updates: the star employee, HR not keeping up with the law, and more

[ResidentialBusiness]

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

Here are four updates from past letter-writers.

1. An employee is out to get my star performer, and no one else cares (first update)

I thought it could be good for the folks who were predicting catastrophe with Dave to hear what actually happened. Sometimes situations aren’t ideal but that doesn’t mean doom either.

I respected Tina’s wishes and did not go to HR. Given some of the vehement responses, I did extra legwork with Maria and HR contacts at previous companies in the same industry before making my final decision. Quoting one HR professional when I asked about noting it in Dave’s record in case there is a pattern: “That is not a thing. We aren’t school admins keeping a permanent record in that way. We handle illegal behavior, or actionable behaviors against internal policies. […] That’s it!” Given that Maria and every professional I talked to agreed HR would not do anything with this information and Tina did not want it shared, I did not reach out to HR. I know some folks will probably still disagree, but I’m comfortable I did my due diligence.

Dave is still here and has been a model employee. I had no authority to fire Dave and agree he should have been!

Jen is improving all the time. I think today’s Jen would have fired Dave. Small consolation but I try to see the silver linings. I’m still cautious, but hopeful we can continue to work well together in the coming years.

My team has grown and is doing well. There have been no issues with Dave or anyone else but I also make sure to ask if they are having any issues with staff in our one-on-ones. I’m also getting an award for an idea Tina gave me before this all went down. I offered to have her receive the award instead, but she understandably wanted nothing to do with this department.

Tina is doing amazing! This year she got a max raise, max bonus, 5/5, and got a special bonus as well. Her manager is getting a prestigious global leadership award for the problem Tina solved as well.

Sadly for the company but happily for Tina, she left and moved across the country to live closer to family. She was able to leverage her new salary and recent accomplishments to land a similar high level role at her new company. She seems excited about transitioning to that industry and I’ve let her know I’m happy to be a reference whenever she needs me.

In the end, all the nasty stuff that Dave, Jen, and Sally pulled launched Tina into a higher paying career track. I’m grateful to have worked with her and hope for nothing but the best for her. She deserves to work at a good place with better people than our company offered her.

2. Returning to an office where an estranged friend works (#3 at the link)

I wrote in last fall regarding my return to an office where a former friend, Ashley, with whom I had had a falling out, still worked. You suggested doing nothing and remaining pleasant and professional. I did follow that advice, although I’m not sure any course of action I took or didn’t take would have changed much.

Unfortunately, it started off on the wrong foot from the very first day. I came into the office and started walking down the hallway. Ashley was walking down the hallway from the other end, towards me. She saw me, stopped, turned around, and walked back the way she came. Later that same day, we passed each other in the hall and she didn’t acknowledge me in any way. She just passed me by like she didn’t know me.

I can’t really say that our interactions have been bad because there haven’t been any. We are in the office once per week and she ignores me. We have a Teams group chat and she never reacts to anything I say.

I had hoped that things might change in the new year. But I was recently asked to give a presentation during an in-person meeting about my experience overseas. The meeting agenda was distributed in advance. She came to the meeting. When it was my turn to present, she left.

So I’ve given up any chance of reviving the friendship. We are moving to two days per week in office in March and three days per week in September. Not sure what impact that will have.

As for Stephanie, everything is good there. We talk every day and it’s like I never left.

Thank you for giving me a chance to put some of my thoughts and feelings on paper and be heard. Even though this situation is my fault, it’s still incredibly frustrating.

3. Invited to be a guest speaker and then blown off (#4 at the link)

I did somewhat take your advice (in combination with some advice from a friend of mine)! I ended up emailing that professor the next day to very politely share my feelings. I know you said I didn’t owe him anything, but I’m the kind of person that needs to speak up when I’ve been impacted by someone else. I basically told him that I was disappointed when the tech issue arose and no time was taken to try to resolve it as I had spent time preparing the dialogue and stepped away from work to be present (this event was in the middle of the workday). I informed him that alum do not have access to authorized school Zoom accounts and that it would be helpful to test out meeting connections to avoid this happening to guest speakers in the future.

The prof was very apologetic in his response and explained that he hadn’t anticipated alum having trouble accessing the meeting. I got the impression he thought the tech issue was on my end and didn’t think my absence was a big deal until I had said something. He offered to have me speak at his next scheduled class, but I kindly declined. I knew that he had initially only scheduled one class for speakers and that he was accommodating me with a second class to make up for the inconvenience. I didn’t feel right taking away from the students’ regular scheduled content and thought it would be weird for me to show up as the only speaker for that second day. At that point, I had also lost the excitement I initially had about being a speaker. The email chain ended on a positive note and I said we could keep in touch, but I do think it has impacted my opinion of this professor a little bit.

4. HR hasn’t kept up with local employment regulations (#4 at the link)

Thanks so much for answering my question! I read the comments with a great deal of interest — there were widely varying perspectives, and I was surprised to find some folks more concerned about making HR look bad (not my intention — they manage to do that all by themselves) than making sure my coworkers know about the new benefit to which they’re now legally entitled.

An update: Once the employment policies intranet page had been updated by HR in early February, I did share the information with all of my New York colleagues and all of the early-career staff in my department (which is spread across the U.S.) via two Teams messages/posts. My intent in sharing it beyond the New York office is to see whether we can collectively encourage the company to match the benefit in all the locations where it operates. I kept an excited “how cool is this new benefit” tone throughout those Teams messages/posts. As some commenters rightly surmised, it’s very difficult to know that there are updates to our online employment policies page, since they’re neither announced nor tracked.

I’m glad to know my instincts were closely aligned with your advice.

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