Dilemmas of a corporate professional #3

Policies or people?

One of my mid-level employees reached out to me about 2 months back. She is a hi-potential employee, with remarkable agility and aspiration. Given her latest delivery on one of the key projects, she had gained respect for quality of her work in a short span of time. She had been in her current role only for about 6 months and was keen to look at an opportunity in marketing team that had been published on intranet. This could have been a career changing moment for her. She wanted an exception to the “2 years minimum tenure in the role” policy. I refused!

However, she made me think about how we design people policies across organizations. That reminded me of the term I would have used 15 years back. As an economics student, I recall all theories were explained with a caveat “ceteris paribus”. It meant all other things being equal or all else unchanged. The idea for economists was to isolate multiple independent variables affecting a dependent variable. This is rather simplified for real world! In real life nothing is constant, all variables change by the minute…after all we live in VUCA world.

So, when as corporate professionals we make people policies, is there an unsaid belief of everything being equal. Do our policies take into account various situations (life, death, accident, new or mature business etc.) and variables (leadership strength, potential, performance, generation etc.). Why is it that every policy has loopholes when looked at from an employee or manager or HR perspective? Policies are critical in organizations as they provide guidance in this ever-changing environment and help build in some consistency in our ways of working.

But, given my assumption these policies are designed ceteris paribus, these make employees feel constrained and undervalued. They then tag their decision-makers/Leadership as unempathetic or as the policy police. Our office ecosystem is not ceteris paribus, so ideally decisions related to hiring, compensation, careers, relocation etc. should not be constrained by strictly driven policies. They should leave room for real-life scenarios. Some policies reek of distrust (prove it!), others of hierarchy (approvals), others of control (access denied!) etc. This could drive people away… We trust our employees with 2000cr balance sheet, 300 cr revenue creation, 50 member team etc. Why should it be difficult for us to treat them as adults when it comes to them making decisions for self/their teams? Policies should be designed/provide exceptions in a way that they ensure win-win for the organization and the employee in question (& not employees at large). Honestly, in some places, policies may not even be needed. They just come handy because as leadership we fail to give right messages at the right time. Some examples I have observed myself where leader’s inability

• to advise an employee to be available for important meetings face-to-face, brings in “Work From Home” policy advising how many days in a month could one work from home,
• to ensure productive workforce by providing stretched targets, brings in a caveat in our leave policy of providing “medical certificate” or policy around “social media usage during office hours” etc.
• to keep an employee engaged in work by putting across relevant challenges, bring about “minimum tenure in a role” policy.

Although such examples are not rare as we look around, employees for sure need to learn to absorb freedom to make decisions. In other cases, companies need to be more agile w.r.t understanding employee pain points. If such levels of empathy are not observed in an AI enabled future of work, HR function accountable for enabling employee engagement could lose sheen.

Even after all this introspection, the case of my she-employee wanting a role change in 6 months, doesn’t make me re-think my decision. For sure, she is a hi-flyer employee. The role was created first time to enable the business and she keenly accepted the opportunity then. She must set that office in order before she asks for an exception. Employees like her deserve exception to ensure fast track career path which could be a win-win for all, but not before they complete the agenda for which they are set out…coz aspirations without end outcome take away the hi-potential tag!

But this introspection, makes me more open to scenarios. Leadership is not about rigidity. Policies provide guidelines but exception is a fair route to take basis situation. I sincerely recommend that decision making leaders should keep aside their fear that exception will become a rule! After all, taking exceptions on policies in consideration with the real time information is also about situational leadership!