I was watching the local news herein Tampa Bay the other night and a story came on that made we stop to think about how we do things within the HR arena everyday.
There is a local man who was scheduled to fly to NJ to be with his daughter who was undergoing a medical procedure. The problem is that he has been fighting cancer for a number of years but he went to an airline and purchased a non-refundable ticket for the trip. Then during a conversation with his doctor, he was told he could not only not fly but he had only about two months to live. He went to the airline and explained the situation and offered full medical documentation. The airline's response was if you died we would give you a partial refund, barring that our policy is that the ticket you bought is non-refundable.That's our policy and we will not make any changes.
I am a strong advocate of our policies and procedures having a standard of work, a set number of steps required to complete the process. But I also realize that in between we have migrated to a world which thrive on flexibility. This leaves us with two options within our organizations. One is to be like the airline and state that this is our policy and we are sticking to it. Or we can introduce the policies and procedures as guidelines and allow your organizations and its managers to use some judgment as to whether the organizational stability is really harmed by inserting some common sense to how we deliver those policies and procedures.
Being lock step into this is the way we do it within this organization does not service the organization nor your human capital assets. Within every policy and procedure, there should be room for some creativity in how we utilize them to resolve issues in the workplace.
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