HR panicked my employee by sending a mysterious meeting request right before the weekend

A reader writes: We received and validated some complaints about language used by a member of my team — off-color jokes, insensitive comments, etc. I agreed with HR that this did not rise to the level of a formal warning, but we would have a documented sit-down with the associate to explain it wasn’t acceptable […] The post HR panicked my employee by sending a mysterious meeting request right before the weekend appeared first on Ask a Manager.

May 19, 2025 - 19:30

HR panicked my employee by sending a mysterious meeting request right before the weekend

A reader writes:

We received and validated some complaints about language used by a member of my team — off-color jokes, insensitive comments, etc. I agreed with HR that this did not rise to the level of a formal warning, but we would have a documented sit-down with the associate to explain it wasn’t acceptable and should not happen again, and further instances would have escalating consequences. Before this, the employee was a high performer without issues.
HR scheduled the meeting on Friday for the following Monday with a very generic subject line and said that she wished to discuss “communication” and included my manager in the invite as a courtesy (she is aware of the situation and supports the approach).
My employee immediately rang me, asking what the topic was. I explained as best as I could and that we would go into details together. But I am not keen on the communication on this topic. I would have preferred to raise this in our regular 1:1 meeting and then follow up with an email including all and summarizing the topic. Am I right to think that this approach should have been more transparent up-front, especially over the weekend?

Yes, absolutely.

Most people who receive a mysterious request to meet with HR, their manager, and their manager’s manager the following week with no details about the topic and the subject line “communication” would be a little concerned, at a minimum. Others would be full-on panicking.

Leaving that hanging over them all weekend with no information is unkind.

And yes, this is something you should be able to handle on your own in a one-on-one meeting, anyway. If HR wants to be there, fine — but they should have coordinated with you about how it would be handled and not sent this cryptic email on their own. It’s crappy.

It sounds like once your employee asked you about it, you told them the basics, which was the right move rather than compounding the mystery and refusing to explain. Ideally at that point you’d say something like, “We’ve had some complaints about some language you’ve used and we want to clarify what is and isn’t okay. As long as we come out of that meeting on the same page I don’t expect it will need to be addressed again after that.” That way they know the topic and they’re also clear that they’re not about to be fired.

You have plenty of standing to tell HR that you think this was a bad way to handle it and that it unnecessarily panicked the employee, and ask that they coordinate with managers on this sort of communication in the future.

The post HR panicked my employee by sending a mysterious meeting request right before the weekend appeared first on Ask a Manager.