Donna Flagg

Employee Behavior: Do Your Policies Sanction or Support?
March 26, 2008

As a result of falling behind in my reading, I found myself catching up on news from last year over this past weekend. In the mountain of papers, magazines and internet articles that had accumulated on my desk, I came across an interesting story about Alexander Kuzmin who is the mayor of Megion in western Siberia. Apparently, he has published a list of phrases which are officially “off limits,” for his employees’ use, and to do so, will bring adverse consequences to them, dare they try. I found it striking that something presumably going on in business all the time, made worldwide news. It got me thinking however, about how we set boundaries in our organizations and use them to get the most (or least) out of our employees and businesses.  

It raises the issue not only of what we do or do not tolerate in terms of employee conduct, but more so, how we enforce the behaviors we want and sanction those that we don’t. It’s certainly possible to say that certain things are destructive and therefore, not allowed. It happens all the time. After all, that’s what employee handbooks are made for. But the challenge isn’t in setting company protocol. That part is easy. The difficultly for companies is the enforcement of the rules set forth by those policies. If you set up rules and don’t enact them, you’ll take two steps back for every one you take forward.  Not only do you fail to benefit from the rule’s existence, but you lose your potency and credibility in all future communications to come.

So in addition to “no smoking,” “no stealing,” “no swearing,” and “no sleeping,” why not have a policy that says, “no more saying certain things?”

Posted by Donna Flagg on March 26, 2008 | Comments (0)