Ermingarden (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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agonyaunt2022-04-11 12:29 pm
ermingarden) wrote in agonyaunt2022-04-11 12:29 pm
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: Employee Doesn't Want to Use a Name
I manage a team of twelve people within an exponentially larger organization. One of my employees has chosen to longer use a name. Due to past family trauma, they find their old (dead) name painful but have yet to settle on a replacement, preferring to be called nothing at all. While I 100% support this personally, I’m finding that it’s causing issues professionally.
For the most part, the team is supportive. People try their best not to dead name this individual but have some difficulty with communication, especially in group situations. Examples:
• We have an open office plan with individual desks as well as task-specific stations. Everyone is within earshot, so typically, if one person needs to speak to someone else, we address them by their name (“Hey, Moira…”) which allows everyone else to tune out. However, with this employee, one now needs to hover over their desk to get their attention, followed by the “prairie dog effect” of everyone else bobbing and swiveling to determine if they’re being spoken to.
• Meetings and group discussions aren’t a problem if everyone is in a circle making eye contact, but that’s never going to happen. This is a key employee whose expertise is often sought, but it can be hard to navigate around how to address them and get their attention. Often other team members often slip up and say things like, “DeadName, could you weigh in on this?” Obviously, it hurts this employee’s feelings to be deadnamed, but people find it hard to address them or single them out in a group situation without a name, especially if it’s hard to make eye contact.
• There’s also an issue of how to reference them. For example, people from other departments frequently ask me who oversees a project. For another employee, I’d just say, “That would be Twyla,” but that doesn’t work here. Usually, I give their job title but have gotten pushback because our duties are flexible and, technically, they are not the only person with that job title. Also, if it’s a new questioner, they inevitably ask what the employee’s name is, which leads to a discussion I feel out of place having. Or they want to know who they are, which means I must lead them to the employee in question and introduce them. (Pointing or descriptions seem awkward.)
This is true for written communication, too:
• Unfortunately, the techs at our home office cannot find a workaround for the company convention of firstname.lastname @ company. com, which means that people (usually from outside the team) who don’t know this employee, will address emails to “Hi, DeadName.” This is upsetting to the employee. Also, we cannot come up with a professional-sounding solution for their email signature without a name.
• We do team emails in which people are assigned tasks for a particular project. It usually looks like:
David: Can you please adjust the copy of the attached presentation and pass it to Stevie to proofread?
Stevie: After proofreading, please pass to Alexis for publication…
The only acceptable workaround I’ve found for this is a blank space underline like: “____: Please check the numbers on the presentation and add your analysis.”
• We order weekly coffee and pastries from the cafe downstairs, and there’s been drama over names on the cups. If I’m the one ordering, I ask the barista to just put a happy face or star on the employee’s order, but often it’s not me and other team members forgets. Or sometimes the barista insists on following their corporate policy of a name on every cup. (Fictional character names work for that. Congrats, you’re “Hagrid.”)
Here’s the crux: my grandboss feels strongly that, for office purposes, this employee needs to “just pick a name and stick with it.” While this feels morally/interpersonally wrong to me, I’m not sure how I can push back. HR seems flummoxed by the situation but suggested we be “as accommodating as possible within reason.” Do you have any advice as to how to best navigate these issues or deal with the grandboss’s ruling?
Yeah, they need to have a way to be referenced at work. I don’t agree with your boss that they have to permanently stick with whatever they select, but they do need to pick something so that other people can function efficiently, even if they change it down the road.
It’s not reasonable to expect a business to function without a way to refer to individual employees.
They can use an initial or other letter, a nickname, or a placeholder name, but they need to designate some way for other people to refer to them while they’re settling on a more permanent replacement.
For the most part, the team is supportive. People try their best not to dead name this individual but have some difficulty with communication, especially in group situations. Examples:
• We have an open office plan with individual desks as well as task-specific stations. Everyone is within earshot, so typically, if one person needs to speak to someone else, we address them by their name (“Hey, Moira…”) which allows everyone else to tune out. However, with this employee, one now needs to hover over their desk to get their attention, followed by the “prairie dog effect” of everyone else bobbing and swiveling to determine if they’re being spoken to.
• Meetings and group discussions aren’t a problem if everyone is in a circle making eye contact, but that’s never going to happen. This is a key employee whose expertise is often sought, but it can be hard to navigate around how to address them and get their attention. Often other team members often slip up and say things like, “DeadName, could you weigh in on this?” Obviously, it hurts this employee’s feelings to be deadnamed, but people find it hard to address them or single them out in a group situation without a name, especially if it’s hard to make eye contact.
• There’s also an issue of how to reference them. For example, people from other departments frequently ask me who oversees a project. For another employee, I’d just say, “That would be Twyla,” but that doesn’t work here. Usually, I give their job title but have gotten pushback because our duties are flexible and, technically, they are not the only person with that job title. Also, if it’s a new questioner, they inevitably ask what the employee’s name is, which leads to a discussion I feel out of place having. Or they want to know who they are, which means I must lead them to the employee in question and introduce them. (Pointing or descriptions seem awkward.)
This is true for written communication, too:
• Unfortunately, the techs at our home office cannot find a workaround for the company convention of firstname.lastname @ company. com, which means that people (usually from outside the team) who don’t know this employee, will address emails to “Hi, DeadName.” This is upsetting to the employee. Also, we cannot come up with a professional-sounding solution for their email signature without a name.
• We do team emails in which people are assigned tasks for a particular project. It usually looks like:
David: Can you please adjust the copy of the attached presentation and pass it to Stevie to proofread?
Stevie: After proofreading, please pass to Alexis for publication…
The only acceptable workaround I’ve found for this is a blank space underline like: “____: Please check the numbers on the presentation and add your analysis.”
• We order weekly coffee and pastries from the cafe downstairs, and there’s been drama over names on the cups. If I’m the one ordering, I ask the barista to just put a happy face or star on the employee’s order, but often it’s not me and other team members forgets. Or sometimes the barista insists on following their corporate policy of a name on every cup. (Fictional character names work for that. Congrats, you’re “Hagrid.”)
Here’s the crux: my grandboss feels strongly that, for office purposes, this employee needs to “just pick a name and stick with it.” While this feels morally/interpersonally wrong to me, I’m not sure how I can push back. HR seems flummoxed by the situation but suggested we be “as accommodating as possible within reason.” Do you have any advice as to how to best navigate these issues or deal with the grandboss’s ruling?
Yeah, they need to have a way to be referenced at work. I don’t agree with your boss that they have to permanently stick with whatever they select, but they do need to pick something so that other people can function efficiently, even if they change it down the road.
It’s not reasonable to expect a business to function without a way to refer to individual employees.
They can use an initial or other letter, a nickname, or a placeholder name, but they need to designate some way for other people to refer to them while they’re settling on a more permanent replacement.