perks for remote employees only, my mom says I shouldn’t leave a bad Glassdoor review, 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. Perks for remote employees only

Our company works mostly remotely. Employees who live locally come in one day a week. A few departments’ employees are allowed to live elsewhere in the country (this rule does not apply to all departments). Several times a year, all staff are required to come into the office for the full week. Employees who live outside the area get paid hotel rooms near the office, and expense all of their meals. Local employees, however, are required to pay for their lunch every day, as well as the additional costs of commuting for the additional days (parking is quite expensive where we work). Is there a way to make our company see how unfair this is? Or am I being unreasonable?

Yeah, you’re being unreasonable! Employees traveling for work have their meals covered since eating on business trips tends to be more expensive (since you don’t have access to your own stocked kitchen). Meals and hotel rooms aren’t perks when you’re traveling for work (“perks” was the word in your email subject line to me); they’re business expenses.

Some extra days in your local office but still going home each night is a very different thing than being gone for a week on a business trip.

I don’t think you’re likely to get traction if you suggest that the company pay for local people’s extra commuting costs or lunches that week. (In theory it could be good for morale if your company provided lunch to everyone at least once or twice during those weeks, but it’s not outrageous that they’re not; this is just a difference in being local vs. non-local.)

Related:
our non-traveling employees are upset about the travel “perks” that others get

2. Being the only woman at a retreat in an AirBnB

My manager, a VP, invited me to attend an upcoming director summit with five directors. While my role is more administrative, he felt my presence would be valuable. The summit is planned for the summer at a rented AirBnb with entertainment amenities like a swimming pool, game room, etc. I would need to take a five-hour road trip with one of the male directors, and the group would conduct meetings around a large kitchen table or in the living room with a projected screen.

I was initially uncomfortable with the setup and expressed my concerns to my boss. He acknowledged them but emphasized that he still wanted me to attend. After discussing it with family and colleagues, opinions were split on whether this arrangement — one woman among six men at a rental property for a work event — was entirely appropriate or potentially questionable. What do you think?

I don’t think it’s inappropriate, but it’s also not unreasonable if you decide that you personally feel uncomfortable with it and want to ask for separate lodgings. (I’m assuming there’s an overnight stay, given the five-hour drive.)

Related:
I’d be the only woman at a team-building event at my boss’s remote lake house

3. My mom says I shouldn’t leave a bad Glassdoor review for my old company

I recently was terminated from a very toxic work situation, and have run out my options to legally pursue them. (The contingency lawyers basically told me I had a case but they did not feel it would be profitable enough to be worth pursuing on my behalf, and I cannot afford to retain legal representation on my own.)

In place of hitting them in their wallet, where I know they would pay attention, I was at least hoping to post an honest review of the job. If I had done my due diligence in the first place, I never would have applied. I want to add my voice to the chorus of others who have proclaimed this company to be bad to work for.

My issue comes because my well-meaning mother is trying to discourage me from posting anything because she is convinced that they will figure out that I posted it and come after me legally. She pointed out that I do not have the money to sue them, and I certainly do not have the money to defend myself if they try to sue me. She is also concerned that it will get linked back to me and prevent future employers from considering me. While she is right that I cannot afford to be sued, I am more dubious about her other fears. If a reputable employer is interested in what I have to offer, why should a bad relationship with a former place of employment be relevant? I have connections in the form of other employees who will and actively are giving me positive references for new opportunities.

How valid are my mother’s concerns? Admittedly, she has been out of the workforce for a long time, but I frequently listen to her because she operates from a place of common sense. I have many people telling me to just do it, and many people pointing out that they have not disputed the other negative reviews so why would mine be the tipping point? I’m just truly scared of making myself undesirable to a future employer. So, how far off-base is my mother on this one?

It’s incredibly unlikely that the fact that you left a negative review will somehow get linked to you in the minds of prospective employers. How would they know? The idea that it would prevent future employers from considering you is a non-issue.

Where it could be an issue if your old employer figures it was you and it causes them to give you a more negative reference than they’d give you otherwise — but it doesn’t sound like you were expecting a good reference from them anyway, so I’m not sure that needs to be a real worry. (For the record, though, you may run into employers who want a reference from this company even if you’re offering up different ones, so you shouldn’t rely on “well, I just won’t give them as a reference” — but it sounds like this reference wouldn’t be great regardless of whether you leave them a bad review or not.)

Moreover, you sent me the review you’re considering posting and it’s not the sort of thing that would obviously have to be from one specific person: you talk in general terms about the company culture and management, not about specific experiences unique to you. I don’t see how they’d tie it to you, unless you repeatedly raised the same issues  in very loud and specific terms while you were there and no one else ever complained about those things (which, from your review, definitely sounds like it was not the case). There’s also nothing legally actionable here; it’s legal to share your opinions [and here’s Glassdoor’s own page on avoiding defamation, which explains what’s considered an opinion (i.e., not defamatory) versus “verifiable facts” (potentially defamatory if knowingly false)].. I mean, people can sue anyone for anything, but it’s incredibly unlikely that a company would feel moved to take any legal action on this.

Your mom is being overly cautious. That said, Glassdoor has a bad track record on privacy so it’s always smart to use a burner email if you post there.

4. Is it normal for managers not to know how much their employees earn?

A few years ago I was a line manager and hiring manager for new employees joining my team, so I knew what the salary range for the positions being filled was, had negotiating power over said range, had the final say on who we’d extend an offer to, and would communicate to HR how much we’d be offering to the candidate. I also used the knowledge of my direct reports’ compensation to fight for salary increases to improve employee retention and to make sure everyone was being paid fairly for their role, their contributions, and their job experience.

I always thought this was fairly standard, but I’ve discovered that my last two line managers had no idea how much I or anyone else on my team were being paid, nor did they care to ask because the final offer to employees were decided by the CEO, as they’re the ones who have the final say on things like budgets for the company and how much they spend on new talent.

My last line manager tried arguing that my salary was private information and wasn’t relevant for him to do his job, but I argued back that, without this knowledge, he had no idea if we were being paid fairly, and as the person who oversees our day-to-day work, he’s the best person to know our worth and make sure that our compensation matches our contributions to the company. I eventually left that job because not only did I find out I was being underpaid for the industry, my colleague and peer received a significant raise that wasn’t extended to me.

Is this normal? Are line managers usually not told how much their direct reports are being paid? Is this not important information they should have so they can advocate for their team with senior leadership? That’s what I thought at first, but now I’m wondering if I was the outlier and line managers are usually not privy to this information due to data privacy reasons.

No, managers generally know how much people on their teams are being paid, for all the reasons you say. You also need to be able to spot inequities (Persephone is making more than Cordelia, but Cordelia does a better job) and retention risks (we’re currently underpaying Cordelia for the market and risk losing her over it) and actually talk to your employees about their salaries, which is a normal thing people bring up with their managers. There are places where managers don’t have this information, but unless they’re very low-level managers, it’s usually the sign of a culture with weak management (including that managers there aren’t well-trained or supported, which can trickle down to the people working under them in all sorts of ways).