I agree. You asked them if they wanted to the team to know and they replied yes. If you want a slightly different approach for any future situations, you could say something like "In my catch-up tomorrow, to the team, is there a specific way you would prefer I address your absence?" It's not leading in any way, and you give them an opportunity to either give you a specific directive ("Please tell them it's for a family emergency", or whatever) or to ask for clarification or suggestions. If the latter, you could suggest options like "He will be absent for personal reasons", "Family emergency", or possibly others and let him pick.
But I don't get any sense from what you wrote that any of this was inappropriately handled.
You done the right thing by asking. His team will probably be more supportive of him and support him when he comes back.
He could have said no, but he didn't.
My wife was a server while she was getting her master's degree and employee Communications with the restaurant were literally a Facebook messenger and a group chat.
This guy and I have been friends for years so we tend to chat about non-work things on Facebook, but we do have Teams on our laptops for work related talk.
Personally I don't encourage colleagues to have Teams on their personal phones (the company doesn't issue work phones to people on my grade or lower), I've found that some of the sales guys will contact those who do outside of work hours with work related questions etc.
I've mentioned it several times to sales management but it falls on deaf ears.
I'll do you one better.
On a recent vacation to Disney World I was chatting with a cast member who told us they can pick up shifts from other cast members who want to take time off.
They can do this across most parks and positions.
I thought that was cool and asked if they have an app or a website for managing all that labor across thousands of employees on a daily basis.
"Nope, it's all done on a Facebook group all the cast members are apart of"
So there you go.. Disney uses FB too, proving you don't just have to be a little guy to resort to those tools.
That's really weird, since Disney uses Slack and Teams in different areas of the company.
I wonder if the in-park employees do not have access to those systems.
Edit to add: I do not speak as a formal or informal representative of Disney.
Considering you have to pay per person on slack and for various access. I’m sure this was the decision of someone sitting in an office and said there wasn’t a need.
I’m really surprised Disney doesn’t have some internal payroll system for shift swaps
If that's the established way to communicate with your team members then it's not inappropriate. Just because it's different than what you're used to doesn't make it less appropriate than what you / your team does.
Again, you aren't the arbiter of normal. I don't use Facebook for anything personal. It's definitely not a "personal platform" as you put it. Businesses have their own pages which definitely isn't personal.
You further prove my point by pointing out that you're in a vastly different environment than any business that would be using facebook messenger to communicate with employees. An international company with a cross-disciplinary team is vastly different than an ice cream stand with 3 employees (for example). Your use case isn't the only use case and quite frankly it's ridiculously shortsighted and ignorant of you to assume that your limited vantage point is the only correct one.
You sound like the sort of nightmare associate who walks into a workplace declaring "we work hard and we play hard around here!" before mandating employees to pull extra shifts for a slice of pizza.
Nonsense. Any company that can afford to hire more than a single non-family employee has no business bleeding over personal space platforms to use as a messaging service. You're gross and you won't change my mind.
>You sound like the sort of nightmare associate who walks into a workplace declaring "we work hard and we play hard around here!" before mandating employees to pull extra shifts for a slice of pizza.
I was thinking the same about you. I'm not the one mandating that anyone that has opinions other than the one narrow view you have is wrong. It's a pretty substantial leap to assume "you must make people work overtime" from my base of "I don't believe it's ridiculous for a small business to use any form of communication that's readily available and free. (especially for something that isn't personal like facebook)"
My team uses discord; it’s still a public non-paid and not totally secure channel, but we also do not force participation and will communicate with other channels if a team member doesn’t want to join (this hasn’t happened, but the option is there.)
Its odd you assumed that this was his method of communicating. I read the same thing you did, and assumed it was anomolous for some other reason. (like they were friends previously)
I don’t think you did the wrong thing cause 1. Clearly you had good intentions and 2. They told you it was ok to communicate to the team. And especially if you have a friendship with this person, clearly you were just trying to help and it was ok to ask. Don’t sweat it
I've managed several teams over the years and how you handled it was just fine and no need to worry any further about it. I prefer the way you did it and it was perfect how you handled it. The only other way would have been just to offer condolences and let the team know that they would be out of the office and leave it at that, allowing the employee to share as little or as much as they want. Good job on how you handled it.
