Am I out of practice or was this a weird discussion with manager?

[pensandpapwrs]

I’ve been back at work just under six months after Mat leave, my daughter is 18 months. I was told my work wasn’t perfect when I came back as I was missing small things (work in a professional role) but I was steadily improving as the months had gone on. I was asked how I felt about things etc. I was told of the direction of the company and that manager was looking forward to us all embarking on this next phase of growth together.

So that was all ok. So I thought. I was then told it would be a good idea to re address the balance of my home and work life as it’s probably too much tipped into the home life at the moment. I have no idea what that meant, I leave to do nursery pick up but I’ve been told (by this manager) that that is fine. I also am on target. I just felt it was a weird thing to say, like how is the balance wrong and how can I NOT collect my child or be there for the home stuff? I was also told I need to build on being more robust so they can send more work to me steadily. I had no idea I wasn’t robust?!

I came out of the meeting feeling totally mixed messages. Am I reading into this too much?

I am finding that "robust" is a new angle in people management, taking over from the caring about everyone's life outside work. Very productivity focussed after the slacking off of Covid. I get it, in general the pendulum swung very far from the level at which businesses can be run effectively.
From the information you give, it is very hard to judge whether your manager was being fair or whether he was just following the new trend of focussing on "robust" (or call it resilient, productive under pressure, etc.).

IN the company I worked for, the managers had to give some improvement goals which could also involve more training in the performance review documentation.. There was a special section for this and whether it was achieved or not was taken into account and discussed in the next performance review. This was also a criteria in the amount of pay raises the following year. i.e failure to complete the improvements normally resulted in a smaller percentage of the pay raise.

forgot to say above, that if the employee was performing well, the improvement goals would often be agreed up front between employee and manager and they would often involve more training.

@pensandpapwrs everyone makes the occasional mistake. Don’t see what it's got to do with having kids or not, etc. Different if you were exhibiting signs of stress at pick-up time e.g. flapping, making specific mistake regularly around that time and so on but that clearly is not the case. I would maybe have a talk and actually ask what the connection is! Don’t tell him you did anything re childcare, that’s like admitting there was a problem when it looks like there is none to me. You can be blunt and say, there is no connection here. Maybe he has held off on giving you stuff so you could say ‘from my side I am getting everything done on a timely basis without issue, but if, for example, that is because I’m at 80% workload compared to others, then that’s on you for not giving me the info or suggesting a timeline for ramping up
to 100%. Please don’t treat me differently; it’s not helpful and without the full story, I can’t address any issue”.

OP, lots of good advice.
My advice would be treat this manager as hostile and watch your back.
Tell them nothing.
Keep excellent notes.
They sound like a misogynistic twat.
Detailed notes are very useful when dealing with people like that.

Some people have difficulty aligning articulate, honest and open-hearted talk with professional standards. This is because they're wankers

This is so true! And if the public sector legal dept I once worked in was anything to go by, the more they could obfuscate things, the better.

OP please don't do this in you want to stay in this role and progress at this company.

I agree that this could be the very early stages of something that turns into a sex discrimination claim. Keep a diary of what was said, send yourself contemporaneous emails recording conversations. Do what ever you want to do to make sure you have a record.

BUT whilst your manager may be a misogynistic arse, assuming he's an idiot is also a bad idea. Starting to need to document everything in writing is clearly someone who is preparing for this to be escalated and it doesn't take half a brain (particularly if you are in law) to see this as preparation for a sexual discrimination claim.

At the moment you have a manager who raised a concern. Yeah we all know that he wouldn't have said the same thing to a man. Yeah that's shit. But it is also the reality of the world that a lot of us work in. You would be completely in your rights to decide fuck this, I won't stand for it, but time and time again the outcome for the woman is not great.

You have the opportunity to address the concern yourself and in a totally professional manner, without a risk of seeming defensive or that you're going to try to 'pull the discrimination card'. Try that first. Bite your tongue and do what you need to do to show that you are not slacking off, the fact that you have recently pushed a baby out of your foof is not in any way relevant to your ability to contribute to the workplace. Honestly most of the time this works.

This may not work with this company, or with this manager, and you may have to go there, but then if you do escalate, you will have a whole long list of all of the things you have done to show that you absolutely are a top performer and it will be much harder for both your manager and your employer to badge you as 'difficult'. If you start making obvious moves towards a discrimination claim now based on a fairly vague statement (we all know what he meant but he didn't actually say anything that objectively was that bad) you're making it easy for your employer to pick the manager over you, and easy for a narrative to be spun that you blew up an innocuous comment and were trying to cover for your own poor performance.

I have confidence from what you've said you can manage this and come out of it smelling of roses and what will be remembered is a manager who was an arse and how well you dealt with it. I'm sorry that you're in this position, but you can do this.

So what time if your normal leaving time? As you said previously about leaving to get your child which manager said was fine, I assume you get your child, drop them with someone, and then go back to work? I assumed you meant something like 3pm, 5pm is standard corporate leaving time isn’t it?!

Maybe my company culture is terrible (big three strategy consultancy) but when those words are used here, it’s generally a path to performance management. Even if there were some good points in the feedback (there HAS to be some) if you still came away with these feedback points ringing in your head then that’s the main message they wanted you to get. Every manager I know does not risk giving that kind of (potentially discriminatory) feedback unless they feel they have a strong case to show how your work/life balance / double checking affects your performance.

it’s awful really and I am sorry you are going through this

This is silly. Documenting everything shows firstly and most obviously she won’t be a push over if they turn it into performance management, which is a very useful message to send. If they haven’t a leg to stand on facts wise they need to pull their heads in. She can’t just ‘improve’ without having established how, nor is it right for her to feel like the only employee who has to work extra hours and exceed not meet targets because her manager has made some vague negative comments which are completely unsubstantiated but clearly flag they have an issue with her. A sex discrimination claim would be pretty hard to get up and running here, and not at all what I would think of first.

