board volunteer makes everyone’s jobs harder, can I expect a raise when I’m on a PIP, and more

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. Our board volunteer makes everyone’s jobs harder

I was recently made the chair of the board for a local community service group. The board receives money each year to buy supplies for community service events, but being on the board is a volunteer position (no one is getting paid). Basically, anyone who wants to be on the board can be because we really need the extra help. Historically, people have only been asked to step down if there is an ethical concern. The parent organization that provides funds does not provide rules or guidance on staffing, only on how we spend the money.

We have one board member who is making everyone else’s jobs harder through no fault of his own. John has been the secretary for a very long time, and he’s in charge of scheduling meetings and taking notes (he doesn’t contribute to event planning or anything else).

John is a very kind, elderly gentleman who struggles with technology. He will take a week or more to schedule a meeting when I could schedule it myself in five minutes. This is an issue when an urgent problem or opportunity pops up that requires a board vote. We’ve been trying to use OneNote to track meeting minutes and event information, but John isn’t comfortable using it (he will only work in Word or on paper). He’s hard of hearing, so he can’t hear what anyone says in the meetings. We end up pausing every few minutes to tell him exactly what to write down (costing us ~20% of our meeting time). At this point, everyone is doing more work just so John can keep his position.

I’m not sure how to deal with this. On one hand, he is objectively hurting our outcomes and making more work for an already stretched-thin team. On the other hand, our organization frowns upon turning down volunteers and John loves being on the board because he’s “lonely and gets to talk to people at the meetings.”

Should I act like this is a paid position (set a performance improvement plan and ask him to step down if he ultimately can’t meet expectations)? I wouldn’t be able to replace him; I’d be eliminating the position entirely. I also worry that excluding him would be akin to discrimination based on age or disability (which is important to me even if this group isn’t bound by employment laws). I also wouldn’t have anyone to replace him with, so we’d just be getting rid of the position entirely.

Or should I try to find a different role/task he can reasonably complete without impacting the rest of us? That feels wrong too, like I’d be infantilizing him by keeping him busy but not letting him do anything meaningful. Is there a third option here?

A performance improvement plan would be overkill in a volunteer position like this.

But you definitely can’t spend a fifth of your meeting time coaching John on what to write in the notes. And if you’re already hurting for volunteers, you really shouldn’t risk making people not want to go to your meetings.

Can John stay on the board without being the secretary? Can he just be a board member who provides input into the direction of the organization without having a specific task list that affects other people?

If not, then at a minimum, it sounds like you need to just tell him that the board is moving to OneNote and no longer needs him to take notes. If he pushes back, be matter-of-fact about why: “We’re spending a lot of time in every meeting discussing what should be written down, and OneNote will take care of it all without discussion, which we need because people are stretched for time. So it’s going to be OneNote from here on out.” Or, “We’re going to try out OneNote for the next two meetings and see if it works.”

You could be pretty blunt about the meeting scheduling: “We’ve been waiting a week or more to get meetings scheduled, and we need that to happen faster. It’s something I can do myself very quickly, the same day it comes up, so my plan is to take over scheduling them unless you are up for getting it done the same day it’s requested?”

The other option is to just lay out what needs to change and let him decide if he’s up for it or not: “We need the secretary to do XYZ, which is different in ABC ways from what’s happening now. Do you want to stay in the role knowing the requirements will be changing in that way, or do you want to take a more of a general board member role where you’re not responsible for XYZ anymore?” If he says he wants to remain in the role but you still don’t see the changes you asked for, at that point you’d revert to the steps above.

2. Is it unrealistic to expect a raise while you’re on a PIP?

I recently had my annual review with my boss, and I was marked as “below expectations.” I expected it as I had been put on a performance improvement plan (PIP) due to “communication issues.” Quick backstory on the PIP is that I am the kind of person who if you assign me something, I will get it done, then update you, whereas my boss is more of the “update me as you go along” kind of person. Different communication styles, I get it, and I’m more introverted and task-focused, which caused me to often forget about communication updates to the stakeholders, which can definitely be improved upon. While I felt the PIP was unreasonable as I was still producing results, it was not totally out of line. I fully expect to pass this PIP, and my boss also communicated that during our review.

Back to the review: my boss told me that I would not be getting a raise, as it is company policy that anyone on PIP will not get a raise. Fair enough, again not a good policy, but sure, I get it. However, I argued that in the past year, my roles and responsibilities had increased drastically, including taking on what is traditionally in my industry a complete other person’s job scope. It is a small-ish company, so I understood it as a logical extension of my work. (The PIP was not a result of me being unable to handle the additional responsibilities.) That was in March of last year. Since then, the company has grown in leaps and bounds and hired much more back end staff. I felt that if I was to continue doing both teapot sets of work, I would need to be paid more. His counter was that anyone on a PIP would not be entitled to a raise.

Is it unfair to expect a raise to reflect my new expanded job scope, even though I am on a PIP? I argued with him for about 10 minutes over this, and his counter was still that last statement above. I felt like I was talking in circles.

