HR Meeting

LegacyUser

Hi,

I started a job 10 months ago and depsite my best efforts I can not get along with my manger. There is only one other person on the team and they have decided to leave. I can no longer deal with her either so have pretty much decided to go. The person prior to me left because of her too. Anyway I want to meet with HR before I go down the road of leaving as I it is not acceptable. My problem is this- we have glass offices so if she sees me with HR I may as well hand in my notice there and then... What way can I do it anonymously?

Irish_Elect_Eng

Some Suggestions:

• Arrange for a lunch or out of hours meeting with HR outside the office.
• Is there a time in the week where your manager is out of the office or otherwise occupied.
• Perhaps initiate the discussion on a telephone call and explain to HR that you would like to meet privately and ask them to handle it confidentially, it is unlikely to be the first time that they have been asked.

Remember, if you want the discussion to remain confidential, then clearly express this to HR at the beginning of the meeting.

At the end of the meeting clearly discuss next-steps, you should know what HR intends to do after the meeting and what their expectations are of you also.

LegacyUser

Thanks so much. I have emailed a request for a meeting and stated that I need it to be confidential.
My manager is out tomorrow but HR person is only here Tues, Weds, Thurs and I want to get it behind me before I chicken out

Clearlier

Have you built relationships with any senior people in the company? Is there anyone that you could ask to mentor you?

If your manager is bad then their peers will be well aware of it. If you have been creating a good impression there may be opportunities in other areas of the company that you work for that you could unlock by asking someone to act as a mentor for you. Failing that a good mentor can give you sound advice on how to handle the situation with your manager.

Bringing your issues to HR at this stage is something that I would be cautious of doing if you hope to develop a career within the company.

LegacyUser

Thanks for your advice and I have already considered the implications this has for any future in here. However, sometimes you just have to either change the situation or move on. At this point I am strongly considering leaving. Going home from work in tears at 31 years of age and facing the next day with dread and knots in your stomach is no way to live. I have worked so hard in here that it saddens me to have to leave at this point but if nothing changes I will have to. There's more to life than this.

L.Jenkins

I was in a similar situation in a previous role. My manager was so hostile in work, that I began to become so stressed out, I began to get sick physically and mentally. This enabled me to become well acquainted with the local hospital. On one occasion, it progressed to puking blood for an entire evening.

I took my concerns to HR, when I was essentially handed the proverbially shovel when my own performance started to decline. I also turned down at every attempt to move departments within the Company.

So the questions are, Can you find a Mentor? Can you create new opportunities within the Company to move to a new role? If nothing can be done to get away from your current Manager, is it worth your health to stay?

Mrs OBumble

OP, you need to decide what you want to achieve from meeting HR:

Do you just want to vent? (In which case, don't talk to them - assume anything you say to HR will be at lease semi-formal)
Do you want to lay a formal complaint? (Great if you do, but expect some even more unpleasantness in the short term).
Do you want them to magically take your manager away (understandable, but they most likely cannot deliver)
Do you want a transfer to another area of the company (HR probably can't achieve that unless your manager agrees).
Do you want them to agree give you a good reference? (they might - but it's your manager who most future employers will want to talk to).
Etc.


Remember that HR work in the best interests of the company, not the employees.

And that your manager is an employee, too. It's HR probably think that his/her behaviour is unacceptable, too. Maybe they are working with your manager's manager, to change it: like any other employee, managers need to be given a chance to improve their performance - and this means that there is a chance they will fail, too. But this means that HR are not allowed to tell you the truth about what may be going on . (The same way that if some other employee complained about your performance, HR would not be free to tell them what was being done to performance-manage you.)

Another possibility is that HR in your company is not responsible for employee performance. This is less common in big companies in Ireland, but does apply in some companies, especially smaller ones. Sometimes responsibility for performance is delegated totally to line-managers, and that HR's only job is to do payroll and to support managers to manage. In this case, HR won't be able to help you much at all.



Good luck with the job-hunting.

LegacyUser

Thanks for the replies. After advising HR I wanted it to be confidential. The hr guy arranged to meet me in a coffee shop around the corner. Which was v nice. She started by asking if it was formal or informal to which I explained I really wasn't sure as I needed to know th implications of both. She explained both and we agreed to have an informal chat about ways to improve my situ. She advised I speak to my manger in my next one to one meeting and calmly explain how the way how the way that she speaks to be impacts me- even though she may not realise it. She explained that then if I take further action I have already given her the opportunity to change her behaviour. She also advised that this manager might need someone to stand up to her. She is aware of the wider issue with this manager but advised until someone makes a formal complain their hands are tied. Seems there has been lots of complaints but no formal one- I was reading between the lines.

