Ask a Manager

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. If I opt out of team-building activities, I still have to work on those days

I work for a small nonprofit with about 25 employees. Recently, we have begun “employee engagement” activities, like visiting local attractions. These activities take place during work hours. We are not forced to participate, but if we choose not to, then we are expected to work while those who do want to participate are basically paid to hang out at a local attraction, restaurant, etc.

I don’t enjoy these kinds of group activities, but I’m not trying to keep anyone from going if they wish to. I don’t mind staying at work, but I am expected to cover for another employee (who always chooses to do the engagement activities) instead of being able to do my own work. Am I just a party pooper or is it weird for some employees to be paid to goof off while others are being paid to work? Am I wrong to think I shouldn’t have to cover for someone else when no other employee is expected to do that?

I don’t think it’s unreasonable. They’re offering these activities because they believe they serve an organizational purpose: team-building. If you prefer not to participate, you don’t have to (which is actually better than at some organizations, where you’d be expected to attend regardless) — but they’re not going to just give you a day off, because that doesn’t provide any value to the org.

That said, if covering for people who aren’t there means you have an unrealistic workload that day, you should talk with your manager about adjusting the expectations to match the staffing on those days. But if it’s more just about being annoyed by the principle of it, you should let it go.

2. My boss has hired my replacement but I’m not ready to leave

I am actively looking for a new job and communicated this intent to my bosses as we have an open communication relationship. As is their right, they started to look for my replacement, which they found and have since hired. I am still actively looking for a job and have given no notice of my intended departure date. What are the obligations to me of my current employer given that I have not quit my job and there is someone we are on-boarding right now for my job?

For a relationship with open communication, it doesn’t sound like there’s nearly enough communication going on! (Or at least not unless there’s been a lot more discussion of this than what’s in your letter.) You need to talk to your manager and you should do it right away. They may be assuming you’re leaving any day now … or they may assume it’ll be months and figure it’s fine for there to be overlap for that time … or they may be okay with a little overlap but at some point are going to expect you to set a clear end date or will do it for you.

When you alerted them that you were planning to leave, they may have jumped the gun — but this is also why it generally doesn’t make sense to alert your boss that you’re job-searching until you’re ready to give notice or at least have a very clear timeline in your head. Your manager should have clarified that with you before they hired a replacement! But it seems like they didn’t, so here we are. Now that this is in motion, they can set your ending date for any time they want, so talk with them ASAP and figure out a plan for what happens next. Be very clear that you don’t have any firm plans, had not intended to give formal notice, and don’t want to leave right away. Ideally they won’t respond to your early heads-up by pushing you out sooner than you want to go … but there’s a risk that’s in progress and so the sooner you figure it out, the better.

Related:
employee said she was leaving and has been replaced, but now doesn’t know when she is going to leave

3. How to implement a policy I don’t agree with

I am the deputy lead for my department. I manage 13 people directly, and two of those people are managers themselves, each with a team of three. The team works a hybrid schedule, with most people choosing to work from home once or twice a week. There are no set days; we have a lot of flexibility. All staff have laptops and other required equipment at home.

My company has a policy that when office PCs reach the end of their lifespan, they will not be replaced. Instead, staff will be given a docking station and are expected to use their work laptops at home and in the office. This policy was announced a couple of years ago, but this is a large company (~20,000 staff) and it seems my predecessor did not inform the team at the time as it didn’t impact them. Now I have been told that our office PCs are end of life and we will be getting docking stations soon.

My team are livid! For example, those with chronic health conditions can currently choose to work from home if their condition flares up. But if their laptop is in the office, they won’t be able to work from home. They have also questioned what happens during bad weather when they cannot get to the office, but cannot work from home because the laptop is in the office. I have raised this with the department manager and his answer was that they will have to take the laptops home each day and bring them back the next day if working in the office.

My team doesn’t want to carry laptops back and forth every day, especially those who walk or cycle. They have raised concerns about whether they are responsible for the equipment on their commute, what happens if it gets broken or stolen, and if they won’t be able to go out and socialize after work as they will be lugging a laptop around. I agree with all these concerns! I have raised them with the manager, who said that staff are responsible for keeping equipment safe. He also said this is company policy and we have to follow it.

How do I navigate this when I agree with my staff? What language can I use to say I hear you, I agree with you, but we have no choice? Or should I be taking a difference stance and projecting to the team that I agree wholeheartedly with this?