Yeah, you’re not going to get a raise while you’re on a PIP, at least not more than a cost-of-living increase at most. Raises are recognition that you’re now contributing at a higher level than when your salary was last set, and if you’re performing below expectations for the job (and by definition with a PIP, the issues are serious enough that you could be let go), very few employers are going to increase your salary in the middle of that (again, excluding COLAs).

The problem is that a year ago your company added significantly to your work without compensating you for it. Maybe that was more reasonable than it sounds on the surface — you can have a job composed of two separate areas of work and still have them be one reasonable full-time job at the original salary. Or maybe it’s unreasonable; your company wouldn’t be the first to pile extra responsibilities on someone without paying them at market rate (or what they would have to pay someone for the same job if they hired for it externally). But you’re not likely to be successful in arguing that while you’re on a PIP.

3. Public-facing employees are upset that other employees do work outside our office

I work for a large educational institution. During Covid, we all worked remotely without issue. Even after returning to the office, there was some flexibility; as long as our work was getting done and our supervisors approved, we could work remotely as needed.

Recently, with a change in leadership, an email was sent stating that everyone must be present in person unless they have explicit approval from their boss. This has created a toxic work environment. Most of our clerical staff have always been required to work in person because they are public-facing or their roles demand it. However, many of us have jobs that require us to be in the field, visiting other sites and meeting with stakeholders. The issue is that the clerical staff is now monitoring when people come and go, leading to resentment, tattling, and unnecessary tension. HR has been unhelpful in clarifying that different roles have different expectations, and the clerical staff feels it’s unfair that not everyone has to be in the office all day. To make matters worse, some employees are now misusing their access to our management system to check who has recorded an absence or who they believe is simply not in the office. They fail to recognize that this is an invasion of privacy — people’s absences and their reasons should not be office gossip.

How can we address this growing hostility and get leadership to acknowledge the differences in job responsibilities while also ensuring privacy is respected?

Wait, the clerical staff is upset not that other people at working from home but that other people are out of the office to visit other sites and meet with stakeholders? That is … a weird new twist on this.

That said, there’s not a lot that you as non-management can do about it. You can point out the tensions to your boss (and maybe HR if they’re competent). You can make a point of being more specific than just saying you or someone else will be out of the office and instead say “I’m meeting with a client” or “Jane is doing a site visit” or so forth. You can counter the comments when you hear them (“part of her job is going to clients’ sites”). You can also just ignore it; internally roll your eyes and figure it’s not your problem to handle as long as it’s not directly interfering with your ability to get your job done. The last one is likely your best option; you might get the most relief from realizing you can’t fix it and don’t need to fix it.

But behind that, what you’re describing is a significant culture problem, and one that requires intervention from management to resolve it. If they don’t care to do that for whatever reason, that’s on them.

That said, if there are specific violations of privacy that you can cite (like someone’s medical information being accessed/shared), you should definitely escalate that.

If I’ve misunderstood and the resentment is actually about people who have their managers’ permission to work from home — not just working from non-home locations — the advice above still applies.

Related:
should I get rid of remote work because our in-office staff thinks it’s unfair?

4. My coworkers tune out so much background noise that it worries me

We have a hybrid office. Some people work with headphones on, others don’t, but many lose all awareness of everything else while working. I know that it’s common in offices for us to be completely focused on our work, but surely we should remain aware of where we are?

We’ve had people be surprised at things happening right next to them. We’ve even had them unaware that we’re talking about them while saying their name out loud. The worst example came when I went out of the room to move things upstairs, always a 10-20 minute process each week. A manager then asked me if I could move things upstairs, having not noticed that I had left the room, done the task, and come back as usual. This manager’s desk was right next to the door!

I’m worried that this lack of situational awareness will lead to more trouble than mild surprise. What if there was an emergency? We haven’t had a fire drill for a long time, I don’t know how quickly they’d react. What about verbal warnings; would they hear the security guards warning them to evacuate? What can I do? What should I do?

You don’t need to do anything! It’s very normal for people to adjust to office noise by learning to block it out so they can concentrate; that’s how they’re still able to do work that requires focus. In all but the most extreme cases, their brains will still recognize and respond to fire alarms, shouts to evacuate, and other noises outside the drone of more routine background noise.

5. I got my years of employment wrong in an interview

I just had an interview that I thought went fairly well. However, immediately upon leaving, I realized I said I held a position eight years when it was really six; it was an honest mistake, my bad-at-math brain just visualized “2014-2020” in my head and did the math wrong. But I’m worried that they will think I intentionally lied. Should I include a clarification in my thank-you email?

Sure. It’s unlikely to be a big deal, but on the off chance they did notice it and wondered about it, it would be fine to include a very brief mention in your thank-you note — something like, “Also, right after I left our meeting I realized I said I was at Oatmeal Village for eight years; in fact, it was six, and I didn’t want to leave that uncorrected.”