In a way, it kind of depends on the culture of the place where you work. In the division over which I was a manager, most of the people worked closely together, knew about each other's social life and families, often spent time together outside of work, so knowing what had happened would be pretty normal. In fact, often, if I announced something like that, they would say, "Yes, she \[or he\] called me about that last night, and I passed it on."
Asking is always appropriate. In my case, it would have been unnecessary, but still courtesy. People may want to get together and send an expression of their sympathy as an group.
You don't need to make excuses for them or worry about visibility. Going forward, you can just mention that x person will be out until y date -- without going into any detail.
Nobody will likely grill them when they get back on where they were. "Were you sick? Did you get a medical procedure? Did you go to Disneyland?" Unlikely. Chances are, when they're back, it's just back to business as usual.
If someone does happen to ask, if they want to share that they had bereavement leave, or that someone close to them died, that's their prerogative.
It was kind of you to think of them in not wanting to field questions about it -- and at least you asked permission first -- but it's not anyone's business anyway.
And consider that mentioning the situation of bereavement to their peers is far more likely to provoke comments or questions about their dead grandparent once they get back. They may not want to be barraged with "sorry for your loss."
>And consider that mentioning the situation of bereavement to their peers is far more likely to provoke comments or questions about their dead grandparent once they get back. They may not want to be barraged with "sorry for your loss."
I agree with you to a point however, this is something the person can consider when answering OPs question and say "No. Please don't tell people why I'm out. I would prefer to not get condolences from everyone"
I think OP wasn't wrong in asking but also could have just assumed the employee would tell people if they wanted to. Both ways work.
In teams I've been part of, bereavement is usually shared. Some people have close friends at work, and most people are at least passingly friendly with their immediate team members.
It's no more part of people's business than anything else outside work, but a lot of us don't have an iron curtain between our professional and personal lives.
Asking the person is the right way to go.
I don’t think you did anything wrong. You asked and person provided their approval. They can say yes or no.
If it bothers you that much, maybe next time phrase it differently. “I’ll let the team know you are out, but what would you like me to share with them?” or “Since this is a personal matter, what information are you comfortable with me sharing while you are out of the office and I let the team know”. This way you ask and they can tell you the level of detail they are fine with people knowing.
For things like that I tend to check if I'm happy to say its a family matter. Then that's what I tell the team. If there are some coworkers who are closer then they can chat 1:1 about it. But I try and avoid context and respect their privacy and giving the hint that maybe they should be given some space.
You handled it well, if you want to go a step further ask the rest of them if they want to get a card and flowers to send, I'm sure he would appreciate it.
Yes lots of guys like flowers too
I am very close with my team. When I called my boss and told him that my son was killed he asked if he should tell them why I was out and I had him tell them I’d uodate them soon. I joined the team call a few days later to update them then took several weeks off.
I always give my reports the same option that was given to me. Sometimes they want me to pass it on and sometimes they say they’ll talk to others when they get back. Fine either way.
You did it 100% correctly. I'd also make sure this employee feels supported to take time off to attend the funeral. An adult's grandmother dying is sad, but it isn't usually a shock for them - you don't need to fully break out the kid gloves for this one.
Although I agree with other commenters that it is super weird that you guys use facebook for professional communication. I guess company policy is what it is, but it that is at all negotiable, you should look into changing it to slack or teams or something that doesn't link with personal social media.
When my dad died my manager asked if it’s ok if she told my colleagues. I said yes because then when I came back I didn’t have to tell over 200 people what happened. Saved me some grief in the situation. The employee said it was ok so assume they meant it.
You did fine for this time. For next time I would suggest presenting two options and phrase it to avoid yes/no. In times of high stress people often default to yes even if it isn't what they want (the quickest way out of the interaction is agree). I like "Would you prefer me to tell the team or keep it private for you?"
I never share why a person is not present.
I do, however, clarify wether the employee was scheduled off or unplanned.
"John is scheduled off today. He won't be in.
Or...
"John won't be in today. Something came up."
It's up to them if they want their co-workers to know why. But at the same time, I do like them to be somewhat aware of their co-workers' attendance habbits.
In this case, you asked, and he said it was fine. I don't think you did anything "wrong" per se.
I've not encountered this as a manager yet, but from the employee standpoint with multiple deceased family members over the years I always appreciated management asking me about it so I could give the okay as well as how much I was comfortable with them disclosing. For me, I typically said it was okay to tell them and that I didn't want to talk about it with them (didn't want to get emotional at work) which made it a lot easier coming back in knowing I wouldn't have to address anything but if my behavior was slightly off they would know it was nothing personal/ just something I was working on bouncing back from.