“I agree and I’ve made that argument, but unsuccessfully. So for now this is the policy and we do need to follow it.” You don’t need to pretend you disagree with them, but it’s also not helpful to contribute to people staying in a state of agitation about it. You want more of a middle ground — “it’s not what I would have chosen, but at this point we don’t have the ability to change it, so let’s figure out how to work within it.”

(That said, can you at least argue for keeping the PCs until they truly can’t be used anymore? I can’t tell if they’re removing them all when the docking stations arrive, but if they are, that might be a spot where you have room to change things.)

Related:
how managers should communicate decisions they don’t agree with

4. Fixing grammar and spelling mistakes

I’m a leader of a medium-sized team in technology in a large, corporate environment. We’re in the U.S. but for a lot of team members English is their second language. When I see spelling and grammar mistakes in presentations that I’m reviewing, is it better to quickly fix it myself (easy to do and quick, although not the point of why I’m reviewing as I’m more focused on the content) or leave a comment (which feels nitpicky and takes longer but maybe that will help them learn)? Or do nothing? I do not judge their performance based on what is clearly a language barrier, but I also want their writing to be clear and easy to understand for their audience.

The main job duties are not writing but in a large company, we make a lot of slides and more so as you move up in leadership.

It’s a judgment call. All else being equal, I’d fix it and leave a quick, matter-of-fact note about what you did (like “changed ’there’ to ’their’” or so forth) but if there will be a lot of those sorts of edits in a single document, I’d just fix them all and then include one note with feedback about any common patterns if you saw any and if it seems like it would be helpful.

If what you’re reviewing is in a format that allows for something like Track Changes, that’s ideal but not always possible.

5. Companies that don’t provide offer letters

I’m interviewing with multiple companies and received a verbal offer via phone call from one company. Typically, I’m used to this being followed up by a formal electronic offer letter. The hiring manager indicated that is not the case, and that the details of the phone call are the offer letter. I mentioned this to another employer who I’m in a last interview round with, and they informed me that this is how it’s done at their company as well.

I am very experienced in my field, and I can vouch for the legitimacy of these companies and interviewers. This is the first time I’m working without a formal offer letter since the early 2000s. Have standards changed?

Nope, there have always been companies that don’t send written offer letters. It seems strange when you’re used to getting them, but it’s always been a thing.

You can absolutely say, “Would it be possible to get the details of the offer — salary, benefits, title, and any other relevant information — in an email so I can look it over and be sure I’m getting all the details correct?” Alternately, you can write that email yourself and send it to them, framing it as, “I just want to summarize the details we’ve discussed.”

Related:
an employer told me they don’t provide written offers

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My boss is my boyfriend and won’t give me a day off

The owner of the restaurant where I work is my boyfriend and the general manager. I asked for a day off a month ahead of when I needed it off. It’s on Mother’s Day and, yes, it is one of the busiest days of the year. But I have worked there for three years and never took a day off, unless he wanted us to go on a vacation. He recently hired someone two weeks ago and promised her Mother’s Day off because it’s her birthday. I have missed out on so so many things in the past three years because he needed me to work.

I am loyal and I want to help him out, and I generally don’t complain. This one time I do and he acts like I’m the worst person ever and how dare I. I’ll lose hours and maybe even my place where we live together if I do take it off. I feel like I live one life and I feel like he is just treating me like a body there, like I’m replaceable, and he keeps on working me to the bone but refuses to see it in my way at all. It’s just unfair and I don’t know if I should quit or just firmly say I’m taking the day off.

Consider leaving both the job and the relationship.

It’s true that in the restaurant business, it’s hard to get days like Mother’s Day off; that’s part of the job. But if he’s offered that day off to a brand new hire, while not giving you any days of your choosing for three years, there’s a problem here, with both the job and the boyfriend. And it sounds like you think that if you take the day off anyway, that itself could jeopardize your relationship (“I’ll maybe lose the place where we live”)? Start thinking seriously about what’s keeping you in both these entanglements (the job and the man), and at a minimum start trying to separate them out from each other. It might get a lot easier to clearly see the state of the relationship if you’re no longer working together.

2. Our boss is MIA

I work at a small nonprofit. I have one supervisor above me, Jill, who is managed by our executive director, Sara. Sara is a great person and has been very open about having some family and health challenges in the past couple years. Since I joined the org a few years ago, she has gone from an engaged and effective leader to a totally absentee boss.

