ADA Question

Hello Evil HR Lady!

I have this niggling little question relating to an ADA issue. The background could run to, oh, 15+ paragraphs--it's all med related. Basically, last years, i had some medication related issues (I'm bipolar) that offended my cowrkers (OK, side effects made me smell). i got these under control, but then I had to tweak some stuff and it happened again and we (my doc and I) had to change assumptions about what happened. Both times involved time off for me. Apparently, I had agreed, with my supervisor and the ADA coordinator, to have my psychiatrist notify them in writing of any medication changes.

Well. I changed meds recently. i let slip to my supe that I did. the med I changed to was the one we originally thought was the problem--though now we are actually sure it wasn't. They, however, were never told. I never realized I agreed to any such thing. The reason I changed is because, well, the stress level in my office was...erm, driving me crazy. Er. Ahem.

So anyway, I've got an ADA coordinator breathing down my neck for a letter.

Cut to the chase: I don't want to give her jack. The most I intend to give her, and my doc is fully behind me (after the first 'issue", where we had a 90 minute after hour session--$200/hour...) is basically a letter saying "CNS has changed his meds". I don't think she can even ask that much legally, and I'm quite sure she can't demand any more.

Oh yeah--I had been hoping they'd forgotten and it'd just pass. but my supe brought it up yesterday. What he said about it was that she said the letter was "mandatory". Quite frankly, in normal times, that ticks me off--but I'm switching meds because I'm severly off-kilter and at this point, due to fears of "offending" my coworkers, we have dropped one med and the other is not yet effective. So I am effectively unmedicated and kind of a pissed off bastard.

But I do try to be polite.

thanks for your time

Now for the usual disclaimers. I am not a lawyer. I am not an official expert on ADA. I am not the Queen of England. (I know there was some confusion over that last point, what with me being anonymous after all. Do you think Queen Elizabeth blogs? That would be interesting.)

I've bolded a few things in your letter. According to my understanding, these things are illegal. Your illness has already been certified as an ADA (American's with Disability Act) eligible. I am going to assume that is the case. Here is information from the EEOC itself:

6. Should the corrective effects of medications be considered when deciding if an impairment is so severe that it substantially limits a major life activity?

No. The ADA legislative history unequivocally states that the extent to which an impairment limits performance of a major life activity is assessed without regard to mitigating measures, including medications. Thus, an individual who is taking medication for a mental impairment has an ADA disability if there is evidence that the mental impairment, when left untreated, substantially limits a major life activity. Relevant evidence for EEOC investigators includes, for example, a description of how an individual's condition changed when s/he went off medication23 or needed to have dosages adjusted, or a description of his/her condition
before starting medication.

In plain English, your medication status doesn't change whether or not you qualify under ADA. Therefore, if they have certified that your illness is eligible (which it appears that they have) they do not need to know what medications you are on.

Now, companies only have to make "reasonable" accommodations. This can vary from company to company and situation to situation. If your condition prevented you from performing the essential job function you can be terminated. If the accommodation you need is "unreasonable" you can be terminated (or not hired in the first place).

I don't know what, if any, accommodations you need to perform your job. The central issue seems to be the unfortunate stinky side effect of your medication. I don't know how bad the smell is, but it wouldn't be unreasonable in some jobs to place you in a separate area. It would be unreasonable in other jobs. (For instance, in a desk job, you could be given a cube/office away from others. On a manufacturing line where everyone has to stand two feet apart, that would not work.)

My advice. Print out the above paragraph and the next time your ADA coordinator wants a med list, hand it to her and say, "why would you knowing what medications I'm on be relevant to this situation?" Then just keep repeating yourself.

Second piece of advice, (I edited your question for space, so my readers are about to be confused), you are unhappy in the job because of the work itself. You feel underutilized. Start looking for a new job. Put your resume together and head out job hunting. It's easier to find a job when you have one, so start looking now.

Carnival of HR #17

Is now up over at The Work Clinic. Natalie's in the UK so it's up bright and early in the US.

The next Carnival will be on October 17th and hosted by our favorite HR Capitalist, Kris Dunn. Get your submissions in to him!

As a reminder, keep it down to one post per blogger. And if you could--something that you've written in the past couple of weeks is preferable.

The Spooky October 31st Carnival will be hosted by HRO Manager at HRO Manager

The November 14th Carnival will be hosted by Patrick Williams at Guerilla HR

The November 28th Carnival will be hosted by Carmen Van Kerckhove at Race in the Workplace

The December 12th Carnival will be hosted by Wayne Turmel at The Cranky Middle Manager

The December 26th Carnival will be hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force.

The January 9th Carnival will be hosted by Ask a Manager at Ask a Manager.

The January 23rd Carnival will be hosted by Deb at 8 Hours & a Lunch.

The February 6th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The February 20th Carnival will be hosted by Lisa Rosendahl at HR Thoughts

The March 5th Carnival will be hosted by Gautam Ghosh at Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant

The March 19th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The April 2nd Carnival will be hosted by Rowan Manahan at Fortify Your Oasis.

The March 16th Carnival will by hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force

The April 30th Carnival will be hosted by The Rainmaker Group.

The May 14th Carnival will be hosted by The Career Encourager at Career Encouragement

The May 28th Carnival will be hosted by Michael Moore at PA Employment Law Blog

The June 11th Carnival will be hosted by Jon Ingham at Stategic Human Capital.

The June 25th Carnival will be hosted by Evil HR Lady at Evil HR Lady.

The July 9th Carnival will be hosted by Natalie Cooper at Personnel Today.

We're always looking for new hosts, so send me an e-mail at evilhrlady at hotmail dot com if you want to host. And get your submissions into me!

Maternity Leave

No, no, not mine (sorry for making you unnecessarily excited, Mom). Maternity leave in general. It's an interesting topic and one that people don't generally like to discuss--because it's a sensitive topic and if you say anything against it you are a woman hating jerk, or just down right evil.

Well, since I'm evil and a woman, I figure it's time to speak up. Well, that and The Naked Economist brought it up first. He writes (after a conversation with his wife):

1. Maternity benefits are expensive. And the more generous the firm in this regard, the more expensive the policy.

2. Even an expensive maternity policy makes perfect sense if it helps to retain valuable employees. But the more often a firm gets "burned" by an employee who accepts generous benefits (beyond what's required by law) and then quits, the less sense the policy makes.

3. The more generous the policy, the more it hurts to get burned.

4. If enough women accept generous maternity benefits but don't ultimately return to work, some rational firms will decide that expansive maternity benefits just don't make financial sense

The end result of this, economically speaking, is that firms will cut back on maternity leave. If every pregnant woman gets the same "benefits" and a large enough number take the benefits and run, firms may consider going back to only the benefits required by law.

Now, for full disclosure, when I was 12 weeks pregnant I told my boss that I was pregnant and that I was most likely not coming back. After the Offspring made her appearance, I took six weeks of disability leave and then resigned. My boss then offered me a part time telecommuting position which I accepted and I am still at that company.

The Naked Economist (Charles Wheelen) makes the following suggestion (again based on his wife's suggestion):

Suppose a firm wants to offer a maternity leave of 6 months at 100 percent salary, rather than the bare minimum of 6 weeks at 60 percent pay. Great. But why not fold those benefits into an employee's paycheck over the year in which he or she comes back to work -- or two years, or whatever? That's what my wife would like to see.

I really like that suggestion. Why not? Yes, there are some obvious problems, mainly that you need the money when you are not working, not when you are working. But it makes more sense than handing out generous benefits without any guarantee that the employee will return.

One of the problems I've always seen with generous maternity leaves is that it makes hiring females of child bearing age much more expensive than other employees. Let's face it, even though men can take FMLA leave for the birth of a new child, I have never known any to take more than a few days. My Brother-in-law's company offered paid paternity leave. He took it, but not consecutively, so he was never out more than two days in a row. You don't have to hire someone to fill in in that type of situation, where you would for a six month leave.

I don't know what the best solution is, but I think that Naked Economist guy has some very good insights. Of course, now I wonder what kind of Google I'm going to get. I have a feeling, some people are going to be disappointed.

Time Equals Money, but Extra Money Does Not Equal Extra Time

I received a copy of Curt Finch's new book, All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource and he was gracious enough to answer a few questions for us.

1. I think HR understands the importance of other people tracking time--IT, Lawyers, non-exempt employees, but struggles with the idea of tracking our own time. I so often go from project to project and back, that I feel it would be difficult to track my time. Why should HR implement time tracking in our own department?

