It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…
1. I found an ad for my own job
I’m supposed to have a team of four, but one of my employees transferred to another team/office three months ago. I put in a job requisition request for his replacement right away but have had no movement on this front. My team is struggling to meet all of our deadlines and doing a decent amount of overtime, but we’re making it work. I’m getting frustrated that HR has not forwarded me any resumes or set up any interviews for me. I checked our online careers page to see if the job was listed and it is, and I also happened to see that my job is listed too! (At least I’m 95% sure it’s mine because there are particular terms that only relate to my department.)
We just had our annual reviews in July and I was given a great review and a small but better than average merit increase (average was 3% and I got 3.5%). My direct supervisor also told me that I received the largest bonus out of everyone in my practice area (which is about 80 people). I met all of my bonus metrics goals, plus I received a large discretionary bonus, for a total of almost 9.5% annual bonus based on my income.
If they are unhappy with my performance and looking to replace me, why would they give me such a large bonus and praise me during my recent annual review? Why else would they put my job online unless they are looking to replace me? What should I do now?
Ask your boss about this, right now. While employers do sometimes seek to replace someone who doesn’t know it yet (although it’s generally a pretty crappy thing to do), they generally don’t do it by openly advertising the role on the company jobs page. It’s much more likely that this is a different role, or that it was posted by mistake, or some other explanation.But rather than wonder and stress about it, go talk to your boss. Say something like this: “I was just looking on our jobs page to see if the X role is listed yet and I saw a position that looks like it could be mine.”
It’s highly likely that your boss’s response will set you at ease.
That said, I’m being given a tiny amount of pause by the fact that HR hasn’t sent you any resumes for the job you’re hiring for. If they were planning to replace you, they might cut you out of the loop on hiring for that role, or even put it on hold until your replacement is hired. But there are also lots of other explanations for this (including just having a kind of lame HR department, the same kind that would accidentally post a role that sounds so much like yours). But there’s no point in speculating when you can just go ask your boss what’s up.
2. My manager tells us to bill the company for hours we didn’t work
My manager has employees record extra hours, and I’d like to know what the possible repercussions to the employees could be.
I work part-time, as does every other member of our department, with the exception of management. To help out the employees, our manager has established the following pay scale:
Task A = 4 hours
Task B = 6 hours
Task C = 8 hours
If we work in excess of the hours assigned to each task, we record the full amount of hours we actually worked. But if we work less, we get a freebie, since we’re told to record the additional time. My manager says that this is to compensate for low hourly wages and vastly varying workloads, and to make everything stay under the radar–if everyone gets the benefit, no one will rat him out. What are the repercussions for the employees for doing this, if any should questions arise from upper management?
Well, you could all get fired. But it’s more likely that your manager would be the one who gets booted. He’s basically defrauding the company, unless he’s doing this with the knowledge and approval of the company’s management (which it sounds like he’s not, given your reference about him doing it for everyone so that no one will report it). And telling you to report extra hours “to compensate for low hourly wages” is pretty outrageous — the company sets the pay scale and if he takes issue with it, he should advocate for higher wages, not enlist you all in fraud.
At a minimum, I’d keep very careful documentation of his instructions to you on this, so that if/when it’s uncovered, you can show that you were following his instructions. But ideally you’d also speak up about it — either to him (if there’s a chance that the company does know, since he could clarify that for you) or to someone above him.
3. How can I ask for regular one-on-one meetings with my manager?
I work for small organization. I sometimes feel disconnected from the rest of the office. My boss and I usually exchange greetings when/if we see each other in the common areas, but some days I don’t see her at all. We rarely discuss what I’m doing unless I’m in her office to ask her a specific question, and she asks, “how are things?” I understand that she’s a busy person and she doesn’t have time to chase me down, and that I need to go to her if I need anything. So I think I want to set up some sort of weekly short one-on-one meetings with her where I could give her a lowdown of what’s going on, ask her questions, ask her if she needs me on any other projects, and also where she can give me a lowdown on things on her end that she feels I should know, but how do I politely bring this up? It was brought up as a good idea at one point a while ago, but it hasn’t been mentioned since. Could I approach her office and ask in person? Or should I send her an email to preface it?
