"I'm new here," a reader we're calling Steve
writes. After months of being unemployed, Steve has just started a new job. So
far he likes his fellow employees and is excited to get started with work.
After a day of orientation and meetings with human
resources, Steve had begun to work on a team with other employees. Armed with
schedules of upcoming meetings and deadlines, Steve was still a bit overwhelmed
by the newness of the job, but he was ready to go.
One of Steve's tasks was to be part of a team involved in
launching a new product. Others on the team were spread throughout the company.
The team's manager consulted by email with all the team members to let them
know he wanted to schedule some group meetings for times when each of them
would be available.
The manager tossed out a few dates and times to see if
any of them worked for everyone. After a date was settled upon, Steve wrote it
into his calendar. He was raring to go.
But as Steve was going over his orientation and human
resource materials that evening, he noticed that the date and time the boss had
gotten agreement on conflicted with another company-wide meeting. Steve figures
others on the team might not have been keeping close track of non-team
meetings.
"I don't really want to be the guy to tell the boss
he'd made a mistake," Steve writes. "He'll probably figure it out
anyway at some point and then he'll ask us all to reschedule." But Steve
worries that if he doesn't say something and the boss doesn't catch the error
in short order that it might set the team back.
"Is the right thing to tell him even if as a new guy
I don't really want my first interactions with the boss to be me correcting
him?" asks Steve.
It might be understandable that Steve is concerned about
making a good impression - a concern that perhaps is elevated by his having
been unemployed for several months before landing this job. He could decide to
simply say nothing and figure someone else will notice the error. But for the
sake of his team, himself and his boss, the right thing is to let him know
about the error in scheduling.
If he's truly concerned about being the one to let the
boss know, he could let a colleague on the team know and ask her or him to let
the boss know. But a better course of action seems to be for Steve to alert the
boss. He can do so by letting him know that he noticed the conflicting date
when he was reading the orientation materials. Couching the message this way
gives Steve the opportunity to let the boss know he's been diligent about
reading the materials he's received and also sends the signal that he cares
about the team functioning smoothly.
Starting off work holding back information hardly seems
the best foot to start out on.
If the boss is good at his job, he'll appreciate Steve's
action and work to remedy the schedule. A good boss can typically tell when an
employee is trying to be constructive rather than randomly critical. Steve
should be constructive rather than stew over what to do.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School.
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.
(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.