HR Drowning in Manager Complaints
HR professionals are consistently burdened by managers exhibiting problematic behavior, creating a cycle of employee complaints, constant interruptions, and a lack of support. This leads to increased workload, stress, and a feeling of being overwhelmed while attempting to mediate and resolve complex situations. The root cause appears to be a lack of manager accountability and training.
SOURCES (60)
“Make it your manager's problem. It's literally their job to figure out how to manage their resources (you). "I have time to do X or Y. I don't think I can guarantee both, at the bar we need. I'm open to coaching, or figuring out…”
“By social I mean they ask me a bunch of questions about my personal life or try to get me to talk about non work related topics. I work at a large company in an engineering field. I'm about a 30 year old guy. About 90% of my coworkers are women who are about age 40. I'm just not really used to the environment I guess. I'm used to people at work who mainly just work. submitted by /u/Big_Eggplant7591 [link] [comments]”
“I've been at my company a little over a year, working in sales. Throughout my time here, I’ve consistently been one of the top producers. I work extremely hard. I’ve been reliable. and I’ve consistently produced results. I’ve also developed a reputation for being someone management can rely on. There have been multiple situations where other employees weren’t as reliable or weren’t performing, and changes had to be made. Because I’m dependable, I’ve often ended up being the person who gets m”
“Should I be looking for a new job as soon as possible? submitted by /u/NoBusiness1559 [link] [comments]”
“Before you consider AI, draft a dumb template response. Pretty much a copy pasta thing that takes you ten seconds to send each day. And teams is a shit medium for orderly documentation. Your boss has offered no metrics under which to grill you about work so don't offer up anything for free. If your boss did have that, you wouldn't be doing his work for him or you wouldn't be called efficient. I've had employers do this to coworkers. They spent an hour a day describing their work”
“So corny. Just a bad manager or worse it’s top down. Or, he actually believes you are being inefficient and tasks are taking too long.”
“I work in professional services and I recently led my first internal initiative for the first time. I completed all the work and my manager asked me to present this tool to the rest of the team during one of our internal meetings. I was so nervous because the senior leadership was there. During the presentation, I started stuttering and noticed I was saying a lot of "umms" and "uhhs". My words were everywhere and I struggled to get to the point. I felt terrible after the meet”
“Trust your gut. You said the key part: "The other part says this is week ONE. If she's testing limits and lying now, it only gets worse. And honestly I really don't have the energy to babysit a grown adult.” Personally I would take your best employee aside and give her a heads up as a professional courtesy. I believe you said it was a small business, and you probably don't have official HR?”
“im gonna do the in between don't give just a warning, and don't fire her I think u give a good FINAL warning on these things, and if it happens again let her know that her job is at risk if caught again, if u caught all these things she'll know that u are paying close attention...but if u dont wanna deal with it, then thats you, im just saying what I would do, especially depending on how often u find people that meet ur qualifications”
“Given the needs of the people here, I think less chance and more about a learning experience or experimentation in order to learn more about management. Can behavior be adjusted? Is the company motivating employees or demotivating them? Does a single person in this place understand what in the hell the word MANAGEMENT means? You know, those little details which tend to flesh out a corporate culture. Unless ...wait. Is letting employees go feral the decided upon corporate culture??”
“One interaction like this can power you through all the other BS. submitted by /u/MD2SC22 [link] [comments]”
“I have been the senior operations lead at my logistics company for four years. When our department manager left in November, I stepped up. For three months I basically ran the entire floor, managed client escalations, handled scheduling, and kept our on-time delivery rate at ninety-eight percent. When the role was posted, I applied immediately. Two weeks ago human resources sat me down and told me they were going with an outside hire. They gave me this corporate word salad about wanting someone”
“My manager promoted me a couple years ago and the person training me only taught me half of the work. He won’t show me the half he does. We have the same job title alongside another lady. He only gets paid about 100 more a month but seems to be doing way more work. It’s an accounting role so I need the experience to qualify but it’s not looking likely that I’ll get it here without constantly begging to be taught his job. I end up doing little work for 2 weeks, get busy for 2, and repeat every mo”
“So, I am APM at a multifamily. My manager consistently moves people in to apartments with roaches in them. I tried to put my foot down today and she basically ignored me. These people are transferring from another property under our company. What does she think will happen when they discover we moved them into a roach motel? Not only will we have to provide concessions and all kinds of crap, they will be uncomfortable, unhappy and distrust us! They're supposed to move in 2 weeks and she thin”
“Definitely a micro manager that can’t figure out capacity of their direct reports. If you like the job and can put up with it then I would say stay as they could be checking everyone’s capacity if you need more work, but if they said you need to be more efficient I would say look elsewhere because they may be looking for a reason to fire if you don’t have the same output as others even though your work product is excellent.”
