The Eight Most Evil HR Policies

We are getting smarter in the business world all the time. Our trusty senses know what works and what doesn't, and by now we know that it doesn't work to treat employees like children or ask them to abide by elementary-school rules.

All we can do with insulting rules and policies is to crush our team members' spirits and keep them from being themselves at work. We need their hearts! We need their brains.

Why would we turn cut off the principal power source for innovation, customer care and everything else we care about by managing to the very bottom of the pack?

Instead of writing rules to ensure that somebody doesn't get away with some little infraction, we can systematically remove the bureaucratic roadblocks that keep our brilliant co-workers from doing their jobs. That is the intelligent way to lead, and the human way.

If you want to build your own Human Workplace, you'll start by removing man-made blockages to creativity and brilliance. The dams in the river are of our own making. We've been busy beavers!

In some organizations the management team has never seen an HR policy they didn't like. Their employee handbooks are 150 pages long. You can start building your own Human Workplace by getting rid of these eight obnoxious and outdated HR policies first. They are unworthy of you and the incredible people on your teams.

Employees Working Sick

You'd think we would know by now that when people come to work sick, other employees get sick. That's how sickness works. I won't be surprised to see companies held liable for making people ill through their Neanderthal sick-time policies.

When someone is sick, he or she can work from home and if that isn't feasible, s/he must be allowed to use paid time off. If your attendance policy considers too many sick days 'unexcused absences,' you are living in the leadership Dark Ages.

Stitch-Level Dress Code Policy

We hire adults, and they know how to get dressed. If you have an issue with someone showing up to work looking too club-ready or too beach-y, talk to that person in private.

Be honest and compassionate, and say "I'm not sure this is the perfect outfit for work. Can I give you a company tee-shirt to wear instead?"

Management is all about judgment. Find your voice and have a conversation. Get rid of the detailed and insulting dress code policy that lists every acceptable and unacceptable item of clothing. You'll never keep up with changing fashions, and your employees won't read the policy anyway.

Stack Ranking

Forced ranking systems compel managers rank their employees from Best to Worst. When there's a downturn (or even if there isn't) it will be easy to whack the bottom ten percent of the names on the list.

This is the barbaric management practice popularized by Jack Welch twenty years ago. It doesn't work. It only gets people focused on stepping over one another instead of pulling together. That would be obvious to anyone who gave it a moment's thought, even twenty years ago.

If you have a performance review system that only lets managers give so many people an "A" grade and so many others a "B," you're making the same mistake. Hire great people and then reward them for being great. Don't force managers to hire and keep lousy employees just to suit the review process!

No Personal Calls or Email at Work

It is 2015, and the hard lines between work and home have blurred. Your employees lay in bed at night thinking about the work on their desks and planning for the next day. There are personal calls and email messages they have to attend to during business hours. I have always told my co-workers to take care of their personal stuff first thing in the morning, so it's off their minds instead of being a distraction all day. You can do the same thing!

No Decorations in Your Workstation

Employees who sit in cubes have to be allowed some freedom to post personal photos and images if they want to.

Otherwise, your workplace becomes a prison - grey and anonymous and institutional. Are you going to produce great things in that environment? Not likely!

Managers are afraid to let people show their individual tastes in workstation decoration because they don't know how to say "I'm not sure that's appropriate workstation decoration," but they are missing the point. More conversation about sticky topics is only good for the team, and for a manager's development. More conversation is never a bad thing.

We write policies so that we can avoid sticky conversation, but it never works. We end up with more tedious and expensive policies to administer, and conversations that should be happening but aren't

We'd all benefit from more conversation and fewer policies!

Inhuman Bereavement Leave Policies

Bereavement leave is a short period of paid time off when an employee's family dies. It is a personal event, not a bureaucratic procedure.

It is vile and unethical to require an employee to bring in a funeral notice to prove that someone in his or her family died, just in order to get some time off.

It is equally inappropriate to list the family relationships that qualify for bereavement leave and the ones that don't. All families are different. I might be closer to my step-grandmother than to someone nearer to me on the family tree. Those distinctions are not my employer's concern.

If you don't trust your employees to use bereavement leave appropriately, why do they work for you? Your employees' workmates may have been supporting and consoling your employee for months during his or her family members' decline.

Now that the worst has happened, you're going to demand to see paperwork?

Maybe in the past someone ripped off your company with a fake death in the family. What a loss! - two or three days of time. That is not a reason to subject your entire team to an offensive and draconian bereavement policy.

You can't write your policies directed toward people you wish you hadn't hired. Humanize your bereavement leave policy immediately or give up any claims that your organization values people.

Attendance Policies For Salaried Employees

You have to keep track of when your hourly and non-exempt salaried folks come and go, because you have to pay them overtime after they work a full-time day or week.

You don't have to track the movements of your salaried people except to log their earned and used vacation time, because you owe them that if they leave the company.

Why track your salaried employees' time otherwise? Unless you are working on a client project that bills by the hour, there is no good reason to make salaried people clock in and out for lunch or an hour here or there at the dentist. There is no reason to count their personal days.

At U.S. Robotics we had close to ten thousand employees and we didn't count personal days. We said "Take the days you need." There was a high level of trust. Here's how many employees misused their paid time off: zero. They didn't do it, because they were treated like adults.

It is absurd to ding or discipline salaried employees when they come in late or leave early for a good reason. They are human beings, not machine parts.

If your company can't handle a person walking in ten minutes late now and then, you have a control problem. You don't deserve the mental and emotional energy your employees have to give you!

No Reference Policies

Some years ago many organizations got into the habit of prohibiting their managers from giving job references for past employees. That's about as weaselly as a policy can get. You could work for the company for years, but when the time comes to help you get a new job, the company says "Jack? Never heard of him!"

They verify your dates of employment and titles - that's all. Wimpy CEOs and HR Directors listened to their employment attorneys when they should have listened to their own beating hearts.

How can you accept a person's hard work and great ideas and then refuse to give him or her a good reference when it could make a difference?

If you don't trust your managers not to slime people and bring on a defamation suit, don't let them manage. Step out of the darkness into the light and tell your managers "Go ahead and give references!"

It is easy to train managers how to say nice and/or neutral things and not to say negative ones. I know, because I have done it and taught many other people to do it, too.

It is a new day. The Human Workplace is already here, and more eyes-open CEOs and their teams are seeing the connection between passion and performance every day. Your firm can join them. Take the first step and ditch these antiquated policies now!