Recently our agency held its annual Christmas gathering for employees. It's a great opportunity to share the good experiences of the past year and look forward to the opportunities of the next year.

Our office has several locations, and this year we decided to host our gathering closer to Indianapolis. We have several clients in the Indianapolis area and we worked with our operations manager to select the restaurant in which to dine and outline our game plan.

After careful review, the operations manager returned with a couple of options. One was a restaurant owned by a family member of one of our employees, another is owned a long-time client.

After reviewing the costs and benefits, my partner and I decided to go with our client and look at our employee's family restaurant another time.

Because of the long drive our northern employees would face, we also decided to reserve rooms at a nearby hotel and provide van transportation to and from the hotel to better manage our risk.

We also discussed the types of bonuses we would give our employees. We wanted to make up for last year, where we did not have bonuses.

As our operations manager was putting together the plans and finalizing the details, he found an email thread from a couple of employees that he was not supposed to read. The comments belittled his job as manager, criticizing him and his plans, and the choices we made as owners.

He called my partner to express his feelings. This was his first experience with this type of behavior so we thought we could use this as a learning experience.

Our operations manager is 21 years old. He is graduating college in 5 months and will begin working full time. He has been with us since he was 16 and has proven very capable at project management, project completion and has a firm understanding of our agency workings.

He has the wisdom of a much older soul, but this situation was very troubling to him.

After hearing the story from my partner, I called our HR company. Our agency outsources our human resources functions to an outside firm. We essentially co-employ our people with this firm for a fee, but the fee pales in comparison to the value we receive from this company. I talked to our rep, whose immediate response was, “No good deed goes unpunished.”

I explained our approach to our Christmas gathering and he listened intently. I asked him to call our operations manager and review with him his feelings and why things like this happen in an office setting.

After that discussion, I received the following email from our operations manager (Note: All names changed)

Just wanted to quickly recap with you my conversation with Mike yesterday. Very positive, very insightful, very helpful.

If we had intentions of giving bonuses to begin with, continue to do so. Reward everyone, even those with poor attitudes. He thinks this bonus may help, but it may not. We can't please everyone, but can give constructive criticism come employee review time.
He would like to hold a handbook review prior to employee review. We will Skype this conversation between ALL employees in the Indy office and Parker City office. Leah will be present in the Indy office and Mike at the PC office.
Topics to discuss:
- Review policy for use of company email.
- Review policy for gossip and treatment of others in the workplace.
- Review PTO (emergency hours, appropriate use, what happens when you go over, etc.)

As a manager of people, I really like working with Team Servant HR. I don't know about your experiences with them, but I've had nothing but help and recommendations from Leah, Mike, and Loren over the past couple of years. I wouldn't mind some one-on-one training/discussions over policies and procedures and how to handle them.

The moral of the story: If you don't think your employees are complaining about you or your management style, you might need to rethink your world.

This type of behavior used to drive me crazy and cause a knee-jerk reaction. Earlier in my career, I probably would have cancelled the annual Christmas party. In fact, that would have killed morale more effectively than the scuttlebutt that started the whole mess.

There is a reason why we have an operations manager and why we outsource our HR issues. Neither my partner nor I have the skill set or patience to deal with the above situation.

But by challenging our young Jedi and giving him the tools and experience to better deal with adversity, we are confident that by the time he's 25 years old, he will have the patience and understanding to be not just a good manager of people, but a great manager of our great team.

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For the Manager: Holiday Office Challenges

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