My Younger Employees Only Want to Communicate by Text

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.

Here’s a roundup of answers to three questions from readers.

1. My younger employees prefer communicating by text

I manage a team of five younger professionals, all between the ages of 25 to 30. I have noticed that each of them prefers to communicate with me almost exclusively by text message or through the chat feature in our collaboration software. Conversations by phone, video, or in-person only happen when I initiate them.

When I initiate an in-person conversation or phone call, my employees don’t seem opposed and typically are very engaged, but if left up to them it seems like all of the interaction with me would be via text or chat. In my own career, I’ve always valued being able to talk one-on-one with my manager, whether it’s during a formal meeting or impromptu. Is the preference my employees show for engaging with me by text or chat generational or should this be a warning sign that my team does not view me as approachable, or doesn’t place much value in one-on-one time with me as a manager?

Green responds:

I’m not a fan of broad statements about generations because people are individuals…but in general there has been a cultural shift away from phone calls and toward other methods of communication. Not just among 20-somethings, but more broadly. And since your employees’ entire time in the workforce has been since that shift started, it makes sense that you’d see it reflected in them.

Since they’re very engaged when you initiate calls or talk in-person, I wouldn’t worry that they don’t find you approachable or don’t value their time with you. Those communication methods just aren’t their go-tos. If you want, you could always ask them about it; maybe it’ll turn out that they think of calling or stopping by in-person as more of an interruption to you, and think they’re respecting your time by not doing it. But lots of people of all ages have just fallen into this particular set of preferences, and that’s likely all it is.

2. Screening out bigots in interviews

A member of our team was recently fired. There had been numerous problems with this teammate, including various remarks made to women and gay men that were not acceptable. So now the search is on to find a replacement.

How do we ensure we don’t hire another bigot? I can’t flat out ask, “Are you comfortable working with women? How about gay men?” Can I? As a gay man myself, one thought I’ve had is to say, “I’m [name], and I live in the [part of town] of [city] with my husband and dog. [more basic personal info].” If they make a face or seem taken aback, red flag. Is this a reasonable approach or is there a better way?

Green responds:

Sharing information about yourself is fine to do. But you’re more likely to get a better sense if you ask about these issues more directly. For example, you could ask, “To what extent have you worked on teams with a broad diversity of race, gender, and sexual orientation, and what have you learned from those experiences?” If this person will be managing anyone, you could ask, “Can you tell me about a time that you had particular success in building an equitable and inclusive team with a variety of demographics, or when you faced an obstacle in doing that? What happened and how did you approach it?” (These questions also signal something about your culture to your candidates, which is useful.)

3. How to unfriend someone I have to fire

A few years back, I started at a new company in a mid-level role. During that time, I accepted Facebook friend requests from a few coworkers, all at my level. Generally speaking, I’m fine being friends with coworkers on Facebook as I don’t share anything I wouldn’t want the entire world to see. However, since then I was promoted to the director of our department. I am still friends with coworkers, because I’m comfortable with the content I share being appropriate for the workplace.

However, I am in the process of terminating an employee on my team, who I am still friends with on Facebook. I understand that they most likely won’t want to remain social media friends with a boss who just let them go. I don’t want to put this employee in any more of an uncomfortable position, knowing how stressful and upsetting losing a job already is. Do I unfriend them prior to letting them go, unfriend them when we finalize the termination, or just see what happens and let them decide if they want to disconnect?

Green responds:

Definitely don’t unfriend the person right before letting them go; if they notice, it’ll look ominous and awfully cold. Frankly, doing it right afterwards will look pretty cold too! You’re better off leaving it in their hands; they can unfriend you if they want, block your posts, or whatever they’re comfortable with.

For what it’s worth, ideally you would have disconnected from anyone you managed on Facebook when you became the director, because this is only the first of a bunch of awkward situations that could come up. It’s not enough that you’re not concerned about what you might post; being connected to them means you might see things they’d rather their boss not see or think about (their politics, health, family, whatever it might be) — and it’s less fraught for you to take the lead on fixing that than it is for them. And if you disconnect from everyone at once, it’s easy to explain it’s not personal and you just don’t want them to feel like you’re watching what they post.

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