What to do when your employees’ personal lives interfere with their work lives
As a manager, you tread a very fine line between sympathising with your employees and getting the best you can out of them for the benefit of the business: if you put a put a foot wrong you risk damaging your working relationship – and not being able to fix it. So where do you strike the balance?
Let's look at a hypothetical example.
Lucy – who handles marketing ¬at company X - has been living with her fiancé for the past year or so. They're planning on getting married at the end of the year and are saving frantically for the big day. However, since the beginning of the year Lucy's been very distant and her excuse – when the other team members call her out on it – is that she "has a lot on her mind" or "she didn't sleep well". This was affecting the team morale badly so her manager sat her down to have a chat. Lucy then started telling her all her troubles – most of them from her personal life. She kept apologising saying that it was so unprofessional of her to have her personal life interfere with her professional life.
There's an interesting article that I read recently on Forbes by employee branding guru, Dan Schwabel, in which he says that it's normal – in this day and age – sometimes to express your personal concerns at work.
The days of being able to leave work completely at the office in the evenings or over the weekends is a thing of the past. With the advent of smartphones, tablets and laptops, our work life has invaded the sanctuary of our homes. Instead of fighting to maintain a work-life balance, you need to ensure that your work life and home life integrate well. What this means is that you need to ensure that they both exist in harmony and that the one doesn't take over the other. So, for example when your spouse wants to spend a bit of quiet time with you, switch off your phone so that you don't get distracted with any incoming calls or e-mails. However, life doesn't always obey our wishes so sometimes you have to bring your work home for that important deal as you want to dedicate extra time to getting it perfect.
The same is true for one's personal life. Sometimes, things might be going so pear shaped at home that you can't help but think about it when you're at work. Situations – such as financial worries or serious health troubles – are so worrying that it's very difficult to leave all these concerns at home when you go to the office.
So, as a manager, how do you deal with an employee like Lucy?
Be a manager and not a friend
Your job is to get the best out of your team and not to be each member's best friend. So if you find yourself in a situation like the one with Lucy, be there for him or her by, for example giving them time off to deal with the stressor without the pressure of work, but don't go so far as becoming emotionally involved.
Check in to see how they're doing
Once the employee gets back to work, check in on them to find out how they're doing and show them you care. But be careful of how often you do this as you might give them the impression that you're checking up on them because you think that they can no longer do their job because of the crisis they went through.
The bottom line is that I can give you all the advice in the world about how to deal with employees who are having an emotional crisis; however, you're going to need to assess the situation you find yourself in to determine what action you need to take.
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Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company. |