Staff justification is one reason that I've seen. When a company is under financial pressure--just like an airline customer of ours has often been--the big executives often look to HR as a place to cut people. After all, they often think, "HR is pure overhead, right?" Once you have data that indicates who is working on which projects, like "Pilot Union Negotiation" or "Health Benefit Cost Analysis Project," then those executives are forced to make a decision on which projects to cut, not which people. It tends to make HR jobs more secure.

2. My business has a lot of people who "think." Since we eventually make an awful lot of money off what these people think up, how would you recommend tracking time for this group?

Knowledge workers think. Most Americans are now or soon will be working in jobs that are all about thinking. That thinking is our new cost of production today, the inventory of our century. Surely some of their thinking is coordinated and directed towards some kind of goal, and completion of that goal is eventually desired. Time tracking can give insight into the ROI of those activities. If such knowledge workers are not tracking time, then some of them are inevitably working on something that will never make money for the company, and they should perhaps consider redirecting their efforts towards something that the market will reward them for. If you're associated with activities that clearly make money, it makes for a better resume, better compensation, and a better feeling of self-worth.

3. Part of your argument for Time Tracking is so that we don't have to "remember" what we did--there will be a record. While part of that is appealing to an HR person (Bob, we talked about your performance on June 2 from 2:15 to 2:22, I have it right here!), another part of me thinks that level of accuracy just isn't needed. I'm sure you'll disagree, so convince me.

If your time is less valuable, then it is probably less worthwhile to track it. For example, most companies consider people who work for minimum wage to be more fungible. If your time is expensive, however, then knowing where it goes is more critical. I once worked at a company, TKG, where we increased our revenues by millions and ran off a competitor with nothing more than excellent time data and an attitude problem. Your company can do that too and some of those millions will trickle down to the frontline workers (or you should quit anyway because there's a company culture problem.) Of course, some smart manager has to care and look at the data for any of this to be useful.

4. What's your best argument for getting exempt employees on board with the idea of time tracking?

If your company continues to flounder about without a deep understanding of the costs of production of knowledge work, you will get crushed by whichever one of your competitors figures it out first. Change is accelerating in our world. You have to get out in front of it and innovate to win. But if you don't understand the costs of that innovation, you will fail. It's not that some projects shouldn't be risky and expensive--they should--but you need to be managing all of these risks and costs consciously. Consciousness in this arena requires an understanding of project costs, which requires that you track your time.

One Title, Coming Up!

Hi, love your site.
I am working for a consulting company, we consult with all kinds of businesses, the two primary are a bowling center and a hotel (currently under construction), but I am getting business cards printed, and now need a title.

So I am SPHR, certified, and worked for a quasi government "one stop" job and career center. I will be working mostly in the areas of handbooks and policies, and HR audits. I am also the "girl Friday" for my current employer, so I do a lot of crazy things; the marketing for the bowling center, running errands, along with the HR duties.

So I am asking for some help. The owner said I can make it up, VP of HR was one of his suggestions, he was joking. He is the "Operating Partner" and the General Manager/Owner, and Managing Member, for the companies he owns and consults for.
HELP! Thank you so very much. Right now I am thinking HR Consultant.

I'm still pondering being a bowling alley consultant. For some reason this cracks me up. (At the university I attended, we were required to take two P.E. classes--one "Fitness for Life" class and one elective. My elective? Bowling. I figured, P.E. credit and the only sweat was from the rented shoes!)

I think HR Consultant is fine. HR Manager comes to mind, but that seems more like you are managing your company's HR rather than consulting for others. (I believe you are consulting for others--correct me if I'm wrong.) You could also make yourself Lead HR Consultant or Senior HR Consultant.

Anyone else have any suggestions?

You Can Either Meet or Work

I haven't had much time to blog (I know, I know, where are my priorities?!?!?) because I've been spending way too much time working.

Well, not "working" but rather being "in meetings."

Now, we all know that I have a small problem with negativity, but here is Evil HR Lady's helpful meeting tip:

15 HR people in any room is about 12 too many.

The meeting I have been in have involved the following people: 2 people from staffing, 3 from employee relations, 6 HR business partners, 2 labor and employment lawyers, 1 labor and employment consultant and 1 relocation specialist.

How much do you think gets accomplished at these "meetings"?

An Interview with Me!

Michael Moore at PA Employment Law Blog has just published an interview with me!

Thanks Michael!

Carnival Reminder!

The 17th Carnival of HR is only 1 week away! Make sure you get your submissions in to Natalie CooperPersonnel Today. Send your submissions to Natalie!

As a reminder, keep it down to one post per blogger. And if you could--something that you've written in the past couple of weeks is preferable.


The October 3rd Carnival will be hosted by Natalie Cooper at Personnel Today.

The October 17th Carnival will be hosted by Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist

The Spooky October 31st Carnival will be hosted by HRO Manager at HRO Manager

The November 14th Carnival will be hosted by Patrick Williams at Guerilla HR

The November 28th Carnival will be hosted by Carmen Van Kerckhove at Race in the Workplace

The December 12th Carnival will be hosted by Wayne Turmel at The Cranky Middle Manager

The December 26th Carnival will be hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force.

The January 9th Carnival will be hosted by Ask a Manager at Ask a Manager.

The January 23rd Carnival will be hosted by Deb at 8 Hours & a Lunch.

The February 6th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The February 20th Carnival will be hosted by Lisa Rosendahl at HR Thoughts

The March 5th Carnival will be hosted by Gautam Ghosh at Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant

The March 19th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The April 2nd Carnival will be hosted by Rowan Manahan at Fortify Your Oasis.

The March 16th Carnival will by hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force

The April 30th Carnival will be hosted by The Rainmaker Group.

The May 14th Carnival will be hosted by The Career Encourager at Career Encouragement

The May 28th Carnival will be hosted by Michael Moore at PA Employment Law Blog

The June 11th Carnival will be hosted by Jon Ingham at Stategic Human Capital.

The June 25th Carnival will be hosted by Evil HR Lady at Evil HR Lady.

We're always looking for new hosts, so send me an e-mail at evilhrlady at hotmail dot com if you want to host. And get your submissions into me!

Headaches Caused by Someone Else

We recently had to fire the head of one of our satellite offices. Very shortly after his termination, it came to our attention that one of her new hires was not working out. We have a requirement that all employees at that office at that site are on call on a rotating schedule. The head of that office hired an individual who could not come in on that schedule. To further complicate things, this manager forbade anyone to contact HR on the pain of instant termination. Therefore, I did not find out about any of this until after her departure.

The problem is that we need to terminate this employee because he can not fulfil the on call rotation requirement due to a family issue. For other reasons, this employee is not completely working out, but this is the main issue.

The complicating factor (there is always at least two, aren't there?) is that this person is in a protected class and already feels that they are being discriminated against. This person was hired based on that protected class status because the site manager's former brother-in-law was a member of that same protected class and the manager thought it would be great to work with another member of that protected class. This person should never have been hired, because they can not complete the basic requirements of the job. A new job was created for him because the site head really wanted to work with this person to practice her Mandarin. The job he was originally hired for? The position is still open because we can't afford to hire someone else for it with him on the payroll.

Unfortunately, the former site manager is the only one who speaks Mandarin and no one else can communicate with this gentleman. As a result of this, this individual feels discriminated against and has made multiple complaints that people don't socialize with him as much as they should. This person has great conversational English skills, but he does have trouble with the technical side of things.

He was insulted when it was gently suggested that the company would cover ESL classes through an adult education program. There is relatively decent comprehension, but when there are safety issues involved (the job involves multiple areas where one could be seriously injured or killed), it is important to be able to understand instructions and warnings. When another employee yelled for him to stop what he was doing, he called the HR office to file a complaint that he was being discriminated against and treated like a child. The employee was doing something that, had he continued for another five seconds, would have broken a very expensive air filtration system for the hospital. He was also standing on a ladder in a loud room and one would have to yell to be heard in the first place. Perhaps it's a hostile work environment for him, but there is a good possibility that it may not be. We have sent the company vice president and the president out there on separate occasions to observe how people get along and investigate any allegations of a hostile work environment and found nothing amiss.

In any case, we need to let him go because he can not be on call. There is no way around this on call thing without other employees having a case for preferential treatment. Or if we let him go, are we going to be sued through hell and half of Georgia?

Well, well, well. If you appeared on my doorstep with this problem I'd say, "Ummm, I'm really busy right now, but my job share partner gets back from maternity leave next Tuesday. Can it wait until then?" Then I'd quickly shut my door and put my fingers in my ears and sing loudly, "I can't hear you! I can't hear you!"

Okay, it's not that bad. You do have some difficulties, and they all begin with your fired manager. Things like this, I suppose, are among the reasons you chose to terminate him in the first place.

