LPT: If you manage people at work, make sure you ask how they are doing or feeling outside of just work, or you will lose talent.

It’s interesting that some people find that outside-of-work stuff is not applicable.

My therapist says that when you’re stressed, you have less resources. If I’m stressed in my personal life, I have less resources to preform in my work life. Yes that’s my responsibility, but if my manager thinks I have the bandwidth to take on extra work based on the scope of the work alone, its not always going to paint an accurate picture.

I just think it’s human to ask how an employee feels or is doing because my feelings don’t then off during work hours. I think everyone needs emotional support from time to time.

As an example, I am working on a complex new feature for software. The points say I have 16 out of 18 points of allocated work over 6 days. He can glance at this and assume I have wiggle room, but mentally, I don’t. The feature touches sensitive code and I feel worried I will miss important bugs. At a certain point you’ve looked at something for so long you get blind spots. My team has been working on this feature for months and now it’s the only focus and been called our company’s number 1 priority due this week. That is a lot of pressure. Everyone is putting in extra hours, and I recently went back to school. I am putting in extra hours on top of school, I might have a difficult therapy session one week, I might be PMSing, I might be tired because heh guess what my brother and his wife had a baby and that’s why I left 1 hour early on Friday when I went to take shifts with family babysitting my nephews for 3 days while they where at the hospital.

Outside factors are always going to take some of my mental resources.

Simply asking me how I am feeling would reveal as much as I felt comfortable telling even as simple as “things are hectic and I’m tired,” and then my manager could consider that factors and help me find some work-life balance. But instead he just doesn’t give a shit and I feel unsupported, overworked, like a unit of measure, a robot, and I’m going to leave for a more supportive work culture.

Re-watch Office Space. There is a banner in one scene, “Is this good for the company?”

/r/LifeProTips Thread Parent