managing an employee with cognitive decline, weekly work event at dinnertime, and more

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

1. Managing an employee with cognitive decline

I supervise a long-term employee, Betsy, who has been at my workplace in the same role for almost 30 years. She’s never been a top performer — she’s one of those employees who does enough to meet or very slightly exceed expectations — but over the last couple of years, there’s been some noticeable decline in her cognitive abilities. She’s started asking basic-level questions about simple job tasks, and the pace of her work, which was never speedy, has slowed considerably.

She’s in her mid-70s and mentioned casually that she plans to work for “a couple more years,” but the decline is getting so dramatic that I don’t know if she’ll be able to function at a reasonable level for a couple more years! I’ve done my best to be compassionate and to set and enforce clear expectations, but it’s getting to the point where other employees are expressing concern for her well-being because of her behavior in our open workspace — not only the basic-level questions, but talking to herself and occasional emotional outbursts. I don’t want Betsy to feel like she’s being pushed out or discriminated against because of her age, but this can’t continue. What’s the best way to navigate this tricky situation?

At a minimum, you should give Betsy clear and direct feedback about the issues you’re seeing — that she’s forgetting basic work processes, the pace of her work has slowed significantly, and she can’t continue to have emotional outbursts that disrupt the work environment. Don’t sugarcoat this feedback; she needs to hear what you’re seeing in order to make the best decisions for herself. As part of that conversation, you can also say, “Because some of this seems like it may be a memory issue, I’m wondering if you’ve spoken with your doctor about whether there may be a medical component at play.” (It might help to imagine how you’d approach this conversation if you were seeing similar issues from someone several decades younger, so you didn’t have the awkwardness around aging hanging over it.)

Under the Americans With Disabilities Act, when you have a reasonable belief that an employee’s ability to perform essential job functions is being impaired by a medical condition, you also can require a medical exam, but that’s something you’d want to navigate carefully with your HR or legal team. In fact, I’d bring them in on the whole situation now so that they’re in the loop about what’s happening and how you’re addressing it.

Related:
my coworker is having serious memory issues

2. I have a weekly work event right at dinnertime

I’m starting a new job where one of the duties involves staffing a three-hour community event that takes place weekly at a local pub. The event runs 4-7 pm, which is right smack over dinner time, and I don’t function well when I don’t eat. I have two different issues with this. The first is that it feels like I’m essentially being required to spend money eating out at this same location every week, which would be fine occasionally, but not something I would choose to do weekly on my own. The second is that the food isn’t particularly healthy: fries, burgers, etc, with no meal-sized salad or other healthier option. I don’t mind eating that way sometimes, but sometimes I would rather not.

Do I need to suck it up, or can I somehow address one or both of these issues? On the money front, can I ask the organization I’m working for to provide some sort of reimbursement or stipend for dinner? It would run around $20/week on average. On the health front, I could sometimes bring in some healthier snacks and eat them on the sly, but we want to keep a good rapport with the pub owners, and bringing in outside food short of serious food allergies doesn’t seem quite right. We also want our attendees to buy food/drinks, so that the pub continues to be happy hosting us, and I don’t want people to start to think that they can bring outside food.

Additional context, in case it matters: the organization I’m working for is a nonprofit. They have covered food/drink for volunteers in the past as a thank-you, but I’m their first staff person so this is new territory.

Is this an event where most attendees are eating? If so, you can ask that they cover your meal; that should be seen as a business expense. However, that doesn’t solve the issue of the food being something you don’t want to eat weekly; the organization can’t really do anything about that (and I agree you shouldn’t bring in outside food beyond something like a granola bar, if you want the pub to continue to welcome your group).

But is there a way to sidestep this entirely by just eating something small before the event and then having a fuller dinner once you’re at home? The reimbursement would only solve half problem, whereas this would get at all of it. (Plus, if this isn’t an event where most people are eating dinner, it risks looking a little … unresourceful to insist that eating a full dinner there at that specific time is the only way you can make this work.)