One good rule of thumb when you have to fire someone in a protected class is to have the person who hired him fire him. That way the person has less of a claim of discrimination--after all, if Bob was willing to hire you in the first place, the termination must not be related to your race, gender or age. But, you can't do that.

You have a clear case of the person not being able to perform the job. Simple termination? Right? Of course not. This is because the person can perform the job he was truly hired for--helping the former manager learn Mandarin.

My solution? Since he can't do the "job" you need filled and you certainly won't replace him for what he is doing, you label it a position elimination and offer him a huge chunk of severance in exchange for signing a general release.

Yes, it's more expensive than saying, "sorry, but you are failing in your job." It, however, is less expensive than getting sued. So, offer the guy 3 months salary (or whatever your severance policy is) and extend his medical benefits (if applicable) for 6 months. In exchange, he signs a release saying he won't sue you. Make sure you consult with your labor and employment lawyer when you draft the release. There are a lot of things that should and should not be included in such a document.

Let this be a warning to all of you who are letting bad managers slide by. Bad managers do bad things, such as hiring people who can't do the job. Then the company has to take responsibility for such employees. Keep on top of your managers and provide training and development for them. And get rid of the bad apples as soon as possible.

Peace & Quiet--or Not So Much

Hello Evil HR Lady,

I enjoy reading your blog! I'm not sure if this question is within your "realm" but if you have the time and inclination, any input would be helpful. A bit of background: I'm the (relatively new) chairperson of a 14-person dept. at a small, 4-yr college. Chairs are members of the faculty and since we are a unionized faculty, I am technically NOT the immediate supervisor of the other faculty in my dept.

That said, the chair is usually the first person a faculty member comes to (and certainly students do this) when they have a complaint about one of their colleagues. My department recently moved into a newly renovated building and all the faculty offices are lined up along a long, hallway, each next to the other.

My office is 2 floors below, so I am not "with" my colleagues. The new faculty offices, unfortunately, do not seem to offer much soundproofing. Even with the office door closed, noise from conversations in the hallway, "loud-talkers" having phone conversations and of, course radios tend to filter in. In addition, there is a diversity of needs that people seem to have for working (ie.writing lectures, grading, writing grants, etc.) such as:"I work best with music in the background""I don't want to have to close my door all the time when I am working in my office""I need a very quiet environment to work""I like my door open so students feel welcome"etc.

Currently, there is one person has a very low tolerance noise, especially for music playing in her work environment and her office is directly across the hall from an individual who not only has a loud voice and entertains students in loud conversations involving much laughter (wish I had profs that were like this) also likes to play his radio "so low that I can barely here it myself". They both like to keep their doors open. The quiet person requested the other turn their radio down or off the other day as it was distracting her from her work. The radio person became upset saying the request was unreasonable as the volume was already very low. Furthermore, the quiet person has others around her with loud phone voices (not much to do about that).

Tensions are mounting. The easy solution is to have a "no radio" policy or a headphones only policy. I have been told that this is not fair to those who require some sort of background music to work and why would we then not require the ones requiring quiet to wear noise-blocking headphones. It does seem sort of strict to have a "policy" about this. Can't we be adults and use common sense and good manners? Sigh. So I'm wondering - in office environments similar to this, cubicles etc. is this an ongoing issue? Is there more to this than to me, what would seem to be a simple solution - the default is as quiet as possible or is the background/music requirement for working as valid as the need for quiet? Thanks for reading through all this.

Ahh, behaving like adults. You know, my experiences lately tell me that children are expected to behave more like "adults" than adults are. Two kids can't get along? We say, "Billy and Sally, you have to be in the same class all year long. You will have to learn to be nice to each other or you will both be in the corner much of the time." (Well, we say that until Billy and Sally have their screaming irrational mothers show up and lecture us for daring to discipline their little darlings, but once again, I digress.)

First of all, I'm going to direct you to one of my favorite blogs, Confessions of a Community College Dean. He has more direct experience in this subject, and he's very interesting. But, all HR people have experienced the "my co-worker is bothering me!" whine.

Yes, rational people would say, "hmm, my colleague is bothered by my music. I'll wear headphones." Or, "I'm bothered by noise, I will shut my door." But that is no fun. So, it comes down to policies.

It's unfortunate that you are having these problems with people in offices. Most of corporate America seems to be living in cube land, where the problems are much more pronounced. (Thankfully, I have an office. I didn't about a year ago, even though what I deal with is confidential even in HR standards. We were finally able to prevail on the powers that be when my job share partner, after having a long discussion with an attorney regarding an employee's termination, turned around to find that same person standing in the neighboring cube. Fortunately, she hadn't heard anything, but we were finally able to knock some sense into the space planning people. Boy, I am full of digressions today.)

I wish I had a magic solution for all of this. You can ask people to keep the noise down. You can re-arrange people so that the loud talkers are together and the quiet people are together. You can require that professors shut their doors when they are having conversations--but from a liability standpoint, I would prefer to keep the door open in such situations.

What I would do with the chronic complainers? Bring the entire group in together and say, "You know, the walls are really thin. Some people need music to concentrate. Some need silence. We all have students in and out of our offices. What do you all suggest?"

Chances are, no one will have any good solution. The tensions are probably running high not because of a radio, but because of competition amongst your faculty. But, they will be forced to stop coming to you with complaints because you'll be able to smile sweetly and say, "Karen, we discussed this in faculty meeting. I'm not sure what you want me to do about it."

Now, of course, if anyone is being egregiously loud or super sensitive to noise, you can help that person come to their senses. (Easier said than done!) Since you aren't a direct supervisor,though, I don't know how much influence you really have.

Good luck!

Exceedingly Poor Judgment

I've seen enough in my life to believe that this is true. Sometimes people can exercise such poor judgment you almost feel sorry for them--after all, being that stupid must hurt at least a little. Plus, the lawsuit payout...

She said that the medical director called her into a meeting and informed her, in front of witnesses, that she is too old and ugly to work at their hospital. He explained it's about marketing, and that the hospital is updating its image. He said that only young, beautiful nurses would be allowed to work at the hospital. He also said that patients want beautiful nurses taking care of them, so she had to go. She was shown the door after thirty years of faithful service to the hospital.

I know that when I was in the hospital, I wasn't thinking about what the nurses looked like.

Fruity Drinks and Communication

Do you remember that old song? The Pina Colada Song? I always thought the people in that story were phenomenally stupid and wouldn't be able to repair their marriage after both were willing to cheat.

Turns out, I was (as always--well, as occasionally) right.

A Bosnian couple are getting divorced after finding out they had been secretly chatting each other up online under fake names...

"It was amazing, we seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriages - and how right that turned out to be.

"We arranged to meet outside a shop and both of us would be carrying a single rose so we would know the other.

"When I saw my husband there with the rose and it dawned on me what had happened I was shattered. I felt so betrayed. I was so angry."

Yeah, well, duh.

So, why am I writing about this? Turnover. Bad turnover. Your employees leave you for new, exciting careers. It's quite possible that you could have offered them what they left to find--they just didn't know it was available. Likewise, you scour the universe looking for a perfect candidate to do X only to find out that a current employee is currently scouring the universe for a job to do X--only the two of you haven't communicated.

I once had a VP of HR tell me, "My job is to develop my people. If you are in the same job for more than two years, I start to worry. I don't want to lose good people, I want to develop and move and promote good people."

You can only do that if you are communicating. Don't be a manager that punishes people for looking for internal positions. Don't be an employee who keeps your career goals secret.

And most of all, stay out of the personal ads and chat rooms and talk with your spouse from time to time. Sheesh.

(Hat tip: Frank:)

Firing Someone with a Medical Condition

Hello Evil HR Lady!

I would like to say I love your website - I just stumbled upon today and I think it's great.

My question is - how do you fire someone with a medical condition? We have an employee who isn't very competent and her skills lack significantly yet she has worked for the company for 6+ years. (We're in the graphic design business - so it only creates more work for the people with skills.) And no one from HR will fire her because she has medical documentation saying she suffers from migraines.

She will miss days - sometimes a whole work week at a time due to her migraines. For example - in 33 working days she missed 16.5 - due to food poisoning and migraines. Isn't there a way to fire someone because they suck at their job and don't do much when they are "working." Any advise would be helpful.

Before I begin I am going to give my standard disclaimers--I am not a lawyer, I am assuming you live in the US in a state that has "at-will" employment.

Now my answer.

You can fire anyone, healthy, sick, black, white, pregnant and suffering from emotional distress. I'll repeat, you can fire anyone as long as you don't have some sort of employment contract.

FMLA, if it applies in this situation, has limitations. (Food poisoning, by the way, probably does not qualify.) Yes, the employer has to give you time off if you have a certified FMLA illness. But, that doesn't mean you can be a poor performer when you are at work.

