There's No Crying in HR!

With Open Enrollment just around the corner I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but, still, to see an article about crying in the workplace in the October edition of HR Magazine; I was taken aback. Besides, during Open Enrollment I don’t think most employees cry, just the HR staff. And CFOs.

Last year was a real challenge, with the Health Care Affordability Act regulations going into effect. Systems and procedures that had become second nature were gone and new ones had to be mastered in time to explain the changes to our employees. This year should be a piece of cake, compared to last year. (She said with fingers crossed.)

But back to the crying. I remember thinking when I saw him cry for the first time, that when John Boehner cries in Congress we actually give him points for sensitivity. We say “Aww, isn’t that sweet”. But if Nancy Pelosi had shed a tear we’d have considered her weak or manipulative. It is an age-old double standard. I have had to fire a lot of people in my 25 year career, been sworn at, but no man has ever shed a tear, so I was interested in what this article said about men and women crying in the workplace.

According to the author of It’s Always Personal: Emotion in the New Workplace, there is more crying at work than there used to be because “there’s no longer a separation between work life and home life.” That surprised me: I expected it might be attributed to behavior modeling by more sensitive men, or job losses and wage freezes and other financial uncertainties, but apparently, it is primarily due to the fact that “we’re always on call.” (Exempt employees, that is. Hourlies had better not be working 24/7.) This produces a constant level of anxiety and can lead to “emotional leakage.”

The book, written by Anne Kreamer, a former Nickelodeon Executive VP, noted that forty-one percent of women admitted to crying at work in the last year. Think about that: nearly half the women in the workforce cried at work. The men? Nine percent. She said that’s normal: on average women cry about four times as much as men.

But it’s not that women are weak! Our tear ducts are smaller, so they spill more quickly than men’s. Really. And when under stress, we women produce a tear-triggering hormone. Stressed men produce testosterone. I’m just sayin’.

So what’s a manager supposed to do when his or her employees cry at work? “Offer tissues and give them a moment to collect themselves”. For men, the tears are probably about something happening outside of work anyway. The women cry mostly when they feel frustrated, undervalued or unappreciated. And managers, you can have an impact on that.

As for John Boehner-types? Weeping men are viewed (by both sexes) as empathetic and compassionate. Men who saw women crying at work were not too harsh, but other women viewed it as a personal or moral failure.

Come on, women, lighten up. It’s about the tear ducts.