3. I want to tell my boss we’re all afraid of him

I lead a team of five operations managers who oversee, let’s say, cafeteria services for hospitals (not really, but I want to remain anonymous). We work with aging, clunky facility infrastructure. Most of our work involves either addressing maintenance and performance issues with the legacy equipment or integrating modern upgrades developed by other divisions. Managing these integrations is challenging because it involves incorporating equipment our team does not directly own, simulating full-scale operational workflows, and thoroughly testing them to ensure they meet strict health and safety standards while also improving the customer experience. Much of our success relies on peripheral infrastructure — like building utilities and supply chain logistics — that we don’t control directly. We have to coordinate with at least three other departments, each with their own priorities, to make all this happen.

Our company’s leadership is very concerned with our clients’ perception of our legacy facility operations. They’ve committed to improving them. Part of this commitment requires us not to introduce any new major operational failures, despite the fact that they are asking us to make significant improvements in a short amount of time. Because of this concern, my manager Bob has been scrutinizing the work we are doing, asking us to justify every choice we make and mitigate every possible risk.

Two months ago, our team found, reported, and fixed a minor defect internally before any customer noticed it. In response, Bob called a meeting demanding to know how this happened and how we were going to prevent it from happening again. It happened because our work is inherently complex, requires cooperation from outside stakeholders, and involves the inevitable risk of managing an aging facility. He says he’s not trying to blame anyone for these mistakes, that he’s only trying to improve on our process, but I get the feeling that nobody on my team believes him. The company has terminated a lot of under-performing employees over the last year in an effort to improve quality, so everyone is on edge and afraid of losing their job. Is there a good way I can tell Bob that we’re doing our best, but his aggressive attitude has destroyed all semblance of trust and safety on the team? Everyone is afraid to do or say the wrong thing and I don’t know how to tell him that we’re going to lose our best performers if they don’t feel they are ever allowed to make a mistake, no matter how small.

How’s your relationship with Bob and does he have a track record of being open to input? If you have decent rapport with him, he seems to respect you, and he doesn’t have a tendency to shoot the messenger, ideally you could say, “I want to share with you that my sense is that there’s a lot of fear on the team right now, where people are on edge and afraid of losing their jobs, and their fear of making a mistake is making it harder to meet the goals we’ve been given. I also worry we may lose our best people if they continue feeling that way.”

There’s no guarantee that he’ll change anything in response to that feedback, but it’s something a good manager would want the opportunity to hear.

4. Applying for an an internal job before going on maternity leave

I recently interviewed for an internal position at my company. I like my current role but I feel I’ve outgrown it. The role I applied for is on a different team and would be a step up. It is also more aligned with the work I would like to do (and that I’ve trained to do previously). I work very closely with this team and they are fantastic; in fact, most of them reached out to their manager to speak on my behalf when I applied.

Unfortunately, I was not offered the job, but the hiring manager, Tom, met with me after to let me know that another, nearly identical role would likely be going up soon. He said he’d reach out when it was posted and encouraged me to apply, indicating that I would have a very good chance. He even had the team lead, Sue (who would be the direct manager), touch base with me. On our call, Sue said that, should I apply, I’d be “fast-tracked” through the process. Both conversations let me be pretty optimistic.

The issue is that I am pregnant and will be going on leave in about six weeks. It hasn’t been a secret within my current team for months, and nearly all of Tom’s team is aware since I work very closely with them. However, I am unsure if Tom or Sue know since I don’t work directly with either of them. I know I’m not obligated to disclose anything about being pregnant during this process, but since it’s internal and so many people are aware, it does feel a bit shady to not say anything.

My company is notoriously slow with these types of internal processes and so the new job has not gone up in the system yet. I’m wondering how I should navigate this situation. I certainly don’t want to miss this opportunity but I’m getting more and more anxious every day that passes without the new job being posted. If it does go up, I’ll of course apply, but I’m not sure if I should email Tom or Sue (or what I should say if I do). The last thing I want is for them to get an out-of-office response to any follow-ups on the job/application.

If the job goes up before your leave starts, go ahead and apply — but then the week before you’re set to go on leave, email them both to let them know you’re about to be out for X weeks for maternity leave and expect to be back on Y date, but are extremely interested in the job and are available to discuss it while you’re gone if things are moving forward.

If the job hasn’t gone up by then, then send a similar message a week or two before you go on leave.

You’re not obligated to do that, but with an internal position where they’re going to know you’re away, it makes sense to do.