There is increased risk when you fire someone who is in a protected class or who is subject to FMLA. The person may sue and sometimes the best thing to do is offer severance in return for signing a general release. For the record, you can't waive your right to FMLA. If the company is required to grant the leave, they must do so.

You have to make clear that the reason for the termination is not sickness, but performance. HR and her managers may not be interested in firing because they are wimps or because it is easier to keep this person on board than it is to deal with the paperwork involved in terminating. There is a maximum of 12 weeks of FMLA per year and if she's taking 16 days off in 33, she's going to max out that 12 weeks (60 working days) pretty darn quickly.

You can't do squat about it, by the way. It's not your decision to hire or fire. It's not your decision to assign out work. What you can do, is do your work. And by "your" work, I mean "your" work. Not her work. Document your assignments that involve her. For instance, send an e-mail to everyone on the team that says.

I just wanted to be clear about the Jones account and my responsibilities.

John: XYZ
Sheryl: QRS
Steve: ABC
Heidi: LMN

XYZ must be completed before Steve can begin ABC. I've attached a complete project plan.

I realize it's dull, it's boring and it squashes your creativity. Do it anyway. You're going to have to pick up her slack anyway, you just want to be clear that it wasn't your assignment in the first place.

But, the key thing is just letting go. You cannot solve this problem. You cannot make her headaches go away. You cannot get her to be productive when she is in the office. Your managers already know she is a slacker. She grates on your nerves. You just have to take a deep breath and ignore it.

Easier said than done, I realize. But that is what you, as a co-worker, can do. She can be fired. They don't want to do so. Sorry about that.

Top 100 HR Bloggers

Bootstrapper has published their choices for the Top 100 HR Bloggers.

I'm pleased to join several of our Carnival Colleagues on the list. And pleased to find some new sites I haven't been to before.

Carnival of HR #16

Welcome to the 16th Carnival of Human Resources. Because we've had so many, I think it's time for a nice staff meeting to discuss the carnival and other important HR business.

Of course, even though I've organized the meeting, I have some objections that such meetings are just too administrative and I would like to cut some of that. Being wiser than I, the "Career Encourager reminds us all that if we offer some contrast things will be more appealing and interesting.

Anna says, "Hey, if you want interesting, how about some magic?" Carmen counters, "yes, magic is definitely interesting, but what if we contrast that with some Diversity training that is boring and ineffective?" Well, maybe not.

"I believe we're really concerned about credibility" Michael says, "and making sure we aren't just 'paralegals for management.'" Daniel nods his head solemnly: "For instance, how we handle whistle blowing can effect our credibility and protect us from legal consequences. Like Lisa says, we not only need to be credible but we need to accurately assess other's credibility."

Jon reminds us that we not only need to be credible, but accountable. He suggests being "RACI" which wakes up Ask a Manager. "For some reason," she says, "that reminds me about dating and interviewing. It's our chance to evaluate candidates and assess their credibility."

Rowan sighs, "I wish candidates would take control of their job hunt. So few do and they could be so much better if they did."

Carl responds, "Maybe we wouldn't have to do so many interviews if we stopped giving people so much money. Maybe retention would be better with lower raises and more spa trips."

"Well," MabelandHarry says, "You need to find out what people really want. That's the key." Wally sighs, "It's not just about giving them stuff, it's about teaching them to manage their careers."

"I agree," says Michael, "but we need to make sure we're doing it legally. For instance, EAPs are good things but don't absolve us of responsibility."

Everyone nods, until someone (who shall remain nameless says) pipes up with, "Hey, I thought I was promised donuts at this staff meeting. I have way too much to do if there aren't going to be any donuts." And he/she gets up to leave, Natalie calls out "Make sure you come to the blogathon September 24!"

Is HR Without Adminstrative Headaches Possible?

Dear Evil HR Lady,

I am currently at university (in Sweden) and will have my degree from a program aiming at HR (including i/o psychology, some other behavioural sciences, economics and labor law). I am just about to start applying for "real" jobs. :) I have some experience from an HR administrative position during summer, and also a few years of experience doing other things. During summer, when I got to come up with a proposal for how a competencies module for a new HRIS to be implemented should be built and what it should include, that was a lot of fun. Interviewing a candidate for a position was also rewarding. Filing papers into folders, or typing data into a database, for hours and hours, decidedly less so.

I am an intelligent, responsible person, a fast learner and I feel confident that I could be great at organizational development and tangent areas. "Good enough" as I may be, I will never be a great administrator because I am so bored by doing work without thinking or being creative. I try to make it more interesting when doing that kind of work, but that only goes so far. I don't mind SOME administrative work, esp. not administrating "my own stuff", but I am truly afraid of ending up in a position doing predominantly that.

Do you have any advice for how I can try to, basically, avoid the boring stuff and work at and be great at the fun stuff? Especially considering I am just about to start my career.

Thank you for a great blog!

First, a disclaimer, I know nothing about Sweden, so I am answering this question from a US perspective. I did call Sweden once and when the woman answered the phone, in Swedish of course, I said, hesitantly, "Can I speak with [name]?" she immediately responded, "Yes, just one moment please. May I tell him who is calling?" And I thought, if someone called me and I answered in English and they responded in Swedish I could never just switch into Swedish with no problem. But, I digress and I shouldn't have taken Hebrew as my foreign language in college because it has NOT been helpful.

So, can you just do the fun stuff? No. Sorry. Especially not at the entry level.

You enjoy organizational development? Great. But, as you sit around thinking, eventually thoughts will have to get down on paper and into Power Point. Seminars will be scheduled and handouts printed. Even if you had an admin to do the "putting together" part, you'll still have a ton of administrative work along with it.

You enjoy employee relations? Great. You get to talk to people. Help them solve their problems. Make the world a better place. And then you have to fill out paperwork--document performance issues, conduct employee exits where you have to check off boxes that say you've collected a badge and they have 3 days of remaining vacation.

You enjoy staffing? That's an administrative nightmare here in the US. Better make sure you save the criteria you used for every Monster.com search or you could be in big trouble for discrimination. Don't forget that not knowing a candidate's race is not an excuse for not being able to submit statistics on the racial makeup of your candidates. Then you have to schedule interviews, review paperwork, copy forms.

You want to do HRIS? Well, welcome to paper central. Who do you think makes sure those lovely forms that have to be signed get sent out and collected? Who does all the reporting?

Comp? Ever heard of a year end salary increase program? Sure, you get to strategize on the best percentage for increases and help managers determine how to go about dividing their available money. But you still have to make sure every eligible employee gets a raise or a reason for not getting one. And then let's talk about salary surveys.

Are you ready to run screaming? It's not that bad. Really, it's not. And you'll find paperwork in any department you go to. And as you start out, one of the worst things you can do for your career is say, "I'm too smart to file/staple/fill that form out. Get an admin to do it." Yes, there are many tasks that a trained monkey could do. However, a trained monkey is much more expensive than a low level HR person.

HR is great. I love it. I try to automate my administrative tasks as much as possible. But, in my experience you can never avoid them completely.

Generally, things such as typing data into databases fall on administrative staff unless it is a special project. I don't think you have to worry too much about that. Make sure when you are interviewing you have a clear understanding of what the job's expectations are. Just because the title says "trainer" it doesn't mean that you won't be responsible for maintenance of the training database. This is fine, you just need to know about it and what that entails.

Good luck and welcome to HR!

What to Include on a Resume

I've been working a temp position since August 20th, but it is currently set to end later this month. How long should you work at a position, before putting it on your resume?

The reason I ask, is because my last long term job ended June 22nd. I worked a total of 7 days for one agency (PP) as an exec. admin asst. in late July/early August. Then I was placed on my current assignment with another agency (A), which should be around 6 weeks long. Looking at my resume, it's pretty much full of temp agencies. I worked for a few years (2001-2005) in California, then for agency A for a few months after moving back to Indiana. Then I found a direct hire position, but left that position for a placement with another agency (FPS), where I worked for 11 months. The position through FPS ended in June, which brings me to where I am now.

Should I put my 7 day placement with PP on my resume, as it will give me something for the months of July/August on my resume? Or leave it off, since it was so short? I think that if I am careful with my wording, I can probably fit both on my resume, and still keep it to 2 pages.

Well, you are smart to limit the length of your resume. The maximum you want is two pages--unless you are an often published writer and need three pages to list all your publications.

