered week-to-week from overbearing to toxic to straight-up illegal. He was very savvy and never put any of the worst stuff in writing. When confronted, he claimed that he was misinterpreted or blamed the language barrier (English is not his native language). However, it’s hard to misinterpret statements such as “how can we force this employee to take less parental leave?” (the employee was taking the amount offered by the company’s own policy and protected by the FMLA) or “this employee’s (supposedly anonymous) company survey results were not very good; you need to …

A reader writes: I feel it is non-negotiable that — except for cases of emergency, sick kids, or traffic jams — employees should be at work on time the vast majority of days. This means getting to work about 10 minutes early in time to hang up a coat, use the bathroom, etc., and be at one’s desk when the hour begins. I feel like most employees and many managers do not so much care about this or, if they do, they don’t say anything to late employees. I have worked with colleagues who regularly show up 10-20 minutes late and no one seems to care. I’m not talking about flex-time jobs. Are my standards old-fashioned? I answer this question — and three others — over at Inc. …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. How to get someone to say what they want on Teams chat, not just say “hi” I’m looking for a polite script to nip a problem in the bud. I started a new job today, and a colleague with whom I’ll be working closely just messaged me saying, “Hi.” To find out this was all she said, I had to put in a long password to open the app, just to find nothing actionable. She still hasn’t sent me the information I need about where to meet tomorrow, so I guess she’s holding off until I reply “hi.” I really don’t want to encourage this kind of empty message leading…

A reader writes: I’m absolutely prepared for you to tell me there is nothing I can do about this at all besides ignore it, but I REALLY need to change my thinking around my boss’s parenting choices, which I find bizarre and am frankly tired of hearing about. My boss’s adult daughter and 13-year-old grandchild live with her. The daughter doesn’t work but often needs my boss to babysit. Fine, this is her business. But when she leaves work to do it, she gives us a convoluted and overly detailed explanation of why, every time. This has the effect of making it seem much more annoying than it would be otherwise, especially if we’re in the middle of a deliverable or project. …

A reader writes: I work for a woman who is very highly respected. She is very smart and has accomplished a lot in her life. She also has had a few missteps in her past like anyone has and, although I do not know the extent of some of her previous failures, I feel I can partly link them to her business partner. She runs the day-to-day operations of the company I work at, and her business partner is mainly the financial backing to her current and her previous companies. My boss does speaking engagements and is very women-empowering, especially to women of a certain age and women of color. Her business partner, however, is very crude; he speaks down to me and all of my pe…

It’s mid-year updates season! If you’ve had your question answered here in the past, please email me an update and let us know how your situation turned out. Did you take the advice? Did you not take the advice? What happened? How’s your situation now? (Don’t post your updates here though; email them to me.) Your update doesn’t have to be positive or big to be worth submitting. We want to hear them all, even if you don’t think yours is that interesting. And if there’s anyone you especially want to hear an update from, mention it here and I’ll reach out to those people directly. The post where are you now? (a call for updates) appeared first on Ask a Manager. View th…

Last week we talked about memorable impressions made by new hires. Here are 20 of my favorite stories you shared. 1. The celebration At my husband’s old company, a new hire took a three-hour lunch on his first day. When a coworker asked where he’d been, new hire said he’d been at the strip club with his friends celebrating his new job. He reasoned that this was fine because “it’s just syllabus week right now.” He did not last long. 2. The carving Years ago we held an orientation for some new hires in the boardroom and one of them chose to carve his name into the table-top. It was his first and last day. 3. The Keurig annexation On a new guy’s first day, he took the…

If you’re getting ready to quit your job, you’re probably thinking a lot about how to tell your boss and your team that you’re leaving. But before you give anyone a heads-up, there are some things you need to do first. At New York Magazine today, I’ve got a checklist of 10 items to take care of before you quit. You can read it here. The post what to do before you quit your job: a checklist appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

A reader writes: I am a senior manager on a team that does a back office function (think HR, finance, marketing). A seasoned manager, Rachael, reports to me and has a handful of staff members reporting to her. Our team is hybrid, requiring two in-office days, although we grant flexibility for temporary medical/childcare/life issues that come up. The operations we support are all in-office. Rachael recently told us that she is trying to move out of state and asked to work fully remote. She was candid about this potential move when she was hired several years ago and in subsequent conversations. Rachael is very experienced and previously held my position earlier in her ca…

