It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. Can my husband hang out in my office at night until I’m ready to leave?
I am a woman in my early thirties. If I am going to stay late at night at work, would it be possible to bring my husband to stay somewhere in the office until I finish my work? Is it an unusual request to make?
It will vary by office. Some offices would be fine with it. Others have security policies that could make it tricky.
Are you wondering about it for safety reasons or something else (like, I don’t know, you carpool to work and your husband needs to wait somewhere until you’re done so you can drive home together)?
If it’s safety reasons, I’d raise that with your manager directly; if you need to stay late at work, you need to feel safe doing that and your employer should work with you to make that possible.
If it’s more “my husband is bored and needs somewhere to hang out until I can leave,” it would be better for him to find somewhere else to do that until you’re done (especially if it would be a regular thing).
2. How do I get my coworkers to treat me like “the talent”?
I work in an industry where there’s crew (the production peeps) and talent (people in front of camera or behind the mic). I’ve been crew for maybe 10 years now. But I’ve pitched a project of my own and will be behind the mic for it. Exciting!
Usually, the production peeps take a lot of care briefing the talent — what happens when, who’s handling what, next steps, etc., etc. But because I’ve been on the team and am part of the company and someone from outside, they are skipping all these steps with me.
Classic slippery slope. Initially, I didn’t mind, because we were still in my area of preproduction expertise. No need to brief. Now we are reaching post and I feel totally lost and worried about who’s handling what and is somebody handling it at all or must I be sorting it out, etc. It feels dramatic to now hit them with an email saying KEEP ME ABREAST AT ALL TIMES. And how do I transition from being a mellow fellow coworker to a fussy client with lots of pointers about editing and marketing and such? (I don’t go overboard with fussiness, I swear.)
“Hey, I know I didn’t initially need everything talent normally needs, but now we’re at a point where I do need the same level of support we give to people without experience in production. I’m realizing I feel lost about things like XYZ, so going forward, can you give me the same level of briefing you’d give anyone else, even if you think I won’t need it?”
As for moving from a mellow coworker to a fussy client with lots of notes … there’s just some inherent awkwardness in there that you probably can’t entirely avoid, but if you just jump in and do it, it’ll feel more natural in time. That said, your knowledge from being on the other side can inform your approach — be as detail-oriented as you want, but be kind about it. Think of it as taking the work very seriously, rather than taking yourself seriously; that usually helps with humility. (At the same time, I bet seeing the process from the talent side is going to make some things talent does that were annoying when you were crew seem less annoying now. That always happens when you do this kind of flip, and that perspective-broadening can be useful if you return to the crew side at some point.)
3. What feedback should I give to a temporary worker who didn’t get the job?
I became a first-time manager within the past year, so this is all new to me. My first act was to make a temporary hire for my old role until our organization could fill it full-time. I hired someone I knew from a similar org who had recently been let go for budget reasons. I am completely confident she knew it was a temporary position. Within a year, I got the greenlight to hire full-time. She applied and was a finalist out of a pool of several hundred applicants. But she lost out to someone with extensive specific past experience that made them a unicorn-level fit for the job.
I told her that she did not get the job, and that it honestly wasn’t anything she did wrong; we just had a candidate we couldn’t pass up. She has been professional about it but is taking it hard.
This surprised me. Even during interviews, she did not seem very excited, but rather like applying was the expected thing to do. Even so, it was a close decision because she is very good. I have honestly told her I will be a glowing reference for her. I told her, if she wants, she can stay through end of the month. (She doesn’t know this yet but I’m also trying to get the budget to give her some cover for the next month.) We also lined up some short projects that I hope she can use as examples in future interviews. I genuinely want her to do well in a job she cares about.
In our last check-in, she started crying and asked for more specific feedback. Like anyone, she isn’t perfect and I have a couple of things I could suggest. But none are why we didn’t hire her. Do I give her honest feedback? Does that include telling her she didn’t seem to want to be here? Or does that rub salt in the wound? As a newbie manager, I try to start with empathy, but I clearly misread her enthusiasm and am doubting my instincts now.
