This week marks a milestone for The Boss Perspective. The article for today is going to focus on a question submitted by one of my readers, who we’ll call Linda for privacy’s sake. She found herself in a situation at work recently that’s not going to be fun for her to address. It seems that Linda, who is a junior manager, planned for some time off a while back, and had scheduled her assistant to cover the shift. The assistant, who’s demonstrated some attendance issues in the past, initially agreed to work Linda’s shift but cancelled at the last minute to catch up on schoolwork.
There are a whole mess of reasons why she may have chosen to back out and leave Linda and her customers hanging. I’m going to discuss this as if I were the one dealing with the situation, but I’m going to intentionally do so without some background context. It wouldn’t be appropriate to highlight their company’s specific policies on this website, and of course we don’t have the employee’s side of the story. My response will need to be fairly generic because of this, but the rest of my readers may one day find themselves in a similar situation. It may be worth noting, however, that Linda and her assistant are close in age, which may play into how the assistant feels about reporting to Linda.
The business model for this particular workplace required employees to stick to a fairly specific and regular schedule based on the hours of operation. Hopefully I’ve spoken to my assistant in the past, to communicate our attendance policy but also to address her prior struggles with adhering to the schedule. If she’s not already, she should probably be on a performance plan with specific goals and objectives for improvement. With attendance, this is usually straightforward. An organization can consider what accommodations need to be made, but in general if the business needs dictate a set schedule then that’s pretty much where it needs to be.
I would review the assistant’s individual calendar so I could plan for a meeting that shouldn’t be interrupted or postponed. If this is the sort of organization that does “write-ups” or other documentation of discipline, I would prepare that ahead of time and have it ready when I go to sit down and talk with the assistant just in case. I would open with discussing what was agreed to or understood versus what actually occurred with regard to her dropping the ball, and ask for her thought process or reasoning behind not covering the shift she agreed to.
In my personal experience, both as an employee and as a supervisor, homework and studying can frequently conflict with a work schedule -- especially if one wants to have any sort of personal life outside of school and work! It may well be that this particular individual doesn’t plan to make a career out of being someone’s assistant at this company, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is committing to a schedule and then not living up to that commitment. Nor is this a habit that she should develop prior to moving on to her “career” job, wherever that may be.
It may not be enough simply to tell her that she was supposed to do something or agreed to do something and then didn’t get it done, and this is disappointing or whatnot. To help her see both sides of the story, I would explain to her how this affected the personal life of whoever ended up unexpectedly working the shift, and how it impacted the customer experience. Then I would ask her what she could have done differently to avoid this situation. Although I’d want her to see a lesson to be learned, or better alternative to ditching work, I wouldn’t be incredibly surprised if she simply expressed regret at agreeing to cover the shift in the first place.
This is tricky because I don’t want to get into her personal business with questions like “when did you receive your homework assignment” or “what were you doing all week that prevented you from studying at night?” Her personal business is, well, none of my business. The steps I take to address the employee issue remain the same, however, since she may one day have other issues at work due to poor decisions made entirely within the workplace.
Then I would move on to how we could avoid situations like this one in the future. The needs of the business and the responsibilities associated with her role may preclude simple answers like avoiding covering shifts for other people. I may offer her advice on time management; I may do some homework of my own and find that my attendance policies are too lax or too strict. It may also be that given the assistant’s prior struggles with attendance, she shouldn’t be scheduled to cover anyone else.
I’d also talk about what happens next with her if she doesn’t avoid behavior like this in the future. It’s important to be clear with expectations around behavior and improvement. This is not to make threats about future disciplinary actions, but rather to prevent the need for those entirely by making clear to my employee where I want her to focus her energy. I also want to make it as easy as possible for her to see what behaviors to avoid or change. If she’s constantly stressed out over any potential disciplinary actions, her performance will begin to suffer as a result.
Finally, disciplinary action may indeed be needed. I prefer to think of performance management as a lot more than just a punitive, reactionary process, but sometimes unfortunately it ends up being just that black-and-white. Attendance can be one of those issues. Hopefully Linda’s assistant can take away a lesson from this situation and improve her behavior, but ultimately she must be responsible for her own actions. Linda and her organization should ensure they provide the necessary guidance and allow the assistant every opportunity to be successful; whether that employee steps up will be on her alone.
What would you do, if you were in Linda’s position? What do you suppose this employee is thinking? Please feel free to contribute to the discussion in the comments section! If you’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes reading “The Boss Perspective,” subscribe and share this site with your friends, Like me on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter @BossPerspective.
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