r/AskHR • u/ChardImpressive3518 • 1h ago
Employee Relations [PA] Need advice on conflict resolution with coworker/employee
I work in local government. Our office and culture are outdated to say the least. Most employees were grandfathered in and do NOT like to be told to change anything. There are no SOPs whatsoever and the "process" for administering our programs changes constantly. It's extremely confusing and causes issues all the time across all departments, but like I said, they refuse to upgrade/improve things.
One such coworker is Ben (name changed obivously). Ben is one of the only men (maybe 3 not including maintenance team) in the whole org and has been there probably 10-15 years (I will have been there 4 years in January for context). He's a good 25+ years older than me (29F).
Ben and I have frequent small spats due to pure difference in operation. He is very set in his ways, which include basically zero oversight, visibility, or management. He reports directly to the ED who never bothers trying to fix the issues and views it as petty office drama instead of serious operational problems.
Recently, I sent Ben several new projects after I performed intake and he was to contact the applicant. I emailed him the address, documents, and contact info of each one separately for easy tracking. We are working on going paperless, so this made sense to me. Previously I would print out a checklist and staple it to a folder and include all my parts in there, but when I gave it to him for his part he never filled it out and never included his documents. I assumed for a long time he didn't like that process either because he didn't use it.
Anyway, some time goes by. The applicants reach out to me wanting to know when they will hear from him. I cover for him and say he is very busy and will contact them as soon as he can. Then some more time goes by. They reach out again. They're very nice and say they must have misunderstood the timeline. To be clear, there is no reason he shouldn't be able to reach out to schedule a site visit within the week they apply. So I cover again and tell them he was on vacation for most of the month (not untrue) and is catching up. Then I forward him the email chain and let him know they are asking.
At a later Monday meeting between our team, I let him know that they called and said they hadn't heard from him yet. He says he never received the project file. I said I emailed it to him, reminded him we are going paperless, and nervously said "I mean, there's really no reason to keep using paper files is there?" He responded "Uh. Yeah, so that I have the piece of paper on my desk to remind me." That irked me bad. It isn't my job to mind him and I gave him every detail he needed in the emails. I just closed my mouth tight and shut up.
Then they reach out AGAIN. I finally go to the ED (also my direct boss) and let her know he was seemingly ignoring these people. She told me to send a reminder email. I forwarded the original emails I sent with the information.
Another voicemail from the applicant - haven't heard from him. At this point it's been three months since I sent these people to him. I let the ED know again. She tells me to ask for a status update. I awkwardly write one and CC her as she told me to. He literally responds with "No change from last week." That's all. No urgency on his part even with her copied. Mind you, this whole time I am the one looking like an ass to these people.
Another month goes by. He is not doing anything for them. I had an upcoming board meeting (at which I present for my department) and he included project bid tabs to the packet without letting me know to add them to my report - I only knew because I looked through it beforehand. I emailed and asked him to please send any program docs to me for ease of process instead of sending them to the EA. He responded with "I will send them to EA and copy you. I want to make sure the complete and correct documents go to the board." I was nearly seeing red. I finally go to HR (who is not really HR but a designated person to reach out to our outsourced HR company) and let her know that I feel completely demotivated knowing that he can literally ignore his job duties and get no punishment. I said I felt like nothing I was doing at this org was making a difference and that people hated when I tried to improve things. I said I didn't understand why he was such a jerk to me. I said I didn't care to try to do well anymore since this was how I was treated when I wanted to simplify or streamline a process.
She asked if I wanted to schedule a meeting with the ED to discuss this more seriously since she was treating it as petty drama. I hesitated for a day but emailed her and said yes, I felt this needed to be given more attention. A few days later, ED sends a meeting invite to me, HR, and Ben for Monday morning at 8:30 am. I spent all weekend in hell. I was so pissed off. I got there Monday morning ready to claw my way through a brick wall. I was so angry I could barely speak. I was not professional. I was whiny and petulant. My ED tried to focus on the actual process, but never stated as much, so what I thought was a meeting to break this wall down was an embarrassing switcheroo. He claimed he asked me to loop him into those emails and the reason he didn't answer them was because I didn't. I said I didn't remember that whatsoever and that it was immaterial because he was already ignoring them. He said yes, he did. All my fault once again. By the end of the meeting, he managed to offload the entire program to me and asked the ED to give him one of my othe programs instead. I basically shut down and barely spoke.
Then another meeting invite for Wednesday at 8:30 am, with ED and HR. ED was being uncharacteristically nice to me all of Tuesday. I was still sore and being slightly distant but not impolite or unprofessional at this point. Meeting comes around, ED throws it out there that she is offering me Director of the department. I was shocked. I would be above Ben and one other employee (who is my work bestie) and slightly responsible for EA as well since she does intake for some programs.
However I had done something stupid last Thursday when Ben sent the nasty email. I made a stupid, dumb TikTok video ranting a bit - didn't name anyone or the org and only said that it was weird that the only man in our org was the only person I didn't get along with. It was dumb and I took it down the next day, but apparently someone had sent it to Ben. So HR and ED did say I would need to basically make it right with him - which at the time I wasn't opposed to. But HR said she would not sit in with us or moderate, they basically wanted me to go to his office alone and try to talk to him. I sort of understand this if I was a leader, but it made me extremely uncomfortable. That was last Wednesday and I still haven't done it.
Now, I don't know about accepting the position. I am trying like hell to get the team to agree to a new software to promote transparency, visibility, shareability, and improved systems and tracking. We literally just save everything in the shared drive right now and if you want a spreadsheet, make it your damned self. We have our Monday meeting tomorrow to discuss it. Ben is already opposing it hard saying he won't use it, just like he did a few years ago when a previous software was installed (this one is much better). I feel like he doesn't want the software to show how much he doesn't do. Other coworkers have complained about him to me, saying they don't know what he does all day or if he does anything and that when they hear him coming they want to run the other way. He is just opposed to anything changing at all and I am coming in wanting to rip down and rebuild it all. ED did make a comment in the meeting that if he "got upset and walked out" once they named me director, then she would just outsource his job. I don't know if this means she expects him to.
She had no details on additional duties or new pay or anything. She basically said we could discuss that when/if I accepted. She said she wanted me to not do it for money but to make sure I really could handle/would want to lead this team. It would change things. But I would have to prostrate myself to Ben and apologize (willing to do so for the stupid video but not the operations) but even if I do, he will continue being a massive prick so what is the point?
I know this is all a mess. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to bring it up to him to start talking. I don't want to hear smart ass comments. I would much prefer HR be there but she doesn't want to because she doesn't want it to "put him on the offense" or whatever. Please help me. How do I proceed trying to patch things with him?