Give her feedback because she’s asking for it, but frame it as, “I can give you some feedback on things that will strengthen your work generally, but I want to be clear that they weren’t the reasons you weren’t hired. You were a very competitive candidate and the decision was about hiring someone who was an unusually good match; it wasn’t based on any concerns about you or your work.”
I would not tell her she didn’t seem enthusiastic unless she seemed so disengaged that you’re concerned it will be an obstacle for her in future interviews. But it’s useful data that people don’t always wear their hearts on their sleeves in interviews and can be much more invested than you can see on the surface. (Not always! Some people genuinely aren’t that enthused. But it’s good to be aware that there’s a wide spectrum of “normal” on this.)
Related:
how to show passion for your work when you’re not a demonstrative person
4. Can I ask for my own office?
I work for a large nonprofit that is mostly remote, but has an office from the days when folks were expected to come in. The building sits mostly empty. On my floor, for example, there are about 20 cubicles and 15 enclosed offices. There are maybe five of us that come in at some point during the week, and of those, only two of us are in every day. Of course, all five of us are in the same cube area, and the two of us in every day sit right next to each other. This leaves over 15 offices empty and unassigned.
This is frustrating! All of my meetings are on video calls, so I spend a lot of time going in and out of enclosed offices. My colleagues often take their videos and calls in the open area, which results in unnecessary sensory overload and frustration for me. (If it matters, I likely have sensory processing disorder from some combination of anxiety/ADHD/etc.)
I’ve only been here a month, and I’m the lowest role in our structure. Still, with so many offices sitting open, I would love to move into one. Would it be okay to request? How should I approach it?
“I’m spending a lot of time going in and out of the enclosed offices since I have so many video calls. Since it seems like a lot are unused, would it be okay for me to regularly work out of one of them?” They might say no — a lot of offices have intense politics around who gets an office and who doesn’t, even the people they’re assigned to are never there to use them — but it’s reasonable to ask. (Those politics are why my suggested wording is “regularly work out of one of them,” which sounds less permanent than “can I have my own office?” even if that’s what it turns into in time.)
If the answer is no, you could ask about moving to a cubicle that’s further away from the current cluster so that you’re not in the middle of so much action.
Also, depending on how much the sensory overload is interfering with your work, you could also consider going the formal accommodations route — but in a lot of cases it makes sense to start with a less formal conversation first.
5. Should I tell my over-performing employee to leave?
I have a superstar employee. She was fairly fresh out of university when we hired her, but I have never had a regret about her performance. She’s now been working for us for almost two years and doing more work than I would expect someone at her level to perform, it’s at an exceptional quality, and she consistently takes on bigger and newer challenges.
Obviously, I’ve been advocating for her to get a promotion. Recently, HR told us that for her to get that promotion, she’d have to have had three years of experience in her current (or any equivalent) role. But she’s performing at a higher level than what her title indicates! She deserves the promotion. She did get a decent raise, which I am happy about, but I know from experience that the title can make a big difference as well. Honestly she could leave and do so much better for herself. I’ve made the case again for her and hope that HR will change their mind (or find some combined level of experience that will help her qualify for it), but what else can I do?
Do I tell her that she should start looking elsewhere because she deserves a role that recognizes and pays her what she is worth? This is the first I’ve heard of the title structure that bases things off of years of experience, but I assume I should just lay it out for her so that she knows what the logic is? Do I have to make it sound like I agree with this because I am her manager?
It’s not terribly unusual to have experience requirements for promotion. It’s also reasonable for you, as her manager, to argue for an exception to that policy, based on her extraordinary level of performance and the possibility that the company may lose her entirely if you don’t reward that performance sooner rather than later.
That said, what’s your employee’s take on all this? Is she happy to wait another year for promotion or is she pushing for it to happen sooner? If she hasn’t shown any unhappiness with the situation, there’s no reason to encourage her to start looking outside the company. If you had the sense that they’d never promote her, that would be different — and you’d owe it to her to be relatively candid about that — but that’s not the case here. You should still share with her what the promotion timeline is so she has it, and you should lay out for HR why you think her accomplishments in two years are the equivalent of the average candidate’s accomplishments in three (or longer), but the three-year timeline isn’t inherently outrageous (as long as it’s real and they don’t kick the can down the road once people get there, and also as long as it’s not at odds with the norms of your field).
