My employee, “Jim,” has been in the workforce for about 2.5 years and with my company for 1.5 years. After working with him closely for that time, I’d rate his work ethic as 5/10 (it’s not a concern, but he’s not impressing). However, he seems to believe that his work ethic and workload are higher than average. In his first annual review, he listed limited time and heavy workload as an obstacle to his success. When I took a closer look, I saw that he averaged 38 hours/week (40+ hours/week is typical for our company). A few weeks after that review, he posted in a company-wide Slack channel that he had just pulled into the golf course on Wednesday at 4 pm.
The most recent example was when I was working with Jim and another director on a project. I provided feedback to Jim at 4:15 pm and didn’t get a response. Then other director chimed in with several questions on a different project and didn’t get a response. At 5:15 pm, Jim responded, “Sorry I was on a walk” and then in response to one of the questions said, “I had planned to, I just had other stuff come up today. I’m struggling keeping up right now.”
Our culture does prioritize flexibility and in most situations, I wouldn’t be concerned about an employee logging off for a walk at 4:15 pm (our typical hours are 8-5). However, it rubs me the wrong way when Jim also says he’s struggling to keep up.
Is there a way for me to have a conversation with Jim about optics and how those types of comments in succession are perceived? I’m worried that in my position as his manager, it will sound like I’m telling him he can’t have a flexible schedule or should lie about his hours.
Is he struggling to keep up? If he wasn’t constantly saying that he’s struggling, would you have concerns about his work?
I’m asking because if he is indeed struggling to keep up — if his work isn’t getting done as quickly as it should and people aren’t getting answers from him fast enough — then this isn’t just about optics.
Optics would be if he were doing a good job and staying on top of everything but still dropping comments about golfing and walks to explain why he hadn’t gotten back to someone sooner. Or showily kicking back and reading a magazine while people were harried around him.
But if he’s really not working with the pace or quality you’d like to see, then this is more than optics: it’s him making bad decisions about his time management while simultaneously not getting his work done That’s a performance issue. Optics would still be a piece of it, since it’s obviously terrible judgment to announce his mid-day golf trips in that context. But it would be a smaller piece than the rest.
If that’s the case, you should sit down with him and say something like: “You’ve mentioned a few times that you’re struggling to keep up, and I’ve seen signs of that too, like X and Y. I’m concerned that you’re doing things like golfing mid-day or leaving work to take a walk while you’re behind on work and people are waiting on answers from you. We do have a flexible culture, but that assumes you’re staying on top of everything. I’m concerned to see you managing your time that way when you’re already struggling.”
But if his work and responsiveness are actually fine, that’s a different situation. In that case, I’d be most concerned that his assessment (“struggling”) doesn’t match up with yours, and I’d want to dig into that. So that’s a conversation more like: “You’ve mentioned a few times that you’re struggling to keep up, so I want to talk about what’s going on. From my perspective, your work is good and you’re staying on top of everything. Tell me how things are feeling to you.” If from that conversation you realize he is struggling (for example, feeling overwhelmed and stretched too thin, even if you don’t see it in his work product), it makes sense to bring up the golfing, etc. in that context.
In either of those situations, it’s not really optics. It’s that all the pieces aren’t fitting together in a way that makes sense: his time management choices aren’t syncing up with his commentary. Something is going on, and digging into it should help you pinpoint whatever it is.
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