We don’t have anyone on staff to handle HR issues or approve payments for needed supplies, which means we often end up spinning our wheels while we wait for her. Emails go unacknowledged. I’ve learned to contact her exclusively by personal cell, and those messages are often ignored until it becomes a crisis. She does not attend staff meetings or communicate with the staff broadly.

Jill doesn’t have the tools and skills to run the org. We have talked about contacting the board directly but are concerned about a blow-up. Sara is close with the board president and we are worried about being seen an insubordinate or untrustworthy.

I feel demoralized. I care about the mission but I am worried about our reputation in the community and our ability to maintain funding if our leader continues to be unresponsive. I feel that if a lower-ranking staff person was this inaccessible or unreliable, they would have been fired a long time ago.

Not to make this break-up day, but you should consider getting out. In a small organization, having an absentee leader when no one can step in and run things in their absence is unworkable. It means the organization won’t accomplish nearly what it should be (hugely problematic if you’re a mission-driven nonprofit) and your job will be a constant exercise in frustration.

That said, if you want to try to determine if this is solvable first, the right move is for someone (probably Jill more than you, or someone else senior or who has good rapport with Sara) to have a heart-to-heart with Sara where they lay out the impact her absence is having and the need for someone to handle the things that she’s not. If that’s already been attempted and you haven’t seen meaningful changes, that’s your answer. But if no one has tried that yet, it’s time; Sara may not realize how bad things are, and it’s a service to her and to the organization for someone to spell it out. That’s especially true if someone might eventually go to the board; you want to be able to say you’ve tried talking to Sara directly first.

For what it’s worth, this is the sort of thing the board should hear about — and it’s not insubordinate or untrustworthy to bring them issues this serious, especially after you’ve tried to resolve the problems with Sara directly first. The bar for staff contacting the board should be pretty high, but what you’ve described meets it.

3. My colleague asked my employee to hide information from me

A colleague just asked my employees to keep secrets from their supervisors, and I’m not sure how to address it. This colleague and I are both at the director level and are still fairly new in our positions (within the last year), but as he is an attorney (and much older man), he is paid nearly as much as our CEO and is generally deferred to by people throughout the organization.

Last week, while I was out of town, he approached one of the entry-level staff members on my team, Jane, and asked her for some information on behalf of one of our board members. None of the information was confidential by any means, but for some reason he specifically directed Jane not to tell her division head or me, the department director. She did as she was told. The requested information was related to a situation that blew up yesterday, and both the division head and I were caught off guard. When the division head and I were trying to address the situation, Jane told her direct supervisor what had happened with the attorney and how uncomfortable that made her. (My team is well-known throughout the organization as being very tight-knit and supportive of one another.) The supervisor then reported the attorney’s actions to the division head, who told me.

This is obviously unacceptable, but I’m not sure the best way to handle this. How do I protect my staff, prevent this from happening again, and restore my team’s trust?

There are times when a higher-up might need someone junior to pull specific information without talking about the request with others, when the situation is sensitive and they’re trying to avoid gossip (for example, during an investigation into potential wrongdoing, or financial info that could lead to job cuts). So this hinges on whether there were legitimate reasons for asking Jane to keep the request confidential or not. If there weren’t, then this is a conversation with the other director about not putting your staff in that position unless there’s a clear need for confidentiality, and it’s a conversation with your team about what to do if they’re asked to keep something confidential (which should include who is in a position to make those requests of them, and what steps they should take if they’re uncomfortable with something they’ve been asked for).

4. We’re supposed to have a team meeting to discuss feedback for our boss

I’m on a team of about half a dozen people supervised by Barnaby. We all have regular but infrequent skip-level meetings with Barnaby’s boss, Calvin.

It sounds like people have mentioned to Calvin in the skip-level meetings that Barnaby is not approachable. He passed that feedback on to Barnaby, and Barnaby asked one of my peers, Alfred, to organize a team discussion to gather more details on where that’s coming from and what he can do to be more approachable. Barnaby will not be at the meeting. Alfred will moderate and provide an anonymized summary of the takeaways back to Barnaby afterwards.

I’m not clear whether this meeting was Calvin’s suggestion or Barnaby’s idea or whether Calvin knows it’s happening. I trust Alfred’s judgment and believe he will do his best to get good feedback and actually anonymize it, and I have no reason to believe that anyone else on the team would feel differently.

