Workplace Coach
Healing the world one workplace at a time...
Jennifer Yuhas
Archives
Q: Sixteen months ago I lost my oil company job, but received enough severance to keep me afloat for more than a year. I’d always wanted to work for myself and felt this was my big chance. Even though I’ve never been a risk-taker, I started a small business. I soon realized I needed an assistant because when I invested time in paperwork it took me away from the sales and marketing… Read More
Q: Several months ago one of my former employees, who’d left our agency, returned as my immediate supervisor. It’s been hell ever since. Before his return, I had been respected and allowed to function semi-autonomously. I’d myself been a supervisor, overseeing one employee until he left and management decided to shift the duties he’d handled to another department. I received excellent performance evaluations for my accomplishments. My former employee rules commander style… Read More
Do you fire an otherwise acceptable employee after he unintentionally creates widespread panic among those your organization has committed to serving? What if he’s a new employee who didn’t know better – and you question whether his supervisor bears part of the responsibility because he didn’t receive adequate training? What if the bulk of the panic occurred because your organization didn’t have solid systems in place to prevent the problems one accidental… Read More
Q: My introverted, insecure, my-way-or-the-highway supervisor has an abnormally low threshold for anything resembling a suggestion. Though I have both technical and managerial skills and could be a wonderful resource for her, I’m a no-BS kind of person who speaks his mind and what I say invariably rubs her the wrong way, even and especially when it’s right. When I first started in her department, I tried to get her to see the… Read More
Q: I work in a medical clinic. A supporting staff member is supposed to work alongside any physician in a room with a sedated female patient, but we’re short-staffed and so this doesn’t always happen. Twice in the last year, I entered a room in which one of our physicians appeared to be acting inappropriately. It happened again this morning. It’s a senior physician and he appeared to have been masturbating. I… Read More
You’ve met the predatory client and possibly even tangled with him. He or she makes life difficult for your staff, particularly your front desk employees, and possibly even for you because his status as a client enables him to do so. Often he represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in billings. Do legal practices have a responsibility to protect their employees and other clients from a client that sexually harass them? Protecting… Read More
It started with Harvey Weinstein and gained unstoppable velocity when thousands of women posted true, painful stories using the hashtag #MeToo. Serious, long-buried sexual harassment complaints have rocked many workplaces – including ones not at all prepared to handle the topic. Even organizations well-equipped to handle sexual harassment complaints and investigations are finding that their wheels are going off the tracks when faced with a tension between two workplace groups – those… Read More
You’ve met the predatory customer. He or she makes work life difficult for others because his money, power or simply his status as a customer enable him to do so. Do businesses have a responsibility to protect their customers from other customers that sexually harass them? What can an employer do if their business survival depends on contracts from a larger business when the individual who controls the purse strings for those… Read More
“How the hell could he have been so stupid?” the manager asked when he called. “What burns me is this spring he asked me if he could skip the annual anti-harassment training because he’d been through it five years in a row. So explain to me why I have credible complaints from three different women alleging this man on my senior team sexually harassed each of them?” The manager didn’t like it… Read More
Question: I’m the senior manager at our branch. After I stopped one of our exempt employees from what I considered a paid time off (PTO) scam in which she repeatedly worked an hour or two a day when on personal leave and claimed full day pay so she didn’t need to deduct the day from her PTO, she acted personally affronted. Then she announced she had a potentially terminal illness. Our employees… Read More
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