An Employee is Crying — Now What?

By | December 15, 2013
An employee crying

Tears in the workplace

Maybe it’s for personal reasons, maybe something happened on-the-job, whatever it was that triggered the emotional response, now there are tears. If you are the boss, what should you do when an employee cries?

Over at the Harvard Business Review blog, Amy Gallo has a comprehensive set of practical steps for managers when an employee cries at work.

If the problem is a personal one, Gallo recommends keeping your response simple:

If you’ve identified that the problem is a personal one, stick to simple and comforting responses — “I’m sorry” or “This is a horrible situation.” Don’t tell him that everything’s going to be OK or imply that he should buck up. And resist the temptation to tell a story of your own.

How about you — have you ever been in a situation where you needed to respond to an employee’s tears?