“The only exception I would consider is if they are totally new to the work force in general. Like - first real job with responsibility. Then you might try a talk that shouldn't need to be had, but can work - explaining that thisnisn't school and there are consequences to bad decisions. Show her the complaints you have and make it clear this is a one time pass because she doesn't know any better but there aren't second passes. Then follow through if it doesn't immediately chan”
The sooner you fire this person, the less messy this is.
“I had an employee like this with a friend I had also hired. The friend became my best employee and eventually my right hand man. I told the friend: I will keep your friend around even with her issues if you want me too, you’re worth it. After about a year, the friend, now managing everyone, was like, “Yeah, fire her, she’s a bad employee and too distracting to the team”.”
“Some people just like to start shit. Sometimes it’s easier to place the blame on someone. It’s easier to blame someone when you don’t know what happens exactly during the shift, like the feud between night and day shift like saying neither shift is doing their jobs. It’s easy to say you did something wrong when the patient was perfectly fine on their shift when it’s just the nature of dementia and sundowning.”
“Document everything, things you tried to do, pt refusal, pt’s behaviors and just everything. If they come at you, give them all the notes. Can’t stop someone from hating on you but you can protect yourself and your job (that is, if you want to stay in such environment).”
“Document everything, even if it feels redundant. Write down the exact time you gave the med, witnessed by who if possible, and any refusal or reaction. When management comes at you with accusations, you just hand them the log and let the cameras do the rest”
“yeah, the problem is, once a manager feels the need to baby you like that, the relationship rarely recovers”
“Before jumping to job search mode, this is a pretty common management move for someone whose output quality isn't in question but speed is. It's more a visibility and self accountability tool than a red flag by itself, some managers use this to help someone see their own time allocation rather than as a precursor to firing.”
“Does anyone have any tips to deal with a partner (your direct boss) who is incompetent (eg always speak on the calls just so he/she can be visible in front of clients)? He/she basically just steals your credits and gives you all the blame. Any way to fight back? submitted by /u/Flimsy_Restaurant555 [link] [comments]”
“I have to break some news to my manager and he is going to be blindsided. Any advice? Basically I have a medical condition that he doesn't know about. I went to HR and got all the paperwork for ADA accommodation approved. My territory needs to be reassigned. Myself and all my coworkers will all still have the same number of accounts so no one is getting stuck with more work. It's just that the accounts will need to be shifted around and I have to work with my manager directly on the deta”
“Yeah same. I recently had to do this with an employee who had a great heart and attitude but really struggled to produce useable work, and to push things across the finish line independently on time. That was a tough one for me because I really did everything I could to help her but in the end, she just couldn’t do the job we hired her for. The check ins were meant to help her prioritize her day better (stay focused on the important critical work) and try to keep her accountable for completing t”
“Should I be looking for a new job as soon as possible? submitted by /u/NoBusiness1559 [link] [comments]”
“Controller resigned in April and they promoted me, the staff accountant, into her role…. That should have been my hint to gtfo. I am totally underqualified but did my absolute best to keep things up as well as I could. But the July numbers were fucking awful and after adjusting some things I had messed up (again, not qualified for this job), it looks like we’ve taken a loss every month this year. Our cash projections are negative every day except for when we’re supposed to receive investor money”
“Agreed - I’ve learned a lot over the last 2 years with some glimpses of Snow White here and there. Sharpening the system has been my biggest focus. I also have found when I’ve had two people working at the same time the dynamic seems to work better. Hopefully within the next 3-6 months that will be doable.”
“Where I work I feel like people do this. I think it's at least a little weird because in a work environment I feel like people should mainly just work. Am I wrong? submitted by /u/Big_Eggplant7591 [link] [comments]”
“I graduated college about a year ago and have been working in construction management since then. I work for a very large company but am on a small project team of less than ten people. Since my first 1:1 with my direct supervisor, he has been telling me to quit. At first, it seemed good-natured, and he framed it like he thought I was overqualified for my position. I shrugged it off as him being dissatisfied with his position in the company and projecting it onto me. Because of this, I didn'”
“If you are in the USA and an at will state, then just fire the guy without cause and move along. It is generally seven dwarfs and then Snow White, so don’t expect magic with the next person. But you have to be sharpening the system if you hope to improve.”