To include a 7 day temp job or not--this is how I'd do it. I'd write:

Temp Agency, June 2006 to Present

Acme Corp, Executive Administrative Assistant

Bob's House O'Pancakes, Administrative Assistant

Big Corporation, Administrative Assistant

Then under that I'd list all the stuff that I did. Especially since one administrative temp job is very similar to another. (In my experience--your experience may vary.) You don't need to put that you scheduled meetings at Acme Corp, and that you scheduled meetings at Bob's House O'Pancakes and that you scheduled meetings at Big Corporation. One time should be sufficient.

If the temp jobs were longer term and had greater variety then maybe you would want to list them out separately, and just leave off the one week job.

For the record, I think temp agencies can be a great way to get your foot in the door to a company or a profession.

I wish you the best of luck!

Another HR Problem

Please help!

I am the HR Assistant for the HR Manager at my job. It is just the two of us in the department. She has reprimanded me on three different occasions regarding the clothing I wear to work. And each time I ask her specifically, what can I , or can't I wear. I need guidelines! And each time she added something different. But she of course follows it up with don't worry, your always dress professionally.

What's not fair is that she told me not to wear a specific sleeveless top, while about 10 other women in the office wear sleeveless. She told me mine was a little to far over the shoulder, therefore showing more skin. Sleeveless tops are sleeveless tops. Depending on your body type, they might fit differently. The top I wore was very professional and not too far over the shoulder. I let her know how I felt, and that I believed this was absurd because I have been trying really hard to go by her suggestions, but how am I supposed to feel when other women are wearing what I was told not too?

I even pointed this out, and she told me to be her helper and let her know when I see this type of clothing. She even told me to shop at Wal-Mart and go to a tailor to get the straps on my tops hemmed. Basically, I feel I am being treated unfairly. I am being singled out. This has created feelings of resentment. For the past month I have been scared about what I wear to work! I am nervous that at any moment she will call me in and criticize my clothes - again!

I dress very professionally in the workplace. This issue has been bothering me for quite some time, and I need some advice. I have documented all of our meetings, and our conversations. I have also noted names of the other women who wear the same thing I got in trouble for. What do I do? I don't feel comfortable speaking to her about this again.

When I give her my opinion, she just stares at me. I want to go to my GM and explain to him that this issue has created a negative environment for me and that I go home mad every day. My thoughts are on my clothing instead of my work. Do I go to my GM about this? Any other advice?

Thanks so much!

Unfortunately for you, you've come to the wrong person to complain about the unfairness of not being allowed to wear sleeveless shirts. But, since that's not really your question, we'll leave my fashion opinions here.

Your manager doesn't like you--or she believes you have more potential than you are living up to. It's quite possible that she feels threatened by you. Unfortunately, when you dislike someone it is very easy to pick out things and label them faults, when you would ignore the same thing in someone else. Likewise, when you feel threatened by someone, the way for mean people to deal with that is to try and destroy that person.

So, your options--deal with it or start looking for a new job. (Although I would find it difficult to not laugh at the idea of buying clothes at Walmart and then taking them to the tailor. It seems to defeat the purpose of going to Walmart in the first place.)

In my opinion, mentioning it to her again won't do any good. Neither will mentioning it to the General Manager. Ask yourself, how would he respond?

Response 1: Thanks for telling me. I think I'll go fire the HR manager.

Response 2: Why are you telling me this? I'm trying to run a business. Dress code is HR's problem.

Response 3: That's terrible. I'll talk to the HR manager right now. That will make your life a living Hell!

I'm guessing that you're hoping for Response 1. I'll give you my professional opinion that it's not likely to happen. A good GM will know if his HR manager is being irrational and he doesn't need you to tell him.

The only person you can control is you. Going home angry every day is only hurting you. It's not doing anything for your career and it's not hurting your boss. Because her complaints are unpredictable, you need to sit down and evaluate: Is this job worth the annoyance and frustration or not? If the answer is no, then dust off your resume and start job hunting. If the answer is yes, you'll have to deal with it.

And by dealing with it, I don't mean grit your teeth and take out your frustration on your friends and family. I mean, make a conscious decision that you are not going to let this bother you. When she criticizes your outfit, apologize politely and say whatever is true about it. "Dawn is currently wearing something very similar" or "This is the 6th time I've warn this outfit. What caught your eye about it this time?" Then forget she said anything.

If you don't let it bother you and you don't get steamed, it's possible that the bullying will stop. (And please understand, this type of behavior is bullying.) Work your hardest and you'll get noticed for your work.

Your Permanent Record

Remember the threat from your elementary school teachers? If you do something bad it will go in your permanent record! Horrors. You would never get into college, let alone live any sort of productive life with a black mark on your permanent record. It was enough to keep a young Evil HR Lady sitting up straight and paying attention. (Okay, I slouched and constantly read novels during school, but I was quiet and I did well on tests, so the teachers ignored me.) (Second parenthetical, my mom is going to kill her self laughing at the thought of me being quiet.)

Well, it turned out that your elementary school teacher was exaggerating on the effect your permanent record had. Your college didn't even request a transcript from your elementary school. All that being good for nothing.

You think you've outgrown permanent records? Well you haven't. You have a new one now, called a Personnel File. Everyone has one. Everyone should have several. They are permanent, except when they are not.

Daniel A Schwartz at the Connecticut Employment Law Blog writes about people requesting their personnel records.

The worry is that people are fretting about lawsuits, which he says is worrying for no good reason. I think personnel records are an interesting piece of information that we ignore too often.

Have you ever gotten a new job offer and then suddenly realized you didn't keep a copy of your non-compete agreement and you don't know what your restrictions are? (No comment on how silly it was to lose your copy of that. I'm evil, not mean.) You can get it from your personnel file. Feel like the company isn't living up to the promises in your offer letter? You can get a copy from your personnel file.

But, what (I suppose) most people are looking for are their performance appraisals and secret things placed there by their bosses. You should look at it.

Yes, it drives the record people nuts to have to pull your file, have you come over and look at it anyway. You should do it.

Why? Well, it turns out, much like your elementary school record, it was permanent but only in elementary school. It didn't follow you to college. When prospective employers call for a reference, they aren't going to be given a copy of your file. If they call HR, chances are they'll get confirmation of your dates of service an your job title and that's it. If they call your manager, they'll maybe get the real scoop.

So, why take the time to look at this permanent record? For internal transfers it is extremely important. A company won't share with outsiders, but they will certainly share with insiders. This is why it's important to insist a copy of your own self appraisal is attached to your manager's appraisal of you in the file. Get your side of the story in there.

And sit up straight and pay attention and don't poke the person next to you or you'll have to write "I will pay attention in class" 500 times before you can go to recess.

Carnivals and Lists

Remember to get your Carnival submission into Evil HR Lady (that would be me!) buy Monday night, September 17. (I'll let you define night by when you go to bed. I'm flexible that way.)

Also, the HR Capitalist has his HR Power Blog listing up. I've dropped by two in his ratings, so now I'm traumatized. Is there an ER rep for the blog world?

Employee Relations

Another scenario:

A woman with a heavy accent walks into your office and explains that she is returning to her native Russia this spring and as such she needs today, September 12th, off. You are a bit confused and asks for an explanation. She sends you to this website. You read:

The governor of Ulyanovsk region in Russia is offering prizes to couples who have babies in exactly nine months - on Russia's national day on 12 June.

Sergei Morozov wants couples to take the day off work to have sex. If a baby is born on national day, they will receive cars, TVs or other prizes.

Mr Morozov has declared Wednesday "family contact day" as part of efforts to fight Russia's demographic crisis.

My response, of course, is that according to AmazingPregnancy.com she doesn't need the 12th off. She needs the 20th for a due date of June 12.

Aren't I helpful?

(hat tip Ann Althouse.)

And I can't help but think that this HRVP would make "family contact day" an official company holiday if he was working in Russia.

E-mail

A while ago I made a comment over at Ask a Manager that I preferred e-mail over telephone calls and meetings. (I couldn't find the actual post, but it's a true statement.) I got the following e-mail from Rachel Prosser:
Dear (not so) Evil HR Lady.

I really enjoy your blogs, even though I don't live in North America. I was curious at your comment on AskaManager's blog that "I wish people would stop calling me and just use e-mail"

My experience in my last corporate job (Senior Lawyer, in a 6000+ employee public organisation working in a strategic/policy area) was the reverse. I often wished people would just talk to each other more .

Although if asked a legal question, I would sometimes make them put it in writing so they had to properly think through the question first.

Yes, sure e-mail can be fine for a simple factual question where you need to keep a record of the discussion, and you don’t want to be misinterpreted (or to have evidence on your side if you are.) It can be convenient, because you can read it when you wish, and interruptions by phone are a pain. It can also be good if you want to be super-careful you are complying with policy.