But … this is kind of weird, right? I guess I empathize with Barnaby that it’s tough to get nebulous negative feedback and I understand why he’d want to involve the team in figuring out what specific actions he should take to improve communication. And I’m willing to give him benefit of the doubt that he’s doing this in addition to self-reflection/talking to peers for advice/asking Calvin for details or suggestions. But it still feels like it puts the team (and especially Alfred) in an awkward position, and it almost feels like it could be a prelude to discounting the feedback, like if people can’t provide (or don’t want to share with the whole team) enough specific examples of times he was unapproachable then he can write the whole thing off as unfounded? Is this a smart way to approach an inherently awkward situation, or is somebody falling down on the job here?

It’s a little weird, but it’s not necessarily a terrible idea if people generally trust Barnaby and Alfred. If either of them isn’t trusted, the whole thing falls apart — people won’t give candid feedback, and there’s no point. But if people trust them both to act with integrity, and also trust Barnaby not to react poorly to honest feedback even if it’s uncomfortable to hear, I can see where this came from: since if the issue is that people don’t find Barnaby approachable, he’s not well-positioned to get candid info from people himself. That said, my first choice would be to have Calvin lead these conversations, not put it on Alfred … but I can also imagine someone thinking people will be more candid when speaking in a group of peers without their boss’s boss there.

So much of this depends on really specific group dynamics that it’s hard to give a general ruling — but I don’t think it’s inherently bananas.

5. As a manager, when do I need to announce my pregnancy to my team?

I am a very newly promoted (two months) manager leading a team that I used to be a high performer on for several years. I think my team is awesome, I’m trying to build credibility as a leader, and the transition is going about as well as it can.

I am also three months pregnant with my first child (I found out literally three days after accepting the promotion), and I’m wondering what my obligation to my team is regarding when to notify them of my upcoming maternity leave. I should also point out that I’m in a male-dominated workplace and I am the only woman on my team.

I know your previous advice states to let your coworkers know whenever you are comfortable sharing, but waiting to tell my team after the 20-week scan feels too late. I handle some of the workload of the team as well, and there will likely be issues with coverage while I’m out, and that’s probably where I’m feeling this sense of obligation from. I am going to manage this as best I can through cross-training in advance, but this will largely be unavoidable. What do you think? As a manager, do I have an obligation to disclose my pregnancy to my team earlier when my absence will impact them?

Waiting for the 20-week scan is not unreasonably long. That still leaves you four or more months for your team to prepare for your leave, which is significantly longer than people get with many other types of medical leave. If this is the disclosure timeline you’re comfortable with, use it; it’s not an uncommon one to see.

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My coworker is making our friend break-up really weird

I have a coworker who I was friends with outside of work for about a year. Due to various issues inside and outside of work (complaining about coworkers over Teams, asking the same basic questions over and over, not doing any bare-minimum problem-solving before asking for help, expecting a lot of emotional support while not providing it back, and just a lot of emotional immaturity), I ended our friendship last July with no possibility of being friends again. We’re in the same department and have almost identical schedules, so we still have to interact every day. Our managers are aware we were friends and I had issues with him, though I protected him maybe more than I should have and didn’t say anything about his complaining about coworkers. I had one issue with him right after ending the friendship where he was monitoring my breaks and tried to confront me on Teams. I went to management about it and haven’t had any other similar issues.

He does still act really weird around me, though. He won’t make eye contact, he flinches when he sees me and doesn’t expect to or shrinks up when he walks past me like he’s expecting me to lash out, and will only talk to me over Teams, even to say thanks for helping him with something. He’s asked another coworker how to “get over his fear of another coworker.” I’ve never threatened him or even raised my voice at him. Right before I ended the friendship I snapped at him once and was irritable with him, but I’ve never been particularly mean and since ending the friendship I’ve been professional, though not very warm. I assume he’s scared that I’ll try to get him fired since I know he’s particularly anxious about that (asking me for constant reassurance about any judgment call or small mistake was one of my big issues with him).

