We’ve all been subject to them—shitty work rules that add nothing to the workplace and manage to frustrate and distract your team. They break down the trust between managers and employees, they don’t allow for autonomy in smart decision-making, and in general, they make it more difficult to get things done.
We reached out and asked our network what shitty rules they’ve seen in their workplaces over the years and here were some of the most common answers:
- Strict dress codes
- Absolute arrival and departure times to and from the office
- Vacation scheduling rules including time periods for booking your vacation, booking your vacation days a minimum of 1 week out, and filling out lots of forms
- Doctor’s notes for sick days
- Clean desk policies—no plants or pictures allowed on your desk and everything cleaned each evening
- No lottery ticket buying groups
- No discussion of salaries with other employees
- Assigning who can talk (or even sit at a chair) in a meeting
- Walking staff/locking them out/not discussing with the remaining employees when a departure happens
- Internet-usage rules—not being allowed to use certain sites or even use the internet at all at work
These rules are just some of the highlights. Many more were shared and looking over them, we began to notice a common thread—most rules were seen as intrusive, unproductive, and as interfering with employee’s ability to work to their highest capacity. And most of the time, they were completely unnecessary.
How do these rules come about?
Rules don’t exist in a vacuum and there’s usually some reason why a rule is in place. Here are a few of the most common reasons we’ve come across in the businesses we’ve worked with:
- Templates from other organizations: Someone in an HR or operations position has brought a template over from a previous job. They’re trying to get a task done and rather than do the proper research and understand their current business, they use a template from another organization (which may have a completely different culture) and apply it. We’ve also seen policies pulled directly from online templates, which are completely devoid of the context needed for an individual business and its culture.
- One time incidents: This is one of the most common reasons why bad rules come about. One employee might misjudge a situation and, for example, not wear appropriate clothing to a client meeting. This causes management to meet and try to figure out how to stop it from happening again. Suddenly there’s a new rule about what people should be wearing at work. This happens on the customer-facing end also. We all have bad or challenging customers who push your team to the limits. Rather than making the exception for that customer—which might involve firing the customer or limiting only that client—a rule gets put in place that affects all clients. The result is that exceptions now need to be made for good customers rather than bad ones.
- Process-building: Some good rules get created when building processes such as rules around measurement, e.g, counting and tracking customer interactions helps build process and understanding. However, these can often go overboard when the rule for the process overwhelms the job at hand. Yes, salespeople should take notes in a CRM about their interactions and conversations, but ask yourself whether your rule about this has become the task rather than the measurement. Are your sales staff doing more measuring and reporting than selling?
- Setting a tone/culture: At a certain point in a company’s growth, an employee handbook gets created and, rather than let culture continue to evolve organically, companies start codifying the tone and culture. The handbook might have rules about how employees should interact with one another, what time they should be at work, or whether they can eat at their desk. Your operations and HR team are helping to push a culture, which isn’t always a bad thing, but it’s worth asking yourself whether they’re overwhelming employees with rules. If the culture is there, people will follow higher-level guidelines, rather than strict rules.
What to do about shitty rules
If you take a look at your own business, you’ll probably find that do have some shitty work rules, but what can you do about them? How do you differentiate between the good rules that need to be in place from the bad ones that are holding you back and not building the best value for your business? Here are a few ideas:
- Ask for feedback on current rules from employees: Specifically, you could call out your employee handbook and ask for feedback from your team. Ask them to read and review it (they may never have done so, or only reviewed it years ago when they first joined the company). Listen to their feedback and implement any changes they suggest that align with your company’s values and culture.
- Review current policies and rules regularly: Ask why each policy is in place and whether removing it would affect anything else in the business. Ask yourself whether each rule actually makes a difference to productivity or whether it’s someone’s personal preference. When it comes to policies, less is often more.
- Review your customer feedback: Look through your customer feedback (online review, customer support comments etc.) with the perspective of policy and rules in mind. Are your internal rules creating some of the issues that your customers are talking about?
We’re not saying that workplaces shouldn’t have rules and policies in place—they absolutely should. Ideally, rules should be minimal, non-intrusive, and ensure that your team has the autonomy to make their own decisions and adjust to their own style of working, as long as their work is getting done.
A BeachHead Operations Audit includes a review of your employee handbook and can offer third party feedback on your policies as well as in-depth interviews with your staff to help identify frustrations. Reach out to us and let us help you get rid of the shitty rules in your workplace.
Connect with BeachHead
At BeachHead, we are passionate about helping businesses scale up from a strong Operations foundation. The BeachHead Organization Audit (BOA) helps founders evaluate their business through an objective lens. Our BOA scorecard allows us to evaluate all aspects of a growing business so we can recommend changes based on what the organization wants to accomplish in the next phase of growth.
If you’re ready to take your company to the next level, reach out and let’s start a conversation.
Email: rdrynan@beachheadstrategic.com
Phone: 416.888-4004
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