But, it requires a high-trust environment, and acts as a magnifier of divisions where there is low trust and suspicion. For many, many things I found it much better to cut off the e-mail exchange and have a proper conversation rather than e-mail tennis. Even voice-mail tennis could be more helpful. It enabled any false assumptions to be ironed out and to build relationships. And hearing someone’s voice means you have a chance of a relatinoship.

I found people would revert to e-mail in low-trust situations, which then amplified mutual suspicion. “aha I have evidence he said x”; “honestly he’s saying x can you believe it...”, “’listen to how he put this, he obviously.....”

Devoid of a human relationship, people would read in the worst. They sense that what’s being written is being done to “cover the back” of the manager, and no-one likes to be treated in a way which assumes you’ll be on the other side in litigation.

The use of e-mail also provides as a way of distancing a manager from staff. I’ve seen managers rever to non-committal, weasel-worded replies which are compliant with policy, but which are a way of avoiding and honest and personal relationship. “He’s toeing the party line”, she’s treating me like a statistic.

E mail is handy if you are going to have to make a diary note of the call anyway, if there’s a high trust environment with relationships built away from the e-mail, and if it’s a factual request (how many days annual leave do I have?) which the recipient is likely to want to work on in a batch, or need to research. In a situation where the employment relationship is already bad, it can help provide evidence for the subsequent employment/industrial tribunal/litigation.

But it can waste time with minor points bouncing back and forth, and good relationships are better built by speaking to people.

Very good thoughts.

When HR is the Problem

I'm the Controller for a small, but, what used to be, rapidly growing firm, 135 employees total. We've always had weak HR, but our recently hired VP of HR seems to take the cake--or at least want to make cake. We have equity problems, no performance appraisal system, high turnover and low morale. His solution for turnover? Recruit more, through offering candidates wine and cheese. His solution for low employee morale? Inviting employees to the parking lot for a tail gate party that includes a keg of beer. His solution for equity issues? If you come and whine about your salary, you can--more often than not--get a raise. Sometimes this even occurs before I know about it, via verbal promises made to employees before I get the paperwork to approve the transaction. These actions seem to be the rule, rather than the exception. When I’ve posed the question to him about where to pull these additional monies he’s throwing around, his response is “You can always find extra cash.”

I'm the bad guy because I put the financial kibosh on many of his expensive alcohol fueled ideas. He makes people "feel good" and is a real cheerleader. Yet, none of the longstanding problems are getting solved. I’m looking out for the company by getting the proper insurance in place to protect us from his stupidity/increased exposure resulting from the above events. I don’t know what has to happen for the company to realize that our HR dept is paving the way for our ultimate downfall. I mean, HR is supposed to be the dept who would normally be expressing concerns about these types of activities, right?

Any thoughts or advice on properly handling, or at least, better coping with this situation would be much appreciated.

Somehow it hadn't occurred to me that I should be planning keg parties in the parking lot. Perhaps I am not ready for a VP position, like I previously thought.

Alcohol and business, in my humble opinion is a bad idea. Some people can handle a beer in a business setting. Others get sloshed, drive home drunk, crash and the company gets sued.

But, you know all this. Your problem is with the HR VP. I wish I could give you some secret "HR" words that you could say to this guy and have him go, "Ohhh! What I should be doing is working on pay equity issues!"

I am hoping my brilliant colleagues will weigh in on this, but in the mean time I'm going to give it my best shot.

You are the controller. You speak about dollars. Your CEO should be able to speak that language. The HR VP--hard to tell. Some can speak in financial terms, some cannot. (I suspect you have the latter.)

When presented with another one of his plans, ask, "What's the ROI on this one, Bob?" He'll probably look at your blankly. (Note, not saying all HR people would look at you blankly, but I suspect this isn't the guy's strong suit.) He'll defend his position. Say, "Sounds like fun, but what do you expect to get out of this?"

Make him come out with the expected result. "Everyone will have a good time?" will probably be the expected result of the tail gate party. You can counter, "It will cost us X for the added insurance, Y for the actual cost of the party and Z for taxis to get people home. Having a good time isn't enough. How do you expect this to reduce turnover? Have people been complaining about the lack of beer at work?"

Okay, so the last sentence is probably over the top. (Of course, yes, people have been complaining about the lack of beer at work. Not me, by the way, I don't drink.)

When he wants to give someone a raise (unless it's you, of course--we do have our priorities here) ask this question. "How are you going to make sure this is equitable? Did you know that males are more likely to ask for raises than females. Therefore, if our compensation structure is based on people asking, you're going to end up with skewed salaries--with men making more than women who are performing the same jobs. I'm not sure we have the financial ability to pay out on the inevitable law suits."

Stop trying to tell him what he can and cannot do. Just make him justify his position to you in financial terms. He'll either learn how to do it--and will start to see the folly of his ways--or the CEO will see that he can't justify his own projects.

It's HR people like this that really chap my hide. HR is supposed to support the business. There is a reason it's called "work" not play. Besides, who says that the employees want to spend their "play" time with people at work? I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than have a kegger.

Employees always want more money. This is true. But even more than that, they want to be respected. And trust me, you don't feel respected when you have to go beg for an increase. And even getting an asked for increase doesn't increase your warm fuzzy feelings for the company. It just leads to more negativity. (If you're willing to give me a raise when I asked, why weren't you willing to earlier? Are you just trying to pay me the least amount possible? This job stinks. I'm going to take my new salary and go apply for new jobs. Maybe I can get two increases within months!)

Don't be mean and don't be negative. Just keep asking questions. Demand explanations. And if that fails, cut his budget. (Just kidding on the last part. Ha! Ha! I love finance!)

Employee Relations Part III

Read part I and part II. Make sure you read the comments. They are, as usual, brilliant.

So, who is the problem employee? Karen or the manager? Or is it a little bit of both. My gut is to take Karen's side, but that's probably because I'm the mother of a young child who occasionally gets ill. But, I also appreciate that business is about making money and the manager (who I should have named, but I didn't) is effective at that.

My point in all this? Employee relations is not easy. Let's look at all the things going this Employee Relations Manager has to deal with. (Many of which I have gleefully stolen from the comments.)

1. High performing manager who stinks at her employee communication skills. Ask a Manager says:

I'd ask the manager: "Have you talked to Karen about your expectations for things she needs to take care of during unexpected absences?" If the answer is no, well, that's the first step. Don't discipline someone for not meeting an expectation you never laid out.

So what about expectations? We all have them. Karen and her manager aren't aligned on those expectations. Wally says:

The point about clear expectations is dead on. Clear expectations are both stated and enforced. Merely having a policy does not constitute clear expectations.

2. A recruiting tool (we're family friendly!) that isn't enforced in all departments. It may be in some, but not in others. As EvilRJ said:

But if Marleycorp's policy is clear (and only your own death or illness is acceptable) then maybe a written warning is a good reminder to start planning the move to Scandinavia.

And Tim Lacy says:

The company policy is flawed. No parent should be restricted for taking a sick day for his/her kid. Nothing should be done to/with Karen.

But what if an employee has 6 children who are prone to strep throat, ear infections and mysterious middle of the night vomiting? Should the company allow that person 10x the number of days off they give to other people? How do you develop a policy that will truly balance business needs and employee needs? And how does the ER rep work within flawed policies? Because reality is, that's your job. Yes, we try to do what is "right" but we also have to do what is "within policy."

3. A high potential new employee who is upset and likely already looking for a new job.

4. ER person stuck in the middle of a political nightmare. If you do the "right" thing for Karen and her co-workers and try to get the manager some training to help her communicate with her employees; or to help her learn to monitor end results rather than face time; or to not require people to work and take vacation days at the same time; you may end up being on the receiving end of some discipline yourself. After all, this manager has won the praise of Sr. Management. She gets the job done.

5. Trying to explain how high productivity but low morale and high turnover is going to eventually lead to low productivity and high costs may fall on deaf ears.

6. Must sort out who is exaggerating more--Karen or her manager? In this sort of situation, I assume that both are either leaving out important details or embellishing others. As Lea said:

As I'd also ask the manager what she said when she talked to Karen on the day in question, because while Karen felt yelled at, there's no guarantee that that's what the manager did.

That's another problem--feelings. Karen felt yelled at. It's doubtful the manager felt she yelled. Which person is right? Both of them. Perception is the person's reality. Sometimes ER has to help people get their perceptions in line with reality.

I could write more, but I need to go to bed. Employee relations is complicated and not all about handing people tissues and firing bad employees. It's about blending of managers and employees and people and policies and striking that magical spot where what is good for the employee is good for the business.

Tough world.

I'll definitely put up some more scenarios in a week or so. I found everyone's comments so fascinating.

