When an Employee Flirts With the Boss

Editor’s note: Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues–everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.

A reader writes:

My friend was recently promoted from chief accountant at one hotel to assistant director of finance of another hotel managed by her company. She’s been at the new hotel for about a month now, and the A/R manager — who reports to her — has gotten a little too comfortable with her. He’s begun making comments that are becoming increasingly sexual in nature. It began with remarks about how her boyfriend is “so lucky to be with her” and has grown to the level of what she describes as “increasingly explicit, sexually suggestive double entendres.”

Besides the sexual innuendos, she says that he’s an excellent worker — the best on her team — so she wants to give him a chance to change his behavior before reporting it to her manager or HR. To give some context as to why he might be acting less professionally with her than he might under different circumstances, she has a firm but casual management style and can sometimes blur the line between friend and manager. (She was my manager for about two years, so I speak from experience.) Aside from that, both he and her predecessor reported to the director of finance previously, so he’s used to being on somewhat equal footing with the person in her position. They’re also both fairly young: he is 26 and she’s 27. (Again, I’m just putting the behavior into context, not trying to excuse it — it’s clearly disrespectful and inappropriate.)

How can she clearly communicate that the behavior needs to stop?

She manages him and she hasn’t put a stop to this? Between that and your description of her tendency to “blur the line between friend and manager,” I have some worries about how she’s approaching her job as a manager in general. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

She needs to put a stop to this immediately. This would be true even if they were peers, but she’s his boss. She’s responsible for setting and enforcing standards of behavior.

The next time he makes one of these remarks, she needs to immediately say, “That’s not appropriate to say at work. Please don’t talk to me or any other employees like that.” She needs to say it clearly — no watering it down with a smile or a laugh.

And then, if it continues after that, she needs to treat it with escalating seriousness: “Bob, I’ve told you in the past that remarks like that aren’t appropriate at work. I’m not comfortable hearing those comments, and it’s not acceptable to say things like that to others here either.” Ultimately, she should treat it like any other serious performance problems — meaning that it should put his job in jeopardy if it continues after he’s been told to stop.

And an important note here: She shouldn’t just be shutting him down when it comes to conversations with her. As his manager, it’s her responsibility to tell him that he can’t talk like that with others at work either.

She should also alert her HR department that she’s had this conversation with the employee — because it will not go well for her if someone else reports him for harassment and it comes out that his own manager knew about his behavior all along.

Now, let’s go back to this management style “that can sometimes blur the line between friend and manager.” She needs to stop that too. She isn’t her employees’ friend. She’s just not, no matter how much she might want to think that she is. Friends don’t judge each other’s work, give tough feedback, impose consequences when their work isn’t up to par, make decisions about raises and promotions, and potentially need to lay them off or fire them. (And managers who try to be friends with their staff? It rarely goes well.)

Given that your friend is already not sure how to address inappropriate behavior from someone who reports to her, she’s really got to step back and reassess her management style — and put an end to the friend pretense. That doesn’t mean that she needs to be cold and aloof, but it does mean preserving professional boundaries, being forthright when there’s a problem, and being comfortable with exercising authority.

Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org.