This is a totally reasonable thing to ask for, and even more so since it’s actually been suggested in the past! Asking in person or via email is fine. I’d say something like this: “Would it be possible to start scheduling short weekly check-ins with you? I’m realizing that I don’t have a great mechanism for updating you on my work, getting your input on things, and making sure I’m in the loop on anything you need from me, and I’d love to get short weekly meetings on your calendar (or even every other week if that’s easier on your schedule).”
4. I’m going to start telecommuting, but my employer wants to change me to a contractor
My husband recently received a once-in-a-lifetime job offer that requires relocation. My employer – a nonprofit organization – is allowing me to work remotely, but they want to change my status from a full-time employee to a full-time contractor. The expectations communicated to me so far would be that I’m available during business hours and that my job would not change, except for my location. The only reason I received from my employer about why my status would change is a fuzzy answer about liability of some kind (something about insurance the employer would need to carry for having employees in another state). My organization is about 70 people, and I would be the only full-time remote employee.
As I think about this, and as I’ve learned more about the distinctions between contractors and employees, I feel pretty strongly that what I would expected to do would be in the realm of an employee. Obviously, the change has a lot of implications for me personally (taxes, benefits, etc.). I’d like to go back to my employer and discuss keeping me on as full-time remote employee, as I think their expectations of me are going to be more in line with that of an employee.
Do you have any advice on how I might handle this, or what the merits of being a contractor v. employee might be (particularly from an employer standpoint)? I know lots of people work remotely as employees (instead of contractors), so I’m trying to understand my footing of how I might approach my employer on this matter.
It’s true that having an employee based in another state will sometimes require your employer to get additional workers compensation insurance (even if you’re working from your own home), which they might not consider cheap. But it’s also true that your employer can’t just decide to treat you as an independent contractor because it will be more convenient to them; whether or not you qualify to be treated as a contractor is a matter of law, not of preference. It’s possible that your role could meet that test with a few minor changes, but they shouldn’t take it as a given.
And yes, there are disadvantages to you in that arrangement: You’ll presumably lose your paid time off, health insurance, retirement contributions, and other benefits, and you’ll be responsible for paying self-employment tax, which is about 12% of your income (although that can also be offset by your ability to deduct more business expenses). That said, if you’re the one pushing to work remotely, you might decide that those trade-offs are worth it to you. But go into it with your eyes open.
5. Following up on networking emails when you haven’t received a reply
My question is about networking. After you reach out to a new person you want to connect with professionally and they don’t respond, is it appropriate to follow up in two weeks to see if they would be interested in connecting or is that just pushy and annoying? And what’s the most appropriate way to frame that email?
I just moved to a new city and have been emailing a lot of professionals who work in the area I’m interested in (nonprofit and government work). Most of the emails I send are because another connection of mine recommended I get in touch with that person. Thus I start off all my emails with some sort of line like “X recently suggested I reach out to you,” and then give a brief explanation of who I am and why I want to connect with them. I have a very high response rate to these emails (maybe 1 out of every 10 or 15 people I reach out to do not reply) so I don’t think the problem is that I’m sending a lame networking request.
However, the people who haven’t replied are some of the people I am most interested in connecting with. I really want to send a follow-up email to those people, but I don’t want them to label me as that annoying person who keeps harassing them. I was thinking that maybe I should contact the person who originally recommended I reach out to the non-responders, but I also don’t want to harass that group of people since they are also new connections and I don’t want to appear like I can’t even email someone without help. Please advise on what the best way to handle this situation would be.
It might not be a coincidence that the people you’ most want to connect with are the ones who haven’t replied. The people who others are most interested in connecting with are often the people who are especially busy and who field a lot of these requests. That means that you might need to resign yourself to simply not getting a response from them. There’s nothing wrong with one polite follow-up after a few weeks have gone by (so a total of two emails to them) — but after that I’d move on.
And I wouldn’t try enlisting the original referrer for help — that’s too much like saying “can you please nag this person who has already had a clear opportunity to respond to me but who has chosen not to,” and that’s way too big of an ask for anyone who you don’t know extremely well and where the stakes aren’t more urgent than just wanting to make additional contacts.
I found an ad for my own job, my manager tells us to bill for hours we didn’t work, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.