HR doesn’t want me to fire an employee for lying, coworker blew up when I asked about her retirement plans, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager .
It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go…
1. HR doesn’t want me to fire an employee for lying and falsifying records
I manage a small team, and one of my employees has been having performance issues. Recently, they made a series of mistakes that resulted in a patron receiving a charge four times more than what was expected. My employee insisted that their review process showed the expected charge rather than the actual charge, and showed me the review file. However, the original data file (which they then copy into the review file) showed the actual amount charged, and when I looked at the version history of the review file, I saw that an earlier version showed the actual amount charged. I asked about the original data file, and they doubled down on their insistence that they didn’t edit it. I have not yet addressed the version history I found with them. I did save all these files and take screenshots. The review file has since been altered to show the actual amount charged.
I can’t find a version of these facts that doesn’t involve my employee lying, and I’m very concerned about continuing to employ someone who lies, particularly when they are the person who processes all our revenue. I addressed this with my own manager, and we met with our director of HR. In this meeting, my manager stressed that we can’t lose a team member, as we’re already understaffed. The director of HR pointed out that we don’t know for sure that my employee lied, and said that when we ask them about the series of events, we need to be careful that we don’t accuse them of lying. Additionally, HR was very pointed in stressing that we need to put this person on a PIP that outlines a timeline for improvement (and suggested six months), and that the goal has to be that we want the person to stay.
I am feeling quite frustrated and unsupported here. I don’t want to fire my employee without exploring the possibility that there’s an honest explanation here. But if there isn’t, I’m not sure how to create a PIP that suitably addresses this. We’re already understaffed, and I have two new employees, who frankly both show a lot more promise and initiative than this employee. I am worried about my full attention being pulled into double-checking everything this employee does and missing out on the chance to mentor these new employees. Aside from these management concerns, I am responsible for keeping my department running, which involves a lot of work outside my supervisory responsibilities! Do you have recommendations for how to approach this?
Yeah, this is BS (assuming, of course, that it does turn out the employee lied and changed the record; you do want to hear them out with an open mind before concluding that, although it sure doesn’t look great so far). You don’t put someone on a PIP for something like this; you use a PIP when you need to see someone improve their skills or work habits, not their character. Lying and falsifying a record should be a firing offense . (What would the PIP metrics even be — don’t lie? It’s ridiculous.)
I don’t know if you’re dealing with a single incompetent HR person or if your whole HR team is like this, but it’s worth going over their head to see if someone will overrule them. HR is supposed to help the organization meet its goals while ensuring you don’t violate the law — and their edict here does neither of those things. In your shoes, I’d be lobbying your boss hard to explain why you’d rather manage your team without this employee than with them (despite being understaffed) and pushing to escalate the HR decision. If they won’t budge, at that point you know you’re working somewhere that has completely disempowered you from managing your team effectively — and you can make your decisions from there.
2. My coworker blew up at me when I asked about documenting her job before she retired
I read this post about ageism and it got me thinking about a past experience when I was explicitly hired on a contract to document, improve, and create processes for a one-person team at a small organization. The person in this role had always functioned by just doing what needed to be done but without any long-term planning, documentation, a cohesive set of goals, etc., and now they were planning on retiring but didn’t have time to document anything so they hired me.
I have always been of the mind that your documentation and objectives should be up-to-date because you could leave. This seems like a best practice. However, I went to talk to my colleague about their retirement and broached it as, in effect, “I know you’re planning on retiring, so I’d like to document the plans for how to transition the role and how a new person can start when the time comes for you to retire, or anyone else who might hold this role in the future, so can you let me know when you have time to discuss this?” I got chewed out for mentioning this and accused of being ageist. I was blown away because I was literally told that one of the reasons my role was created was because this person wanted to retire, but I was being treated like I was trying to force her out for having a matter-of-fact conversation about having transition plans in place. Was this person just reacting badly? Or was I unknowingly being insensitive about the fact that she was planning on retiring? How could I have handled this differently?
I’m wondering how transparent the organization had been with your colleague about why they were hiring you and the project you were charged with. It sounds like maybe they had been clearer with you than they were with her. If that’s the case and she had no idea people were discussing her retirement (or no idea that they had discussed it with you), her reaction would make a lot more sense.
3. Is worrying about the candidate pool a bad reason to apply for a promotion?
The excellent and widely liked manager of my department recently left, and I’m trying to decide whether to apply for the job. I’m having trouble deciding in general — I’ve tried writing out a pros and cons list, and there are big factors in both columns. But one reason to go for it that I keep coming back to is that I’m concerned about who might end up in the job if I don’t apply. The last several people in the role had all been internal candidates. I know no one else in my (small) department is planning to apply, our government salaries are far from competitive with private industry, and our peer departments within the bigger organization tend to have weird political stuff going on that I’d be worried about a candidate from those departments bringing with them. Upper management have also said they’re hoping to keep the search short, which they mean to be reassuring, but it makes me more worried that they’ll settle for someone just-okay for the sake of filling the seat. I feel like if I did apply and there ended up being a really awesome external candidate, I would be pleasantly surprised and fine with staying where I am — but, definitely surprised.
I’ve enjoyed my current job for several reasons, but my former manager’s approach definitely played a big role. If we end up with someone who micromanages or plays politics differently or is a bad manager in other ways, my feelings about my job could change quickly. I suppose that’s a risk anytime there’s a new manager somewhere, and I suspect it’s probably not a great reason to apply for a job, maybe? It’s also not at all my only reason for considering it or for thinking I’d be a strong candidate. But it’s still weighing pretty heavily for me right now. Is this a valid thing to factor into my decision, or should I try to set it aside?
If it were your only reason for applying and you were otherwise unenthused about the work, I’d try to steer you away from it. Managing can be stressful and thankless under the best of circumstances, and even more so when you never wanted the job in the first place (not to mention the harm a reluctant manager can cause to their team).
But if you think you would genuinely enjoy doing the job and would be good at it — but just aren’t sure if you should pursue it — it’s perfectly fine to factor this in as one of your reasons. It shouldn’t be your only reason, but it’s okay to give it some weight in your calculations.
4. How to invite rejected internal candidates to a meeting to explain the decision
Luckily, we had 18 internal applicants for an opening on my team. Based on qualifications and prior ad hoc experience assisting our team in aspects of the job, we advanced 11 people to the first round. In the next two weeks, I want to have 10-15 minute 1:1s with those who were not interviewed or not advanced to the second round in the interview process.
Our team has LOTS of outside helpers who pitch in throughout the year. A good comparison is a training team who uses people outside of the team to deliver sessions, act as mentors or on-the-job trainers, update materials, etc. I want to give the candidates feedback and encourage them to stay engaged/start to engage with the team, but what I don’t want to do is send them a meeting invite that makes them think it’s an interview or that they got the job.
How do I word it in a way that conveys that? Again, seemingly low stakes, but I’ve been on the receiving end of a meeting like this that was titled in a way that made me think it was an interview. It was not a pleasant experience, and I want people to leave these 1:1s knowing there are other opportunities to pitch in and get more experience with what we do.
I’d actually send them the news of the rejection in an email first, and in that email suggest meeting to discuss it further. The reason for that is that a lot of people strongly prefer to receive job rejections privately , so they can process it on their own rather than getting the news in person and needing to control their face and emotions for the rest of the meeting. Also, giving them space to work through any disappointment privately first will make it easier for (some) people to benefit from the conversation you’re offering, rather than expecting them to do both simultaneously.
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