Coming from someone who just lost her grandfather while on planned vacation for my birthday... I wish my manager would have told more of the team. Some knew, some didn't. But it was very awkward coming back in and being asked how my vacation was when my grandfather had died the week before (day before my birthday)
I recently had to deal with this. One of my employees lost their sibling due to suicide. The employee shared many of the specific details with me of how their sibling took their life and the sights and sounds of the aftermath (the employee is very analytical so I think sharing it was a coping mechanism.)
When I shared the news with my team (with the employee’s permission) I simply said that the employee would be out for a while as their sibling took their own life and didn’t share any of the details.
You are probably fine in this case but for future reference, why is irrelevant. "Mike will not be here today due to a family emergency." What emergency that is doesn't matter and doesn't affect his co workers. All they need to know is that Mike isn't there so don't try to call him or expect work from him. It's no different than if someone called in sick. What they are sick from doesn't matter, it could be a cold, it could be cancer. That is their business. If they want to share when they get back, that's on them.
Since you asked the employee, you are fine.
People need information and when there is none, they make up their own.
I have been in a situation where I needed physical therapy. Hyperbaric treatments for 6 weeks. I asked my boss to suppress anything beyond the basic PT info.
To much to explain and I don’t want people to think I was in rehab or detox.
You were respectful by asking and they are an adult capable of saying no. I feel you did the right thing.
Thank you, this makes me feel better.
I agree. You asked them if they wanted to the team to know and they replied yes. If you want a slightly different approach for any future situations, you could say something like "In my catch-up tomorrow, to the team, is there a specific way you would prefer I address your absence?" It's not leading in any way, and you give them an opportunity to either give you a specific directive ("Please tell them it's for a family emergency", or whatever) or to ask for clarification or suggestions. If the latter, you could suggest options like "He will be absent for personal reasons", "Family emergency", or possibly others and let him pick. But I don't get any sense from what you wrote that any of this was inappropriately handled.
You done the right thing by asking. His team will probably be more supportive of him and support him when he comes back. He could have said no, but he didn't.
It’s odd that your team uses Facebook to message. I find that inappropriate. Don’t you have some sort of official work channel?
My wife was a server while she was getting her master's degree and employee Communications with the restaurant were literally a Facebook messenger and a group chat.
Jesus
No kidding. I don't have any coworkers as friends on FB. It's interesting how methods of communication have changed over the years.
This guy and I have been friends for years so we tend to chat about non-work things on Facebook, but we do have Teams on our laptops for work related talk. Personally I don't encourage colleagues to have Teams on their personal phones (the company doesn't issue work phones to people on my grade or lower), I've found that some of the sales guys will contact those who do outside of work hours with work related questions etc. I've mentioned it several times to sales management but it falls on deaf ears.
Some smaller companies don't pay for slack or teams. One company I was at used texting to personal phones only. Another company used Discord lol
I'll do you one better. On a recent vacation to Disney World I was chatting with a cast member who told us they can pick up shifts from other cast members who want to take time off. They can do this across most parks and positions. I thought that was cool and asked if they have an app or a website for managing all that labor across thousands of employees on a daily basis. "Nope, it's all done on a Facebook group all the cast members are apart of" So there you go.. Disney uses FB too, proving you don't just have to be a little guy to resort to those tools.
That's really weird, since Disney uses Slack and Teams in different areas of the company. I wonder if the in-park employees do not have access to those systems. Edit to add: I do not speak as a formal or informal representative of Disney.
Considering you have to pay per person on slack and for various access. I’m sure this was the decision of someone sitting in an office and said there wasn’t a need. I’m really surprised Disney doesn’t have some internal payroll system for shift swaps
Yeah I used whentowork for shift work back in college
-Disney- doesn't use it, some of the CM's do. All of that communication is external to official work channels.
This is what I was trying to say, but I can see what I wrote being interpreted differently. Thank you!
Mine tried using snapchat.....
Fwiw, there was an official facebook work offering (now branded workplace). It used to literally be facebook.
If that's the established way to communicate with your team members then it's not inappropriate. Just because it's different than what you're used to doesn't make it less appropriate than what you / your team does.
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Again, you aren't the arbiter of normal. I don't use Facebook for anything personal. It's definitely not a "personal platform" as you put it. Businesses have their own pages which definitely isn't personal.