Another DUI Problem

Hi Evil HR Lady,

I was working as a contractor for this company for about 5 months. Company offered me a Permanent position and I accepted it. When I fill up backgound check form I mentioned DUI but I was afraid to mention details about it. As a result of background check they came to know that I had 2 DUI's and a probation violation that was in my record 2 yrs ago.

I was sent home from the work, and I was told that if this information is incorrect I could dispute the background check report. Company will give me 3 days to do so. I don't know what should I do. All the information on the background check report are correct. I believe the reason they send me home was because I did not mention all the details on the background check application. Could this be the reason?

What should I do to convince them that I did not try to hide anything. I was trying to be as truthful as I could. My manager said he could give me 5 to 7 days instead of 3 days. Should I dispute the background check report and request re backgound check and fill all the details or if I could do that at all. I am a very honest and hard working employee and my managers and Directors were proud of my work. I am not sure If i could be able to get the Job back.

Yes, your lack of details is undoubtedly the reason you are being terminated, or rather not brought on board.

If I were your manager, there is probably nothing you could say to get me to take you back. Why? It's not because of the DUI (although 2 DUIs and a probation violation scream "IRRESPONSIBLE!" which makes your desirability as an employee quite low). It' because of the dishonesty.

You were afraid to mention the details, but it is the details that got you in trouble. Notice that they didn't care that you had the DUI. (And it's illegal to discriminate against someone on the basis of a conviction unless the conviction is related to the job.) What they did care about was that you didn't tell the truth.

Yes, there is a possibility you wouldn't have gotten the original contract work if you'd said, "two DUIs and a probation violation", but you wouldn't be where you are now if you had been honest.

Your best bet--explain to your manager that it is all correct, that you put the original DUI on the application, but left off details. Apologize profusely. If you truly are a good worker, he may give you another chance.

And just to everyone else, please, please, please be honest on your applications. I know other people lie. Other people get caught, too.

Employee Relations Part II

Scenario I, part II (read part I) and Part III)

As a skilled employee relations expert, you manage to convince the high performing manager to not proceed to a written warning stage at this time. You explain that you would like to speak with Karen and give her a formal "verbal" warning, which will be documented, but does not carry the weight of a "written" warning. You volunteer to explain to Karen the seriousness of the problem.

Your reason for this is because you want to know Karen's side of the story and your well honed ER sense is telling you that this award winning manager may be the cause for her department's high turnover--after all, managers are the number one reason why people quit their jobs.

Karen comes into your office and is visibly upset. "I don't know what to do!" she says, dropping into your office chair. "Two weeks ago my three year old had the stomach flu. I had to stay home. I sat next to my sick child with my lap top on my lap and running conference calls on my phone. I put in 10 hours of work on that day. Then I get called into my manager's office and informed that since I was out of the office, I have to use a vacation day. Vacation day! I worked my tail end off all day. I only get two weeks vacation as is, and to be forced to use up one when I've worked all day is ridiculous.

"One of the reasons I took this job was because of the family friendly policies you advertise. The recruiter assured me of flex time and telecommuting and all sorts of great things. None of them are true.

"So, yeah, I didn't work yesterday. I did put an out of office notice on my e-mail and my voicemail, but if I'm going to have to use a vacation day and get a lecture, then no way am I doing any work. I didn't answer the phone when my manager called because after she yelled at me the first time, I figured if she had anything important to say, she'd leave me a message."

So, now what do you say to Karen?

Carnival of HR #15

Is up over at Fortify Your Services.

Once again it's a fabulously informative set of articles. I do have to say that the carnival seems to get submissions from the best and brightest minds in HR.

The September 19th Carnival will be hosted by Evil HR Lady at, well, Evil HR Lady.

The October 3rd Carnival will be hosted by Natalie Cooper at Personnel Today.

The October 17th Carnival will be hosted by Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist

The Spooky October 31st Carnival will be hosted by HRO Manager at HRO Manager

The November 14th Carnival will be hosted by Patrick Williams at Guerilla HR

The November 28th Carnival will be hosted by Carmen Van Kerckhove at Race in the Workplace

The December 12th Carnival will be hosted by Wayne Turmel at The Cranky Middle Manager

The December 26th Carnival will be hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force.

The January 9th Carnival will be hosted by Ask a Manager at Ask a Manager.

The January 23rd Carnival will be hosted by Deb at 8 Hours & a Lunch.

The February 6th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The February 20th Carnival will be hosted by Lisa Rosendahl at HR Thoughts

The March 5th Carnival will be hosted by Gautam Ghosh at Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant

The March 19th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The April 2nd Carnival will be hosted by Rowan Manahan at Fortify Your Oasis.

The March 16th Carnival will by hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force

The April 30th Carnival will be hosted by The Rainmaker Group.

The May 14th Carnival will be hosted by The Career Encourager at Career Encouragement

The May 28th Carnival will be hosted by Michael Moore at PA Employment Law Blog

The June 11th Carnival will be hosted by Jon Ingham at Stategic Human Capital.

We're always looking for new hosts, so send me an e-mail at evilhrlady at hotmail dot com if you want to host. And get your submissions into me!

You're Fired, eh?

The Evil family just got back from a fabulous Canadian vacation. We spent most of our time in Ottawa, which is celebrating the 150th anniversary of Queen Victoria making Ottawa the capital of Canada. (It was an utterly fantastic city, by the way. I highly recommend it.)

We took many tours, including the East Block Tour. The offices of several of Canada's early leaders have been preserved, along with the Privy Council Room.

Outside this room is a coat and hat rack. (This is Canada, of course. It does get a bit chilly in the winter.) According to our guide George-Étienne Cartier, Minister of Militia and Defense used to be the last to arrive at these Cabinet meetings. He enjoyed rearranging coats on the coat rack. If you were being promoted, you would come out of the meeting to find your coat moved to the right. If you were being demoted, it would be moved to the left. If, perchance, you came out and found your hat and coat in a pile on the floor? Well, it's been nice knowing you.

I think several people would prefer to conduct terminations in this same non-confrontational way.

Employee Relations Part I

Scenario 1:

A high performing department manager walks into your office. She has been highly successful at turning a low performing group into a high performing group. In the past 3 years, she has won two awards for her work. Senior management is highly impressed with her and holds her up as an example to other managers on how to get results. Turnover has been high, but each of the employees told you they were leaving for better positions--obviously this manager had trained them well.

The manager says: "I want to put a formal warning in Karen's file. Two times in the past month she has called out with absolutely no notice. Yesterday was the last straw. She let clients hang, didn't check her voice mail or e-mail and didn't even answer her phone the second and third time I called her. She said her child was sick, but then why didn't she answer her phone? And she has a laptop and I checked her office and the laptop was gone, so she obviously had it at home. There was no reason she couldn't check her e-mail. I deducted both days from her vacation, but that doesn't make this behavior acceptable!"

Your company's official policy is that sick days are only to be used when the employee is ill, not for sick children.

Karen has been with the company 6 months. She came highly recommended and has performed well. She rapidly gained understanding of the company and her responsibilities. To the best of your knowledge, she was a good hire with potential.

How do you respond to the manager? Right now?

(read the comments and then read Part II and Part III.)

Carnival Reminder

The Next Carnival of HR will be held September 5th over at Fortify Your Oasis.

Click on the above link because it is truly worth it. What would we do without Rowan?

Entries to rowan dot manahan at gee mail dot com by 6.00pm GMT on Monday folks. Please include a short paragraph in your mail outlining the thinking behind your post.

Fair is Fair

Miss South Carolina was on the Today Show and re-answered the question given her at Friday's pageant.

Since I posted the video of her first answer, I think it's only fair to post the video of the second one.



She seemed quite well spoken and did a great job.

Teacher Shortage, or How to Write a Job Description

I live in a really good (read: high taxes) school district. We've lived here for 7 years, and specifically bought the house we are in now to be in this school district. It came at a premium, but we were willing to pay it to be in a good school district.

I have several friends who are teachers. They live in this good school district, but teach in other school districts. Why? Because getting a job in this district is extremely difficult. So, they commute and pray for openings here.

Which brings me to this article from the New York Times:

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.

Hmmm, what's the problem? My friends are desperate for jobs close to home. Other school districts are desperate for teachers. How can we solve this problem?

Well, first, let's identify the problem. Is it a shortage of people who can teach? I could teach. Granted, I'm not a certified public school teacher, but I've taught at a university. It always boggles my mind that while I'm not qualified to teach government to a bunch of 10th graders, I'm qualified to teach the same subject on a much more advanced level to college seniors.

So, perhaps lack of certified teachers is the problem. But, with programs like Teach for America and emergency certification programs, I think finding people who meet the criteria isn't the problem either.