“Hello, This is a lot but I truly need some advice. This year we got new assistant admin and new security monitors. Both have been a nightmare. The new vp is controlling, petty, and truly condescending. Teachers and various other staff around the building are unhappy with this vp. The new monitors are overly aggressive to students and frequently overstep with teachers. They get involved in situations that have already been resolved within the classroom, re-escalating students multiple times throu”
“I manage a small family owned practice, I have been managing it just fine for years. That being said, we switched systems and it's very confusing because I can't get the same papers for them at the end of every month and quarter. The faith in me has been deteriorating and they are replacing me without telling me they are. It's upsetting because I have given them so much of my life. I have sacrificed days with my son. I only see him for an hour in the morning and an hour at night. Yes”
“Trying to make this short - just ranting. Small mfg company. 4 person team. We have a AP person that was brought on to eventually learn everything and progress. Learn how to do AP, AR, payroll, etc. jack of all trades. This is our second attempt at filling position. Let someone else go around end of June. 30 days in my boss and person training the new hire say that the new hire is already underperforming and have no trust they can take on more workload. I’m looking at this and thinking how can b”
“My company has grown bloated with bad management. I mean managers not enforcing deadlines, not knowing what is going on in the business, not showing up to meetings or responding to emails, not standing up for their workers, etc. Furthermore, a lot of senior employees are quitting and retiring saying that this is the worst they’ve ever seen management be. Talking with my other friends who work in corporate settings, these sentiments seems to be echoed a lot (both accounting and non accounting peo”
“I’m a senior associate dealing with a difficult mid level associate. On several recent big deadlines the associate told the partners he would work on XYZ task. Then later, he would tell the associate team that he actually didn’t have time to work on it at all and the rest of the team would have to cover it. Most recently, he was assigned filling in record cites in a dispositive motion the weekend before the brief was due. He told the partners he would cover this. When I checked in for a copy of”
“I work for a general contractor as an Assistant Project Manager, and I’ve been feeling pretty frustrated lately. Management recently told us that either me or the other project manager needs to stay in the office until 4pm every day. I don’t mind doing that, but the other PM regularly leaves early or comes up with excuses to dip out, or shows up incredibly late so it feels like I’m the only one actually following the rule. On top of that, there are times when I’ll ask him to call people back — c”
“I’m 2 months into a new role; my boss is loud and direct. She acknowledges that. Today was the second time in customer facing meetings that she’s made comments that feel like a dig at me in front of the customer. She likes to joke and cut up with the customer, “talk shit” and poke at them. I consider myself to be friendly and engaging with my customers. I smile, laugh, take interest in their lives, but I don’t cut up the way she does. Twice now she’s said in front of this customer after talking”
“Hey all! Hoping this is the right place to put this because I need to vent/get some advice. TLDR; a soon to be direct report is suffocating me with how much time he’s been taking of mine since I started and I’m looking for advice on how to correct this yesterday. I’ve recently started a new job which I’ve been loving. The only thing that I’m getting frustrated with is one of my coworkers. A little context extra context before I begin, in 6 months they will become my direct report. I’ll also add”
“My workplace is the same right now, I don't think my manager is very happy about it, but with the amount of things that we need to get done it's kind of unavoidable. It some how hasn't blown up in our faces (we're working on a lot of pre-production stuff so we can afford to be more fast and loose). I don't love it but trying to go against it is just going to cause more issues in practice. Some hills aren't worth dying on.”
“My boss isn’t very involved in my work. A couple times a week he might ask me to do something. He has never provided me an ounce of feedback in the last year I’ve worked there. He’s just disconnected and busy with his own stuff. Anyways, today he emailed me & asked me to do something. His boss replied all and corrected him on what he was asking. He wasn’t originally on the cc line. We all three work closely together anyways. I don’t understand what the purpose of the bcc instead of the cc wa”
“I work an office job in a physical building. I don't engage with or do work outside of office hours. This is the 3rd time my office manager has texted me off the clock with non-emergency questions. My company functions in 1998, there is no remote option or access to any information without being in office. What sends me over the edge is that this time she asked me specifics about shit she could have easily looked up AT WORK or simply asked the customer she talked to without bothering me at a”
“The best habit I ever saw was a manager who told me directly when I did something wrong, in private, the same day, and then moved on. No buildup, no saving it for a review three months later. I always knew where I stood, and it made me trust everything else he said. The worst was a different manager who agreed with everything in one-on-ones and then said the opposite in group meetings. What's a manager habit, good or bad, that affected how you worked or how you felt about the job?Did it chan”
“What are the inconsistencies? and how did it ended up? Is Legal also involved and also a big problem? How about your manager?”