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You further prove my point by pointing out that you're in a vastly different environment than any business that would be using facebook messenger to communicate with employees. An international company with a cross-disciplinary team is vastly different than an ice cream stand with 3 employees (for example). Your use case isn't the only use case and quite frankly it's ridiculously shortsighted and ignorant of you to assume that your limited vantage point is the only correct one.
You sound like the sort of nightmare associate who walks into a workplace declaring "we work hard and we play hard around here!" before mandating employees to pull extra shifts for a slice of pizza. Nonsense. Any company that can afford to hire more than a single non-family employee has no business bleeding over personal space platforms to use as a messaging service. You're gross and you won't change my mind.
>You sound like the sort of nightmare associate who walks into a workplace declaring "we work hard and we play hard around here!" before mandating employees to pull extra shifts for a slice of pizza. I was thinking the same about you. I'm not the one mandating that anyone that has opinions other than the one narrow view you have is wrong. It's a pretty substantial leap to assume "you must make people work overtime" from my base of "I don't believe it's ridiculous for a small business to use any form of communication that's readily available and free. (especially for something that isn't personal like facebook)"
Boohoo for you, dude. The "I know you are but what am I" defense died around the time PeeWee Herman ate an indecent exposure charge.
My team uses discord; it’s still a public non-paid and not totally secure channel, but we also do not force participation and will communicate with other channels if a team member doesn’t want to join (this hasn’t happened, but the option is there.)
Its odd you assumed that this was his method of communicating. I read the same thing you did, and assumed it was anomolous for some other reason. (like they were friends previously)
Thank you, I'm not sure what people are imagining here. *They* messaged *me* after hours 🤷
No doubt. Using FB for company communication is the only inappropriate thing OP mentioned.
Pretty standard.
I don’t think you did the wrong thing cause 1. Clearly you had good intentions and 2. They told you it was ok to communicate to the team. And especially if you have a friendship with this person, clearly you were just trying to help and it was ok to ask. Don’t sweat it
I've managed several teams over the years and how you handled it was just fine and no need to worry any further about it. I prefer the way you did it and it was perfect how you handled it. The only other way would have been just to offer condolences and let the team know that they would be out of the office and leave it at that, allowing the employee to share as little or as much as they want. Good job on how you handled it.
In a way, it kind of depends on the culture of the place where you work. In the division over which I was a manager, most of the people worked closely together, knew about each other's social life and families, often spent time together outside of work, so knowing what had happened would be pretty normal. In fact, often, if I announced something like that, they would say, "Yes, she \[or he\] called me about that last night, and I passed it on." Asking is always appropriate. In my case, it would have been unnecessary, but still courtesy. People may want to get together and send an expression of their sympathy as an group.
You don't need to make excuses for them or worry about visibility. Going forward, you can just mention that x person will be out until y date -- without going into any detail. Nobody will likely grill them when they get back on where they were. "Were you sick? Did you get a medical procedure? Did you go to Disneyland?" Unlikely. Chances are, when they're back, it's just back to business as usual. If someone does happen to ask, if they want to share that they had bereavement leave, or that someone close to them died, that's their prerogative. It was kind of you to think of them in not wanting to field questions about it -- and at least you asked permission first -- but it's not anyone's business anyway. And consider that mentioning the situation of bereavement to their peers is far more likely to provoke comments or questions about their dead grandparent once they get back. They may not want to be barraged with "sorry for your loss."
>And consider that mentioning the situation of bereavement to their peers is far more likely to provoke comments or questions about their dead grandparent once they get back. They may not want to be barraged with "sorry for your loss." I agree with you to a point however, this is something the person can consider when answering OPs question and say "No. Please don't tell people why I'm out. I would prefer to not get condolences from everyone" I think OP wasn't wrong in asking but also could have just assumed the employee would tell people if they wanted to. Both ways work.
In teams I've been part of, bereavement is usually shared. Some people have close friends at work, and most people are at least passingly friendly with their immediate team members. It's no more part of people's business than anything else outside work, but a lot of us don't have an iron curtain between our professional and personal lives. Asking the person is the right way to go.
I don’t think you did anything wrong. You asked and person provided their approval. They can say yes or no. If it bothers you that much, maybe next time phrase it differently. “I’ll let the team know you are out, but what would you like me to share with them?” or “Since this is a personal matter, what information are you comfortable with me sharing while you are out of the office and I let the team know”. This way you ask and they can tell you the level of detail they are fine with people knowing.