A reader writes: I’m managing a department of eight people and two of them won’t speak to each other. I’m new to my position and it took me a couple of months to figure out that they weren’t talking. They literally won’t speak to each other. If we have a meeting, they won’t participate if the other person is in the room, unless I address a question directly to one of them. I’ve been managing them for three months, but from what I can gather it’s been like this for at least two years. There seem to be a couple of other people in the department who are on one person’s side or the other, and it is affecting the department’s work. Everyone who has been with the company fo…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I recently interviewed for and accepted a job as a nurse at the very small hospital in my very small midwestern town. My lovely manager was very transparent about how they are big supporters of work-life balance, and gave tangible examples of how they support families, because they have “small town values.” She is clearly very proud of this fact and puts a lot of stock in being a “good” manager. I know some of the employees on that floor, and everything she says seems to be true and not just lip service. Well, I am pregnant (around 15-16 weeks when I interviewed) but, naturally, did …

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: The letter you posted from the volunteer who didn’t disclose something to a student’s teacher and parents reminded me about something that happened to me a while ago with an outside mentor for an after-school program, especially since I was a lot like Marvin in that letter (without the expensive romantic overtures). I was the only girl in a STEM club at my high school, and the mentor was, let’s say, a teapot designer who also trained teapot drivers. Bob wasn’t actually a teacher at my school. He was a volunteer who worked at a well-known organization that the club was associated with…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: I recently interviewed for a new job that I was really excited: it’s exactly what I want to be doing next in my career, at a company I’ve heard good things about, and with a salary range that would be a significant boost from what I earn currently. After the second interview, the hiring manager asked me for my references. I sent her contact info for my manager from the two previous jobs before my current one, as well as a senior colleague who I’ve worked closely with. I didn’t offer my current manager since she does not know that I’m looking, and I would rather she not know until I’m…

Remember the letter-writer whose breastfeeding coworker wouldn’t stop talking about her boobs? Here’s the update. It has been about a year since I wrote in. While the talk about breastfeeding specifically decreased about eight months in, my coworker’s seemingly endless need for attention and validation was unceasing. It got to the point where only about three people in the office were engaging with her at all unless they absolutely had to. She then shifted tactics, approaching people with questions that were superficially work related, then immediately re-centering the conversation to either boast about her chosen path to martyrdom, garner excessive praise for her child’…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. A reader writes: Through a bit of misfortune, I had to fall back on working at the company my parents own, in order to pay my bills. It is a challenging job market, to say the least, so I am grateful that I have this safety net I can fall back on. However, it isn’t without its own league of challenges: my coworkers have taken to making complaints about me to my parents, who are the bosses, about issues that quite frankly seem petulant. In one case, one coworker was noting what times I was clocking in and made a complaint when I clocked in three hours earlier than everybody else to finish paperwork in…

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Employee is afraid to fly I work on a small marketing team and have one direct report. A couple of times a year, our team is required to attend industry conferences to staff a booth. These events typically require air travel and are part of the job expectations, outlined in the job description. We rotate travel assignments so the same people aren’t always on the road. Earlier this year, after some high-profile plane incidents, my employee disclosed that she has a fear of flying and said she wouldn’t be able to attend an upcoming conference. In that case, it was fine — we had plenty of coverage. My question is: if thi…

Two questions, same topic. The first one: I’m on the job hunt, and I have some DEI-focused experience on my resume. I’ve received five rejections from the ~15 jobs I’ve applied for (at least they responded instead of ghosting me!) and I’m wondering if the DEI work is getting flagged. I revamped my team’s interview process to be more equitable and reduce bias, I joined the company’s DEI group when it started in 2020, and I have volunteer experience with a DEI group outside of work. It’s not my entire resume, but it’s enough bullet points and buzzwords to show that I have opinions. In today’s anti-DEI world, should I remove this from my resume? Probably worth noting, I’m…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Remember the letter-writer whose boss was pressuring them to work more hours when they had just back from stress leave? Here’s the update. Good news all around, thank you for the advice — I desperately needed to hear it. It ended up working out — eventually. Brian’s outbursts, yelling, and general unreasonableness got worse after I wrote in, to the point where he would shout at me and everyone else in front of the team. I’m proud of keeping my cool in those moments, but I was in tears afterwards. It sucked. “Nobody is bigger than the project” became a sort of meme on our site, which was a funny upsid…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. Especially early in your carer, it’s common to think that they way your workplace does things is normal — and then you move somewhere near and discover that having a goat shrine isn’t normal at all. This can also happen if you stay at one job for a long time, or if you move to a new field. We don’t always know that what we’re surrounded by isn’t normal — until something makes us realize that it’s not. Today’s “ask the readers” is a suggestion from a reader, who requests stories of “expressions, traditions, methods that you thought were universal but which you learned were actually just a weird thing y…

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss leads the worst staff meetings ever Every month my boss leads an all-staff meeting, and it is awful. Normally he is a pretty good boss, and I enjoy working with him. But this meeting is regularly 1.5-2 hours long and largely irrelevant to half the staff because it is mostly geared towards one team (out of 4). My boss also tries to make these meetings “fun” by asking people for personal pictures — at one meeting he showed pictures for 45 minutes before even getting to the business/informational part, during the height of our busy season. I ma…