Upon reading further in the story (2nd paragraph--I do do complete research before pushing post), we find this:

Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say the challenge of putting a qualified teacher in every classroom is heightened in subjects like math and science and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools, where the turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in such schools have opened with substitute teachers in recent years.

Ah-ha. We need more math and science teachers.

At the university I attended, in order to get a degree in math education you had to take a bunch of education classes and a whole lot of high level math classes. Lots and lots of advanced calculus and other things that I don't know about because I majored in something much more squishy (political science).

Why? Why is that in the job description for a math teacher? Most schools (that I am aware of) offer calculus, but don't require it. In fact, here are the math requirements from North Carolina (the state with bad teacher shortage mentioned above). For people on a "university prep" path, Algebra II and one "higher level" math class or "integrated math" levels 1-3 are required. For other paths, the math requirements are even lower.

But, here is the University of North Carolina's requirement to get a degree in Mathematics Education to teach high school.

Math 231 Calculus

Math 232 Calculus II

Math 233 Calculus III

Math 381 Discrete Mathematics

Math 383 Linear Algebra with Differential Equations

Math 551 Euclidean and Non-Euclidean Geometries

Math 416 Matrix Algebra

Math 515 History of Math

Math 533 Number Theory

Why? If the vast majority of your students aren't going to be taking calculus (let alone, calculus II and calculus III and Matrix Algebra) why require that for your certification?

Wouldn't it make more sense to require things that the teacher will actually use on the job? Why not, if you have 4 math teachers in the high school, require only one to have all the fancy higher level math skills. The rest of your teachers need to be qualified to teach "integrated math" and alegbra I.

Kind of opens up your field of available teachers, doesn't it? Someone that might be a great algebra teacher just may switch her major if she doesn't have to take so many years of higher level mathemetics that she will most likely never use.

And now for our general HR application--job descriptions. Are we writing job descriptions to make them sound more impressive then they really are? (10 years of experience, MBA, required.) Is it really?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

You really need to think about what is necessary to do THIS job. Not, boy, I really like people from Harvard! It's fine if you want to hire people from Harvard, but is it a requirement?

Making high level requirements that don't truly fit the job can result in getting applicants who are barely qualified on paper and tremendously overqualified in practice. They are then bored and that increases your turnover.

Make sure your list of requirements are truly requirements. Then you can add your nice to haves (7 years experience, bachelor's degree in business, social sciences or similar. MBA preferred).

A Thousand Pardons

I've had to turn on the word verification. I hate the word verification.

But, I'm spending more and more time deleting spam comments. Hopefully this will help.

And now a word for my spammers. You aren't very bright with your spam. Your grammar is terrible. And, furthermore, every time a comment gets posted to my blog, I get an e-mail, so then I go in and delete the comment.

It's annoying, and unless you happen to be lucky enough to post one of your spam comments while I'm at the grocery story, they don't stay up long enough for anyone to read them.

I hate spam. Although I like this Weird Al Song

The Coming Talent Shortage

In response to the YouTube video about demographic changes, Michael Moore (the lawyer, not the other Michael Moore) posted a link to this video about the upcoming labor shortage.



I thought it was very good and should be seen, but I wasn't planning to blog about it, until my brother sent me this video



Is this who we're going to be hiring in a few years? Yikes. Please, those of you who are in your sixties, don't retire. Looks like we're really, really, really going to need you.

The High Cost of Geeks

Dear Evil HR Lady:

I just discovered your site, and it really is great! And as fate would have it I now have an evil HR question. My employer recently implemented an ERP system and took the occasion of scrapping all the existing HR data as an opportunity to reclassify every single position in the organization, not a bad thing in and of itself. Here's the problem: back in the day (e.g. pre-ERP) we knew how to write job descriptions so as to maximize the paygrade that would be assigned to the position -- a critical skill when trying to attract technical staff to positions in a tight, tight market for this talent. Now the whole compensation analysis criteria scheme is a mystery...nay it is a secret! The grades that our compensation analysts are assigning to positions that we know are high-five figure jobs in our market are just not competitive, and we're facing having to hire and train bozos right out of college rather than being able to attract the high-level techies we NEED to run our crap. (And by crap I mean a complex server environment that houses several billion dollars worth of financial data.)

My question: Is it standard evil HR practice to keep the criteria by which a position description will be analyzed and assigned a pay level a secret? Do you have any advice for gaming on the system so that we can hire for newly created positions and replace high-level staff members at appropriate salary levels?

Signed,
Geeks Cost, and Right Here Is Where You Start Paying

Methinks someone is on a cost saving power trip. To quickly answer your question, paygrades should be based on market data. Your compensation department should be looking at salary surveys to determine what other companies are paying for similar jobs. This should not be secret at all. They should be able to show you what the market rate for the job is and it should correlate pretty closely with the assigned pay grade.

Make an appointment with your compensation analyst, don't be accusatory, just ask her to explain how she comes to a decision about the grade for any given job. She should be able to do so. If she hemms and haws, produce a job descriptions and say, let's level this together! This will make her very annoyed, because chances are she's operating under stupid rules put into place by the power hungry cost saver above her.

However, some companies think they can get by with a "cheap" labor force. This always cracks me up because a cheap labor force will cost you more money in the long run--for several reasons. I'll start with my two favorite.

1. You get what you pay for. (Generally, we all know there are exceptions to this rule. We all wish we could be exceptions to this rule--being overvalued, that is.) If the market rate for one of your techie positions is $95,000 (not unrealistic in my neck of the woods either), and you can only pay $75,000 you aren't going to have as many candidates to choose from. Sure, you'll be able to hire someone (because IT jobs are frequent targets of outsourcing), but that person will lack the skills and experience of the person you could hire at $95,000. You will have to train. This costs money. You will have more mistakes. This will also cost money.

2. Once you get this person up to speed she'll say, "why am I working here for $75,000? I can go across the street to the competitor and make $95,000. Plus they'll give me a sign on bonus!" And so she leaves. Now you've got recruitment costs, overtime costs (sometimes) when others have to fill in and do her job until you find someone. And you are stuck with the same low pay grade, so you have to start with the under-qualified person (not a bad person, mind you, just an inexperienced one) and the cycle continues.

One of the big overarching HR problems is our lack of understanding of not only the financial side of the business, but everything else. Once upon a time I led a task force to determine how our business wanted to look at turnover. The consensus among the senior HR people was that we only really wanted to look at the professional population. The factory workers--an hourly, unionized group--didn't matter. Heck, they're cheap labor.

I was flabbergasted. The hourly factory workers made up a really high percentage of our workforce, and their turnover was quite high. I suggested we include them in our turnover. No, no, no. We only want to see the professional people.

Finally, a plant HR manager spoke up, "we have a really hard time filling positions" she said softly.

Everyone was shocked. You do? Really?

Here was a bunch of senior HR people who literally had no clue what was really going on. Factory labor is cheap, so they didn't care about it. Except it's not cheap and it's necessary to keeping the business running.

If your business is in the business of storing financial data, your IT people are beyond critical to your business. But, HR may be focused on the sales force or the stock brokers or whatever is the glamor group for your company.

You may have to do some hard work to help them understand the critical nature of getting the right geek on board.

Are You Ready for the Changing Workforce?

This video is long, but very interesting.

I wonder if any of us HR types are truly prepared for a changing workforce.

Carnival of HR #14

Is now up over at Three Star Leadership. Hope on over and read.

The September 5th Carnival will be hosted by Rowan Manahan at Fortify Your Oasis.

The September 19th Carnival will be hosted by Evil HR Lady at, well, Evil HR Lady.

The October 3rd Carnival will be hosted by Natalie Cooper at Personnel Today.

The October 17th Carnival will be hosted by Kris Dunn at HR Capitalist

The Spooky October 31st Carnival will be hosted by HRO Manager at HRO Manager

The November 14th Carnival will be hosted by Patrick Williams at Guerilla HR

The November 28th Carnival will be hosted by Carmen Van Kerckhove at Race in the Workplace

The December 12th Carnival will be hosted by Wayne Turmel at The Cranky Middle Manager

The December 26th Carnival will be hosted by Ann Bares at Compensation Force.

The January 9th Carnival will be hosted by Ask a Manager at Ask a Manager.

The January 23rd Carnival will be hosted by Deb at 8 Hours & a Lunch.

The February 6th Carnival will be hosted by Wally Bock at Three Star Leadership.

The February 20th Carnival will be hosted by Lisa Rosendahl at HR Thoughts

The March 5th Carnival will be hosted by Gautam Ghosh at Gautam Ghosh - Management Consultant

We're always looking for new participants and new hosts. Send me an e-mail if you'd like to host and make sure to submit your posts to Rowan Manahan for the next carnival.