ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 24, 1996 TAG: 9611220020
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAMILLE WRIGHT MILLER
Give your secretary respect and responsibilities
Q: I've been promoted and will, for the first time, have a secretary. Any hints for making me look more experienced than I am and ensuring I don't commit a major faux pas?
A: It's important to understand that the role of secretaries has changed over the past 15 years.
Secretaries now function more as paraprofessionals. They are valuable members of your team. In addition to traditional duties, your secretary can assume much of your routine work -drafting preliminary responses to correspondence or handling requests for information. Secretaries can also solve some client problems quickly - great customer service at a lower cost.
Begin by having several conversations. What work did this person handle for a former employer. What additional challenges the secretary would like to undertake over the next several months?
Keep communication lines open. Treat the secretary as a professional equal. As you discover the person's abilities, delegate more challenging work. Offering greater challenges will be rewarded with increased loyalty and higher job satisfaction. Additionally, you'll be freed to do work you find challenging.
Secretaries who quit often do so because they weren't treated with respect or provided with work commensurate with their continuously developing skills. Demonstrate that you are committed to the ongoing professional development of your new partner.
Q: Our professional-level openings are attracting resumes from people with degrees in unlikely fields. We're getting resumes from graduates of law schools and MBA programs.
To date we've eliminated these applicants in the first cut. Are we missing something?
A: Career counselors recognize that many in the work force will make five to seven complete career changes during their lifetimes. Your "unlikely" applicants are testimony to the fact that many workers want to change fields.
Rather than discard resumes with seemingly unrelated education and work experience, evaluate the skills gained from the education programs and employment experiences. You'll find much that has value for your organization.
When you find a qualified applicant with a background different from your expectations, consider offering an interview. Ask the individual why he or she wants to make a career change and why he or she is interested in your organization. You should find that creative hiring broadens perspectives within your organization and can help your organization strengthen.
Q: Over the course of the past year I've written up an employee who's easily classified as a "problem employee." After the last write-up, the employee presented me with a written "response" and asked that it be included in his personnel file. Do I have to include an employee's response to personnel records?
A: Your "problem employee" may want a chance to recover self-esteem and that has prompted the response. It's equally possible your employee doesn't think he or she is being fully heard or understood when talking during performance evaluation sessions.
Before focusing on whether to include your employee's written defense, review evaluation sessions. Are you listening carefully and demonstrating listening skills? Are you listening for underlying messages your employee may be sending?
An additional area of concern is that you've been dealing with a "problem employee" for a year. Evaluate your techniques and time lines. If methods for handling difficult employees are appropriate, problems should have stopped.
When problems continue, despite using appropriate techniques, it's unlikely future efforts will bring about change. How much time and energy are you willing to devote to an on-going problem in the next year?
Once you've addressed these concerns, it's time to consider including the response in your employee's file. Such a gesture is usually harmless and can, sometimes, clarify problems.
There are some legal concerns, however.
Tammy Moss, a lawyer with The Center for Employment Law, agrees that "while an employer may have no legal obligation to allow an employee to respond to evaluations or warnings, it is not necessarily a harmful practice to allow them to do so."
Moreover, Moss says that, "often times, an employee's response will further document that a problem, in fact, exists and provide additional information to justify the employer's concern."
Moss cautions that "care should be taken where an employee's response provides information that, in some way, mitigates the lack of performance." In such cases, "the employer may then be required to factor in the mitigating circumstances when deciding how to handle the performance problem."
Because there exists the possibility of legal ramifications, have the response reviewed by your human resources department or your company's lawyer.
Camille Wright Miller, an organizational behavior sociologist who works in Lexington, answers questions from our readers about workplace issues. Please send them to her in care of The Roanoke Times, Business News Department, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke 24010.
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