HR rules, policies and procedures are frequently blamed for protecting erroneous employees and inhibiting performance, productivity, or profit. So, would you be better without HR rules? Of course, you would…
One of my erstwhile colleagues believed “Rules are for the guidance of wise men, and the obedience of fools”! It was a favourite phrase of his and he would trot it out whenever he and I came into conflict over some policy or procedure that I was trying to persuade him to follow.
It is for this reason that you should not incorporate rules and procedures into the contract of employment unless they are a statutory obligation. Statutory rights are for the courts to decide. But managers, and business owners, should always be free to use HR rules for guidance. A huge range of unpredictable situations can arise in the normal day-to-day running of a business. Those in HR who may draft the rules cannot anticipate every eventuality.
For this reason, we need to avoid procedures that are excessively detailed or too prescriptive. Detail or prescription may be used against you. Disciplinary rules, as an illustration, need to be only examples of behaviour that would be unacceptable.
Policies are needed to provide guidance and to seek to create fairness in adjudicating the type of conflicts that can arise between employer and employee or between employee and employee. They should be written clearly but not prescriptively.
Why have an employee handbook?
We do need HR rules but for guidance, not obedience – and not for use as an excuse for inaction. The idea that we do not need HR rules at all, was rhetorical.
Malcolm Martin FCIPD
Author Human Resource Practice
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