Consider a hypothetical situation: you’re in a neighborhood convenience store over the weekend and happen to see one of your employees. They don’t notice you but you overhear them, in the midst of an argument with the cashier, use a racial slur. You intervene, de-escalate the situation and tell the employee you want to discuss this at work the following week.
On Monday you pull the employee aside to explain themselves. They call it a “stupid argument” and say they got “hot headed” and “didn’t mean anything by it”. “And besides,” they say, “I wasn’t on the clock, it was my personal time.”
What do you do? Do you let the employee go with a warning? Do you formally reprimand them? If you decide to discipline them, why do you do it? They weren’t on company time. In that moment, in that convenience store, they were acting as a private citizen, not as your employee. Do we have the authority, as managers, to discipline employees for their behavior outside of work?
In our modern world, with the prominence of social media and the blurring of “on-the-clock” and “off-the-clock” lines, every leader is faced with these situations. Leaders have to ask themselves questions not covered in management classes: Is it justifiable to employ a racist, a fascist, or just a generic jerk? Can someone get reprimanded at work for being an online troll at home?
The easy answer is “it’s not my problem”. It’s completely understandable to feel that if the employee didn’t break any laws and didn’t technically violate any company policies, it doesn’t make sense to turn a personal situation into a professional problem. “Why make life any more complicated?” you might think. “People have a first amendment right to do and say what they want outside of work,” you might tell yourself. Maybe we shouldn’t be the arbiters of truth and morality for our workplaces.
In moments of doubt, it’s natural to look to the organization to help us find our answers, and while no company has a “what to do if your employee stormed the capitol” policy, many companies will have guidelines on how to act if employees act counter to the company’s values. At company’s like Coca-Cola, you might see values such as Leadership, Collaboration, Integrity, Accountability, Passion, Diversity, and Quality. At Burger King, they aspire to the values of “teamwork and family, excellence and respect”. Nike has Community, Sustainability, Diversity, and Social responsibility. Stated values are meant to be aspirational and clarifying, helping employees guide their actions and behaviors and ensuring that our behavior is in alignment with the company’s values. It also serves as a compass for managers to help them find true north in the foggy, gray wilderness of real life.
But these values are inherently subjective. None of these companies have published material on how to interpret the values they aspire to. They’re open to debate. There’s no universal standard to determine if someone is acting with “respect”, and so it’s up to organizational leadership to provide interpretations and (imperfect) assessments as to whether employees are acting appropriately. If these issues were black-and-white, they wouldn’t need us. You’re in this position to use your judgment – to help legislate issues around harassment, bullying, morality, ethics, etc.
Any claim of “not my problem” misses the entire point of what we’re trying to do as leaders. Being a leader means leading, it means taking a stance on where boundaries are and having an opinion about acceptable and unacceptable behavior, as defined by the organizational values, your personal values, and your sense of ethics.
Where we fail in this calling is when we narrow our focus, when we say to ourselves and others, “this isn’t in the manual so I won’t worry about it” or “technically they didn’t violate any corporate policies so there’s nothing I can do”. What does this message send to your employees? What does this say about how seriously employees should hold to the values? Are company values nice window dressing for slide decks and on-boarding presentations or do they actually mean something?
It’s easy to believe that our job is to avoid controversy, to stay out of situations that might be uncomfortable or awkward. But in fact, moments of controversy and uncertainty is exactly when we’re needed. People most need strong leadership and direction when things are on fire. Sure, in a perfect world, we’d keep personal lives and professional lives neatly separated, but if the past year has taught us anything, it’s that we don’t get to decide (and can’t predict) the sorts of things that intrude into our workplaces. Life doesn’t exist in a vacuum and we’re forced to constantly consider the context of the larger world and society we live in.
Should we go trawling employees’ social media pages looking for questionable content? No, but if an employee acts inappropriately outside of work, in a way that becomes public, and is not in keeping with our values (based on a reasonable interpretation of these values) then discipline and termination is absolutely on the table. Because who they are outside of work will always be seen as a reflection of who they are at work. Even if what you do at work is just sell sandwiches.
Do not let people fool you into thinking that reasonable discipline for unconscionable personal behavior is an encroachment on someone’s first amendment rights. The first amendment has a proud tradition of protecting people from prosecution over whatever horrid thing they may choose to say, but was never intended to protect people from the consequences of their words and actions*.*
We can never allow ourselves to forget that our behavior as leaders is seen as a tacit endorsement of what is considered “acceptable” in our workplaces. The behaviors we choose to ignore or tolerate sends a message. “This is someone that belongs here.” “This is someone you should emulate.” “This is someone whose values reflect our values.” All across the country, companies are making choices about the employees that choose to represent their brand. Not necessarily because these people violated black and white corporate policies, but because their behavior ran so counter to the organizational values and standards.
Some behaviors don’t get the benefit of the doubt or second chances – and it takes courageous leaders to draw a line in the sand.
Good luck out there.
-Patrick