I’ve just been kind of rolling my eyes internally at his behavior, but it’s been months and it’s getting old. His communication with me is pretty inefficient, but overall it doesn’t hinder my work that much and seemingly vice versa. I don’t avoid any of my job duties that involve interacting with him. However, whenever something comes up in our work where he needs to be corrected, I don’t feel like I can go to him directly (I don’t supervise him but I outrank him and there are forms he sometimes has to fill out that go to me). When I was friends with him, if I asked him to communicate with me differently or set some kind of boundary, it would just make him more nervous and he would either avoid me or ask for more reassurance. I don’t really think that asking him to act normal around me will help. Is there anything I can really do at this point? Or do I just have to accept this as part of the job now?

It doesn’t sounds like there’s anything you need to do (or could do, for that matter). In fact, this is a situation where, if you let it, the burden can be all on your coworker’s side. He’s the one feeling weird and anxious and flinching when he sees you … but you can just carry on as usual and let him feel however he’s going to feel about that. I know that’s easier said than done — when someone is reacting to you like this it’s hard not to think you have to modify your own behavior in some way — but you actually don’t! You can operate completely normally. For example, if you need to give him feedback, give him feedback. If he has feelings about that, so be it. As long as he’s not getting in the way of you doing your job, the best approach is to just decline to tiptoe around whatever is going on with him.

If it does get to the point where it’s affecting your work or his, that’ something you’d need to raise with his manager. But otherwise, operate the way you normally would and let him deal with that however he’s going to deal with it.

2. My job is really flexible but it also sucks — is it time to go?

I work remotely for a very small federally funded nonprofit, in a position that’s a step below my skillset and pay grade, with no upward mobility. I started it two years ago when I was desperate to find anything while unemployed. It’s not challenging or interesting, but I’ve really liked the people I worked under and the company’s mission, and I can perform most of the functions in my sleep. The hours are flexible enough that so long as I’m available 10 to 6, it doesn’t matter if I don’t log in right on the hour or a little later, or take time during the day to run a short errand. I’ve been content to hang around however long they needed me, even though I’ve been bored out of my skull and could really use a pay bump. My wife makes enough that we aren’t in the hole every paycheck, but only just barely — we have no savings.

In the past few months, both people I’d been working under have left, and this has resulted in a culture shift. I still have some of the same flexibility as before, but the new department head has a more traditional management and communication style than I’m used to. I’ve gone from communicating mostly through Slack and email to getting phone calls out of the blue and my days filled with Zoom meetings, and I’m shocked at how miserable even that shift is making me. I’ve also been feeling overly scrutinized, any questions I have are met with condescension and the implication I should know the answer already, and today I was given a new duty that is way out of my skillset that I would have never in a million years signed up to do (and when I voiced my discomfort I was told, “You just have to practice and you’ll get good at it”).

I have a feeling it might be time to move on and find something more along my desired career path — but when I brought it up to my wife, the idea of potentially disrupting our fragile financial stability by changing jobs really freaked her out, so I don’t have anyone to bounce my thoughts off of. (Not to mention any time now the DOGE axe could fall on our only funding source, and then the decision will be made for me.)

I’ve been pretty spoiled with how easy and flexible this job has been so far, even with all the changes. What if all the things I’m starting to hate at my current job are just what I’d be dealing with at the next job anyway? I have no official educational background in my field (just experience), some major knowledge gaps, and am very out of practice after languishing for two years. Do I really want to leave my organization in the lurch and run all the risks that taking a new job entails … for a position I may not even be good at anymore? What if the job I have now is the best I could hope for? Do I suck it up and deal with these changes in exchange for flexibility and a light mental load? Or do I strike out for greener pastures and risk falling on my face in cow dung?

You should job search. The reasons you’ve stayed in a job that’s below your qualifications and doesn’t pay enough are now disappearing, so the calculus on this job doesn’t makes sense anymore. Moreover, since your job’s funding is now precarious, it would make sense to be looking around at options in case you need them even if you were still super happy with the work and the people. Which you’re not.

Job-searching doesn’t commit you to taking a new job just because it’s offered to you. You can be picky, you can ask probing questions about their culture, and you can do your due diligence to ensure that move is right for you. But given all you described, it would be foolish not to start looking.

3. Reaching out to very old work contacts when I have a serious diagnosis

I’m finishing up treatment for my second cancer in five years. This second (completely different) cancer has a high chance of recurrence in the next two years. So while I’m gaining energy and feeling grateful for still living on the planet, I’m also thinking about some past work colleagues. Fortunately, I’ve enjoyed a wonderful 40-year career with some fantastic people who have made a real difference in my life. I would like to reach out to them, somehow.

