Copy of Policy vs. Compassion: Using Your Handbook to Reinforce Your Value
Derrick Van Mell, MBA, MA
Principal of The Center for Management Terms & Practices
While often necessary, employee policies must not keep managers from treating employees compassionately as individuals.
One Workgroup member had a policy against tattoos and piercings.? Ten years ago, it was thought they made customers uncomfortable, and the company look unprofessional.? But times change: that policy was recently ripped out of the employee handbook because customers—and recruits—now see tattoos and piercings as a normal expression of individuality.
Best Practice Workgroup
Participants:? Robert DeVille Nicholas Drewsen Sarah Hoke, MBA Bill Mitchell Eric Nelson Aleksandra Orda-Dejnarowicz Kristi Thering Erin Lavery, MS, SHRM-SCP Derrick Van Mell, MBA, MA
Discussion questions
When did you purposely violate a management policy?
What's the connection between policy and compassion?
How could policies be minimized or eliminated?
The stronger your core values, the fewer policies you’ll need
Another Workgroup member, when first made a manager, was told by his mentor, “Above all else, do the right thing.”? This fundamental value recently helped the member confidently break a policy when helping an employee through a terrible bereavement.? The other employees didn’t see it as unfair, they also felt it was the right thing to do.
You can’t be compassionate unless you know the person as an individual.? Most organizations’ statement of values express just that idea with words like respect, trust, and caring.
Your core values are your culture.? If you have a core value of compassion or to treat people with respect, or to treat them as individuals, or as one member has it, “To have fun!” then your policies must align.
You can have fewer and more flexible policies if employees trust their managers to treat employees with compassion and respect—to live by their declared values.
The ethical standard of management is The Pledge of Managerial Power.? Its central idea is that managers—whether they like it or not—have enormous power and are morally obligated to use that power with wisdom and compassion.
Policies have to keep up with the broader culture, which changes rapidly
HR managers have had to tear up their employee handbooks since Covid, which started tectonic social changes: remote work, TikTok, cybersecurity threats, gender identity changes, housing costs, DEI, clothing, wellness needs, meeting and email bans, to name a few.
You can’t compete to fill today’s open positions if you’re behind today’s macro trends.?
Globalization will continue to change the needs—the demands—of the workforce:? German employees get two years of parental leave as well as job security.? Americans can’t compete for European talent with four weeks of parental leave.?
There’s also a new and healthier attitude toward work itself.? Older generations of Americans, Koreans, and Japanese had the “work ‘til you drop” ethic.? Younger generations—learning from peers around the world—want more balance.? Patterns of women in the workforce, age at marriage, fathers staying home, the soaring cost of housing and childcare mean employees need a very different “contract” with their employers.?
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And who knows what artificial intelligence will mean for how we work?? How will jobs change?? What will happen to job turnover and security?? How will schedules change?? Will today’s forms of org charts go out the window?
Whatever the changes, your organization’s values, culture, and policies must make them feel safe, included and valued.? To keep ahead of these external forces, see the Trends Outline in The Toolkit.
How to make your employee handbook an up to date recruitment tool
The employee handbook is the formal compilation of all your written policies.? Front-line employees in particular take it seriously and literally.? Of course, some policies are necessary or even required to comply with the law.? And policies can be essential when needing to discipline or terminate the rare bad actors.
Because the handbook is so important to front-line employees, include them in developing and reviewing the policies and handbook.? Link the annual handbook review to a review of the macro social trends.? ?
Be sure to provide meaningful communication and training in how to interpret and apply policies, including reminders about your core values.? By emphasizing your value of compassion and respect for the individually, everyone will understand that true fairness requires flexibility, not “exceptions.”
What if the only policy was compassion? Some of the Workgroup have been in start-ups, where everyone knew everyone else so well that a handbook isn’t necessary.? And they all grieved growing so big that policies became necessary.?
But policies aren’t needed when managers really know their employees and help them get to know each other.? Yes, that takes time and, yes, you might need to pay to get remote workers together, but if people really care about each other, then they’ll want you to bend the rules to help their co-workers.
Plan of action
Relevant Terms from The Index
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