“I told you about the time clock, right?”
“No.”
“We have to clock in first thing in the morning, then clock out when we leave. Oh, and we have to do it when we leave for lunch.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“I wish.”
A few weeks ago, I met with my close friend Michele for lunch and listened in disbelief as she regaled me with tales of the toxic environment at her new job. There were stipulations about how many people from a particular department could go to lunch at the same time, and personal calls were not allowed during work hours. Period.
Just a few months in, she was already looking for a way out. Despite having nearly two decades of experience and a master’s degree, she was being treated like a rookie.
“I may as well be flipping burgers,” she told me.
But ever the professional, Michele was determined to make it work — after all, she had been at her previous company for more than 15 years; the last thing she wanted to do was jump ship right away. In addition to being hard-working and dependable, she’s extremely personable and has an uncanny ability to cultivate strong relationships with colleagues. Surely she could turn this lemon of a situation into lemonade, right?
Wrong. When she attempted to voice her concerns, she was met with a phrase many of us are all too familiar with: “That’s the way we do things here.”
Sadly, she’s not alone. I’ve known many qualified people who have either turned down jobs or left because of bad policies.
There’s my friend Chris. After working at a company for more than a decade — during which he rose through the ranks of his department by putting in hard work — he asked to work from home for a few days while he was finalizing a move. His request was quickly denied by a short-sighted manager who didn’t believe employees actually worked when they weren’t being closely monitored. Chris was incredulous.
And there’s my friend Sean, who became frustrated when the higher-ups at his company eliminated casual Fridays with no explanation (he later learned it was revoked because a sales person scored a last-minute meeting but didn’t have a suit). When Sean tried to appeal, arguing that employees who don’t meet with clients shouldn’t be held to the same standards, he was quickly overruled. Case closed.
What bothered him the most, he told me, was that management wasn’t even willing to discuss the matter. They issued a blanket policy, and that was that.
To me, that’s just plain foolish. If there are steps that can be taken to improve morale — particularly those that won’t cost a dime, leaders have to at least be willing to listen. For all three of my friends, blanket policies (and shortsighted managers) poisoned the well.
Good leaders know that there are times when it behooves you to be flexible; when considering different opinions and exploring different options can result in a win-win. For Jim Turnbull, CIO at University of Utah Health Care, the solution to the IT staff’s request for a casual dress code was simple. “You can come in wearing jeans or practically whatever you want, but you have to have an emergency kit at your cubicle or in your car so that you can change quickly and go to a meeting up at the hospital if you’re called up there at the last minute,” he said in an interview earlier this year. “That’s been in place for probably 18 months and we’ve never had a single issue with it.”
Turnbull, who was named CHIME-HIMSS CIO of the Year, recognizes that rigidity isn’t a wise strategy. When leaders become too focused on trivial matters — and choose to fall back on flawed policies instead of having a discussion — they lose site of the big picture. And more importantly, they lose good people.
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