She said my manager has spoken to her unofficially and is more than happy with me on the team. She said the company would hate to lose me and to try everything before it comes to that, advising that if it gets to a formal complaint they will do all in their power to protect me. I said that if I was going formal I am pretty much taking a step out the door- she said that this is not how I should feel but to walk away without taking action will lead to regret and nothing learned or gained from the experience.

Clearlier

appleday wrote: »

I said that if I was going formal I am pretty much taking a step out the door- she said that this is not how I should feel but to walk away without taking action will lead to regret and nothing learned or gained from the experience.

I would be careful here. It could be that HR would like some ammunition to use against your manager and would be happy for you to provide it. Before you do that make sure that it's in your best interests to do so.

Irish_Elect_Eng

I am glad to hear that your meeting was productive. I hope that it give you the information that you needed to decide on your next step. Given that the HR manager had positive feedback on your performance from the manager in question, approaching your manager, while difficult is probably the best next step. There are a lot of issues in the workplace that can be addressed by a frank and honest conversation between two adults.

People can be very non-self aware and are sometime surprised by how they are perceived by others and that their interpersonal style is not working for some of their co-workers. Sometimes they have developed a style that worked well for them as an individual contributor on task-driven work, but failed to recognize that the style was not successful once they were promoted to a people-centric management role.

Average HR folks do work primarily for the company interest, but they can also recognize when addressing management problems are in the best interest of the company. Although the HR person stated that their hands were formally tied, it would not be unusual for them to be working to address these issues informally.

But as others have stated, base your decision on what is best for you in the long run, and only you ca really know the answer to that question.

LegacyUser

Thank you for the excellent advice. I really have taken it on board and will decide on the best course of action in the next few days. I won't be going the formal route at this point so its either put up or speak with my manager.

Thanks again.

MajorMax

As a manager I was once responsible for training a new addition to my team as we are a specialist technical team and our regular trainer wouldn't know the apects of our job that would be required.

I approached the task in my usual manner, friendly and enthusiastic in a gruff sarcastic way. I trained the guy and after he was on the team, I had him placed at a desk next to mine so I could mentor him, we conversed and bantered in a friendly way for over a year until he left for a new role in the same company

A while after this I was speaking to my manager and it comes out that this guy made an informal complaint of bullying against me, he was told at the time by my manager to make a formal complaint if he felt it was nessecary but he didn't bother

This stunned me. i hadn't considered myself a bully, I can be short with people who are under performing, but I never considered it bullying. I wish he had spoken to me about it.

This made me re-examine my attitude and I believe i have made steps to address this issue.

OP your manager may not be aware of the problems, talk to them and see what happens. We're all grown ups

LegacyUser

Thanks. You sound a lot more reasonable than my manger. I will have a conversation with her, give her the benefit of the doubt. However, I just heard today HR had an informal chat with her 2 weeks ago- it hasn't had any effect on her. Apparently she has "issues". Not my problem!!

I will stick it out but in the long run she is not someone I want to work with, so I will keep an eye out for something else.

LegacyUser

I have very much been in this position OP.As with you, I (well, actually it was "we" as a team) didn't go down the formal complaint route, because we felt that it was a personality thing - the manager just was the way they were, and it was unlikely that any action by anybody would change how they worked, and how their personality was. Also this manager got very defensive when challenged on anything at all, so we felt that any conversations with them would probably fall on deaf ears.
I'd like to say it all ended well, but really, speaking to HR didn't do much for us. As with you, there was a wider awareness of the problem, but an unwillingness to try and deal with it. Your last post is an exact description of where we ended up.
The manager actually ended up leaving eventually, but most of the team were gone at that stage. For various other reasons, I myself am also job hunting.
I completely and totally agree with you - to be going home from work age 31 in tears because of one individual is just not on - I was there too. There's more to life than this, and I felt that nobody could do anything about it, so it was up to me to change it (still is) by taking myself out of the situation. I think you did the right thing, so hang on in there and hope you find something else soon.

LegacyUser

Thank you so much loudechoes. I know I will never change the situation in here but I can change the situation for myself, by leaving. I just need to find somethign suitable for the same pay. I have an interview on Thursday, so the ball is in motion. Thanks again