People believe and repeat a lot of misinformation about jobs and work. Here are eight of the most common myths about work — and the facts for each. Take a look and see if you’ve fallen victim to any of these mistaken beliefs.
1. Myth: When you’re ready to resign, you write a resignation letter and hand it to your boss. You see this a lot in movies when a character hands a neatly typed resignation letter to her boss, who reads it with surprise.
Fact: In real life, you should rarely announce your resignation in the form of a letter. Instead, you should ask to talk to your boss and explain face to face that you’ll be resigning (if you work remotely, you can use the phone for this). Your company may request a resignation letter for its records, but that’s just documentation — it’s not the announcement itself.
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2. Myth: “Hostile workplace” laws mean that you have legal protection from hostility from your boss or co-workers.
Fact: This law just has a really confusing name. It sounds like it’s referring to, well, hostile behavior. But in fact it protects you only from very specific types of hostility, based on your race, sex, religion, national origin, age (if you’re 40 or older), disability or genetic information. What’s more, that hostility must be “severe or pervasive enough to create a work environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive,” says the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “Petty slights, annoyances, and isolated incidents (unless extremely serious) will not rise to the level of illegality.”
3. Myth: When you talk to human resources, they’ll keep it confidential.
Fact: Your HR rep is not like a priest; there’s no obligation to keep your conversation confidential. HR’s role is to serve the company, and if they decide that they need to share what you told them in order to help address a problem, they have a professional obligation to do that. In some cases, they even have a legal obligation to do that, like if you report harassment or discrimination, which they’re then legally required to investigate. There are some cases where you can negotiate confidentiality with HR — like if you’re looking for guidance on how to help solve a problem with your manager — but it’s something to address explicitly rather than assume you have it.
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4. Myth: Eighty percent of job openings are never advertised.
Fact: You hear this statement a lot when you’re job hunting, but if you look for data to back it up, no one seems to be able to find any. It’s certainly true that some jobs don’t get advertised and instead get filled through people’s personal or professional networks. But that 80 percent figure sounds outrageously high to every hiring manager I’ve ever run it by.
5. Myth: Companies aren’t supposed to give bad references.
Fact: This myth is incredibly pervasive, despite not being true. It’s perfectly legal in the U.S. for an employer to give a detailed reference, including negative information, as long as it’s factually accurate. Certainly some companies have their own internal policies that they won’t give references and that they’ll only confirm dates of employment and title. But corporate policies aren’t the law. It’s both legal and common for employers to give detailed references, including negative ones.
6. Myth: Your employer can’t make you do something that’s not in your job description.
Fact: Your manager can assign you any type of work she wants, regardless of what’s in your job description (assuming that you don’t have a contract to the contrary, which most American workers don’t). People sometimes assume that the common presence of “other duties as assigned” in job descriptions must be there for a legal reason, but it’s just there for clarity of communication with you! Job descriptions aren’t binding documents.
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7. Myth: Your employer has the right to prohibit you from discussing your salary with your co-workers.
Fact: Federal law forbids employers from preventing workers from discussing their wages with each other (or at least for most people; some management employees are excluded from this protection). The idea is that workers have a federally protected right to organize for change around wages and working conditions, and they can’t do that if they’re not allowed to share salary information with each other. If you’re surprised by this because your employer has a rule against salary-sharing, you have a lot of company. Employers commonly violate this rule, either in ignorance of the law or simply despite it.
8. Myth: Your boss needs to have a good reason for firing you.
Fact: In every state in the U.S. except Montana, employment is “at-will,” which means that either you or your employer can terminate the employment relationship at any time and for any reason. That means that your employer doesn’t need to show just cause for firing you, as long as your firing isn’t discriminatory (based on your race, sex, religion or other protected characteristic) and as long as it’s not in retaliation for exercising a legally protected right (like reporting harassment or organizing a union). Of course, good employers don’t just fire people willy-nilly — but it’s useful to be aware that they have a pretty wide berth here.
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8 Weird Workplace Myths That You Probably Believe originally appeared on usnews.com