For the more recent folks in the past 10-15 years or so, I have email addresses and could use this to contact them. Do I just say something like, “Thanks for the impact you’ve had on my life. You have been special to me”? Is this too weird? Too sentimental? The majority of these people have no idea of my fight against cancer.

For the more distant people, from 25-35 years ago, I do not have email addresses. I could possibly figure out mail addresses and send a hard copy letter. Most are retired now. I have not been in contact with some of them for many years. Should I drop off this section of people, as long out of touch colleagues? If not, should I preface a letter with more info, like my career timeline, since I’ve likely not connected with these folks for a few decades? Is it still too weird to reach out to long-lost contacts to say how they improved my work life a long time ago?

I’ve toyed with the idea of hosting a happy hour/afternoon tea for work colleagues and inviting anyone I could contact. I could end the email or letter with this invite. Again, this means people I’ve not been in touch with for at least 10 and possibly 25-30 years. I did not get the opportunity to have a retirement party when I stopped working, so I think that is part of it. I would like to say good bye to these people, but I don’t want to seem morbid or too odd. Your thoughts?

I think contacting any or all of them with a message about the impact they’ve had on your life and/or career would be lovely! You don’t need to explain your health situation, although you can if you want to. You don’t need to include a career timeline for the longer-ago people who won’t know it; you’re not writing to update them on what you’ve done in the last couple of decades, but to tell them about the impact they had on you. (Some of the career timeline stuff might come up organically in doing that, but don’t feel you need to provide your job history just for the sake of catching them up.) That said, if it will take detective work to track down addresses, it might be more practical to leave those people out — but it depends on how strongly you feel about the impact they had on you.

A happy hour or tea is also a nice idea if a lot of the people are local to you. I would probably get back in touch with people first, partly to gauge potential interest, but I don’t think you have to do that first.

4. Do LinkedIn sob stories turn off hiring managers?

Do LinkedIn sob stories turn hiring managers off?

I keep seeing very emotional posts on LinkedIn as people talk of their desperate job searches, mortgages to pay, mouths to feed, with not even a whiff of an interview, despite searching day after day.

As someone who hires people for my own team, I can’t help but think such vulnerability is counterintuitive. Rather than appear as an emotional wreck burnt out from months of fruitless applying, surely it’s more important than ever to keep the game face on and sell your skills with composure.

I want to know (or at least believe) you are ready to hit the ground running, as well as that you want the position I’m offering (not just any job that comes available). I want to hire you because you’re the best person for the job, not because you are about to lose your house.

This isn’t about being cold and callous but, rather, when times are tough, don’t do anything to work further against you. There are other private platforms to vent and fret if needs be.

Yes, this is much more likely to hurt someone’s job search than to help it. Employers want to hire the best person for the job, not the person most in need of it, and candidates who appear bitter, pessimistic, or cynical are making themselves much less appealing. And that’s before we get into making employers worry that there’s some reason that all those other employers have passed on you. (That doesn’t mean there is! But it’s not helpful to raise that question.) It can also make you look like you have poor boundaries regarding what you share online and where you share it.

Yes, this job market sucks and it’s demoralizing to apply for months without getting anywhere, and being unemployed can be incredibly scary and understandably makes people feel desperate. But LinkedIn is not the platform to talk about that; it’s a place to put your best professional foot forward.

Related:
does posting sob stories on LinkedIn hurt your job search?

5. Should my company fly my family to see me during an international assignment?

My company would like me to work in our office in Europe for six months (I am normally based in the U.S.). As part of this, I asked that they cover airfare for my wife and son, since they will need to accompany me (spending six months apart is not in the cards). My company is refusing to cover their airfare. I find this kind of insulting, but I’m wondering if I’m off-base here. Is it common for companies to cover travel expenses for family members on assignments like this?

Some companies do cover travel expenses for spouses and children when you’re on a long-term assignment, but many don’t. Often if they do, the assignment needs to be over a certain period of time (six months is right around the time you often see it kick in, if it’s going to). But I don’t think it’s particularly insulting if it’s not something they do; many companies don’t. That said, if you have flexibility in whether you go or not, you could try making it clear that your ability to accept the assignment would hinge on this.

Alternately, would they pay for you to fly back home a couple of times during that six-month period, instead of flying your family out to you?