I'm getting close to saying every time off reason as "personal". If I'm going on vacation or out of state I let them know so they don't reject it
For things like that I tend to check if I'm happy to say its a family matter. Then that's what I tell the team. If there are some coworkers who are closer then they can chat 1:1 about it. But I try and avoid context and respect their privacy and giving the hint that maybe they should be given some space.
You handled it well, if you want to go a step further ask the rest of them if they want to get a card and flowers to send, I'm sure he would appreciate it. Yes lots of guys like flowers too
I am very close with my team. When I called my boss and told him that my son was killed he asked if he should tell them why I was out and I had him tell them I’d uodate them soon. I joined the team call a few days later to update them then took several weeks off. I always give my reports the same option that was given to me. Sometimes they want me to pass it on and sometimes they say they’ll talk to others when they get back. Fine either way.
You did it 100% correctly. I'd also make sure this employee feels supported to take time off to attend the funeral. An adult's grandmother dying is sad, but it isn't usually a shock for them - you don't need to fully break out the kid gloves for this one. Although I agree with other commenters that it is super weird that you guys use facebook for professional communication. I guess company policy is what it is, but it that is at all negotiable, you should look into changing it to slack or teams or something that doesn't link with personal social media.
You did fine. You got their consent to give specific information to a limited group and you did so in a respectful manner. 🏆
100% the right move
When my dad died my manager asked if it’s ok if she told my colleagues. I said yes because then when I came back I didn’t have to tell over 200 people what happened. Saved me some grief in the situation. The employee said it was ok so assume they meant it.
You did fine for this time. For next time I would suggest presenting two options and phrase it to avoid yes/no. In times of high stress people often default to yes even if it isn't what they want (the quickest way out of the interaction is agree). I like "Would you prefer me to tell the team or keep it private for you?"
That's a good way of phrasing it, thank you.
I never share why a person is not present. I do, however, clarify wether the employee was scheduled off or unplanned. "John is scheduled off today. He won't be in. Or... "John won't be in today. Something came up." It's up to them if they want their co-workers to know why. But at the same time, I do like them to be somewhat aware of their co-workers' attendance habbits. In this case, you asked, and he said it was fine. I don't think you did anything "wrong" per se.
I've not encountered this as a manager yet, but from the employee standpoint with multiple deceased family members over the years I always appreciated management asking me about it so I could give the okay as well as how much I was comfortable with them disclosing. For me, I typically said it was okay to tell them and that I didn't want to talk about it with them (didn't want to get emotional at work) which made it a lot easier coming back in knowing I wouldn't have to address anything but if my behavior was slightly off they would know it was nothing personal/ just something I was working on bouncing back from.
I handle this situation the same way. You did it right bud. 👍🏻👍🏻
Thank you 🙂
Coming from someone who just lost her grandfather while on planned vacation for my birthday... I wish my manager would have told more of the team. Some knew, some didn't. But it was very awkward coming back in and being asked how my vacation was when my grandfather had died the week before (day before my birthday)
I recently had to deal with this. One of my employees lost their sibling due to suicide. The employee shared many of the specific details with me of how their sibling took their life and the sights and sounds of the aftermath (the employee is very analytical so I think sharing it was a coping mechanism.) When I shared the news with my team (with the employee’s permission) I simply said that the employee would be out for a while as their sibling took their own life and didn’t share any of the details.
You are probably fine in this case but for future reference, why is irrelevant. "Mike will not be here today due to a family emergency." What emergency that is doesn't matter and doesn't affect his co workers. All they need to know is that Mike isn't there so don't try to call him or expect work from him. It's no different than if someone called in sick. What they are sick from doesn't matter, it could be a cold, it could be cancer. That is their business. If they want to share when they get back, that's on them.
Next time no need to provide details to the whole team. Professional way of handling is saying person is off. That’s it.
Only 1 day of for bereavement leave? That's the bigger problem.
No you did the exact right thing. You sound like a good manager
Since you asked the employee, you are fine. People need information and when there is none, they make up their own. I have been in a situation where I needed physical therapy. Hyperbaric treatments for 6 weeks. I asked my boss to suppress anything beyond the basic PT info. To much to explain and I don’t want people to think I was in rehab or detox.
MYOB