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The Five Most Offensive HR Policies

This article is more than 8 years old.

There are a lot of stupid and pointless HR policies still hanging around, but some of them are worse than others. Some HR policies scream "Maybe we hired you, but we don't trust you any farther than we can throw you!" They are insulting.

Here are five of the worst HR policies I know -- policies that signal to employees that they are interchangeable cogs in whatever machine the employer has built.

If you have any of these policies in place at your company, it's time to make a stink about it.

It's time to tell your manager what you think about these policies that convey the message "You suck!" to you and the rest of your co-workers.

If you're an HR person, you have no higher priority between now and the end of 2015 than getting rid of these talent-repelling policies and starting 2016 on a friendlier note!

Prove Your Grandma Died If You Want Your Bereavement Pay

Possibly somewhere back in the mists of time some employee fabricated the death of a family member in order to crook two or three days of paid time off.

That's heinous, but it's no reason to subject the rest of  your honest employees to the insulting requirement that they bring in a funeral notice to prove that a loved one died!

There is no greater insult to toss at your valued teammates than "We can't be sure your grandma died - or even that you have a grandma, now that we think about it -- so you have to prove it in writing."

How low can you get? If you can't trust yourself enough to hire trustworthy team members, why not go whole hog and ask for genealogical records and a tissue sample from the deceased? Your employees deserve better!

You Can Work Here for Decades, But You Won't Get a Reference From Us

I did not believe it at first when HR friends of mine told me that their companies were installing "no-reference" policies. These companies were afraid that a department manager might slime an ex-employee in a reference call and bring on a defamation lawsuit.

Keep in mind that any manager could bring you a lawsuit at any moment, without giving a reference -- as I wrote about here.

Managers can provoke lawsuits by discriminating, sexually harassing people or in many other ways. What's so special about giving references?

If you don't trust yourself enough to hire and promote managers who can give a job reference without sliming a person, get some help with your problem!

It's disgusting to tell your loyal employees "No matter how long you work for us, when you  leave us, we won't say one good thing about you!"

 Bell Curve Performance Reviews

The people on your team, like all people, have a finite amount of energy.

If you want them to spend most of their energy vying with their teammates for your approval, then it makes sense to set up a performance review system that allocates only a small number of spots for Excellent employees, another small number of places for Above Average workers, and so on.

If you want your employees focused on helping customers instead of competing with their teammates, then it only takes two functioning brain cells and one heartbeat to see that bell-curve-type performance reviews are idiotic and will not help you win.

They can only get your employees focused on the wrong thing -- beating out someone else on the team for one of the top spots!

Smart leadership teams abandoned bell-curve performance reviews around the year 2000. What is your company waiting for?

Stealing Miles

What do companies pay for? They pay for things they value. They pay for factory equipment and shiny  new software applications and gleaming glass-and-chrome headquarters buildings.

If they send you on a business trip out of town and then steal the frequent flyer miles you earned by standing in those lines and crushing yourself into airline seats, they are low-down dogs indeed.

Stack Ranking

Stack ranking is a holdover from the bad old nineteen-eighties when companies were slashing headcount left and right and thinking themselves virtuous for doing so.

If you remember Michael Douglas' brilliant performance in "Wall Street," you've got the ethos of their era down.

Stack ranking is a process by which managers are forced to rank their team members, top to bottom, in a classic Lord of the Flies exercise that accomplishes nothing but makes weenie executives feel powerful and responsible.

If your leaders still subscribe to the slash-and-burn management style popularized by Jack Welch and his cronies, then Stack Ranking is right up your alley.

If you believe that you hire smart people and that you don't need to keep them wondering whether they'll have a job next week in order to get their best efforts, then it's time to drop the medieval Forced Ranking system and start leading your team the way real leaders do - by inspiring them.