People mentioning performance management… I was specifically told the meeting wasn’t about that and that there weren’t concerns about performance. I have only been worried due to the remarks about work life balance and being robust and now next year should be my year etc. all seemed very strange comments to make.

Poor managers won't make it as obvious as that because it will start as conversations. It will be minor things to unsettle you and make you doubt yourself. It will move onto a proper meeting then performance management.

Please start to document every conversation.

It’s very strange to me too. I don’t think I hang out with superwomen but I don’t do a job that allows for six months of reduced performance. Surely few people
do?

Would you really find it ok if someone whose career involved teaching your children, resuscitating people, investigating crimes or constructing bridges was performing under par for six months? That really surprises me.

I wonder if you’re minimising a bit here OP as you sound a little contemptuous of being dedicated to career or being ‘corporate’? As though you don’t find those things meaningful? That’s up to you of course but i wonder if that attitude is coming across at work, as if you’re not interested or caring about your work? I think six months is a long time to get back up to speed.

Having said that I’m surprised anyone would say you need to adjust your work/life balance - that to me seems a very foolish thing to say. Your manager would be better to focus on performance.

I’d ask to meet again just to clarify some
specific goals.

I think you need to ask them for examples. It sounds a very general comment.
Are there any other parents in your team?

First, it starts with "we are embarking on a new exciting journey of growth and all need to buckle-up".

Then, they will tell you"rember we discussed the need to buckle up, you need to do better"

Then, "you remember we discussed you need to do better? Well,you didn't "

And so on..

Are you in consulting by any chance?

Obviously you don't have to answer or say anything that would identify you, but I'm curious what type of company you work for or the type of job you do if your experience is that demonstrating that 'you won't be a pushover' by emailing and starting to document things would be a good thing to do at this stage.

they will not tell you it’s about performance management. It sounds like they do not want you to work there anymore. If they officially told you it was PM then they would have to give you more detail rather than make vague statements which are intended to confuse you, expect you to appeal earlier, get your ducks in a row around discrimination. They are hoping to extend out time by giving you vague negative feedback and hoping you accept it without asking questions while formally documenting it as a pre-performance management conversation. These are the unwritten rules of corporate life

I just don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I work late. I’m responsive. I’m 5k off my (huge) target. I work on my days off. I never miss a meeting because of childcare issues. I honestly don’t get it.

I think what they are not telling you, is that your target was set low as a new joiner (which is normal and very common).
You might have meet the target, but they would have looked at raising it in the second half of the year and they feel they can't.

The comment about work-home balance is a bit shit. It's not their business how you manage your time as long as your work is done.

The only time I have had to intervene as a manager is when one of my direct report was consistently sending reports past midnight. There was a concern about their wellbeing, they just weren't efficient enough and it was taking them too much time to complete the work.

@Bearbookagainandagain but that’s the thing I have been told to take time to keep work and not push it off my desk too… so I feel like I can’t win! The last bit of advice I put forward the response was ‘totally agree, that was my analysis and view too.’ So… if they are in total agreement with my strategies etc then how am I going wrong? I just feel I can’t win at all.

I’m so upset about this tonight, not sure why it’s getting to me so much

For the record, I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong. I think he’s a dick and you’re better off out of there.

I think if your mat leave coincided with this new manager’s culture setting and settling into the role, then he may have a vision/plan for the team that does not include you, either because he wants to drive people hard to achieve even greater results (to make him look good) and your pace (work/life balance) does not fit, or he has his eye on someone else externally or from another department who he thinks would fit better. He can’t technically do or say anything at this point but he can point out some low hanging fruit which are things any misogynist could fit to any woman, especially in making general statements about your home life taking all up your time, not being “robust” and “missing things” like spelling a name on an email wrong.

when accounting for this he will back-label it as a pre PM conversation and he will have started the clock ticking on how long he’s given you to improve the moment you left the office. Any small mistake you make from now will be noted and added to the list to give shape to his vague and currently unjustifiable feedback.

your best bet right now is to ask him in writing if there are any other examples he can articulate apart from spelling someone’s name wrong, because you are keen to work on the feedback. Do it in one brief email (so you can’t be accused of “double checking.”) I would completely stop speaking about your child or home life and I would move all conversations with everyone back on to work if they ever stray. If your company is very corporate and has a board of directors or senior advisors (I don’t know what your company is) I would see if there is a senior woman who is out of the day to day who you reach out to personally and ask for a mentoring coffee.

OP as someone trying to balance motherhood after mat leave and a demanding job will a confusing manager, I totally feel you and you aren't alone. I was already dreading Monday on Friday night...

I’d be asking for another meeting, in writing, to clarify what they meant about work life balance not being good enough and making them spell their discrimination out in writing so I could take them to tribunal if needed at a later date!!! You sound like you have a shit manager.

I just don’t know what to do about this. I have nothing to lose so won’t go without a huge fight that’s for sure. But sadly I have no experience of employment law or how to play that. I am so fucking fed up of entitled men spouting shit to women. I’m doing the job. That’s all I need to do. I’m really angry and upset about it.