Rules are a part of our life, we are expected to follow them everywhere. From schools to our office, every organisation have a set of rules that one associated with them has to follow.
Office rules are a set of written rules for employees to be professional and polite person. While office rules depend on the company, generally, some office rules are made to allow employees to correct their behaviour in the office. These office rules affect everyone.
In this article, we will talk about the rules that one needs to follow in office but doesn’t like. So, let’s get started.
Attendance Policy
Restricting the Internet Policy
Time Policy
Bathroom Policy
Counting With Miles Policy
Overtime Policy
Rigid Ranking Policy
Banning Cell Phones Policy
Dress Code Policy
Attendance Policy
Attendance is a significant part in any organization. It is basically the record of how many days you have been in the office at the proper time and how many days you were late for the office. It also determines the day that you have come to the office. All these records are saved in any kind of tool for attendance that particularly depends on the organization.
The company expects the employees to do the first thing after coming to the office is putting their attendance in the log of the office. However, those who want to cheat with the attendance log can, and the organization should use other tools for keeping a record of attendance.
Restricting the Internet Policy
There is no doubt that the internet has become a very necessary part in our life and on in any organization, it is much more important. Giving employees access to the web, however, is not a very trustable thing.
Instead of working at their office, employees will tend to pass their time by doing other activities and neglecting their office work. To make sure that the employees are working and not doing other things, companies restrict the use of internet for the employees in the office. However, just because one person at the office spent time watching other stuff rather than writing important mails does not mean that the other employees should get punished for this. The company should allow the responsible employees to use the internet in break time, as long as work does not suffer. Besides, these rules are preventing employees from doing research and using the internet as a useful tool.
Time Policy
It is being asked by the employees, “ what were you doing all day?” and it’s a very humiliating question for most and no one wants to answer this especially when they have to work all day in the office. Though the toughest challenge faced by a company’s management is to keep records of work and time spent by the employees.
As un-tracked work hours could be costing massive losses that business incurs daily across the world. However, keeping a record of every employee can be difficult for any organization. A company manager is always concerned about the lost time and that’s natural because that directly impacts the company’s growth. Although the employees working daily don’t like to be questioned in turn. Trust is essential for successful cooperation in the organization. A company manager should trust their employees.
Bathroom Policy
Some organizations have a policy of how many times a person can use the bathroom in the office. Managers should not add these kinds of policies to the office. When an employee has to go, an employee has to go. Unless that employee is not abusing bathroom rights and spending unnecessary time without completing their work.
A Chicago-based firm, a call centre in Scotland, Amazon have this policy which is criticised by employees as well as people around them.
While there is a clear public policy of allowing employees access to bathrooms, it does not support that employees may leave their tasks at any time without responsibly completing them. Seriously, limiting people’s trips to the bathroom is only going to give them serious health problems.
Counting With Miles Policy
Some companies have the policy that any employee going on a work trip from the company side, they have to give a record of how many miles they have travelled. This policy is a bit unnecessary if the employee is going on their own expenses. There’s no need for keeping a record of how many miles the employee travelled.
Employees generally hate to do this because there should be trust between the company and the employee and the employee feels like the company does not trust them. Plus if the company should not send an employee if they feel thr employee is not that trustworthy.
Overtime Policy
Overtime is the period in which an employee has to work more than their working hours. Under the overtime rules and policies defining work hours, an employee should work 8-9 hours per day in India which equals a total of 48-50 hours a week. The company sometimes offers employees more work to do as overtime and also the company pays for it. Employees do not like to do overtime but they have to fulfil the company’s requirements.
Rigid Ranking Policy
We live in a world where benchmarks and rankings are set to judge the performance of a person. When rankings are used at the office for praising employees’ performance, many managers think that doing this can inspire them to become more competitive. This will help them in working hard to catch up more.
Although in reality, the opposite happens, employees become demotivated. People who ranked highly will always think that they are already in the highest position, and are the best. While people who are ranked too low can become depressed about their work and might give up.
Companies like IBM, Amazon, and Facebook use this policy to rank their employees.
Giving feedback is another thing but comparing employees to other employees is not good for the company’s growth. Companies can compare the individual performance of an employee and that will help them in growing their confidence.
Banning Cell Phones Policy
The use of cell phones at the office can cause extended personal interaction during working hours. The banning of cell phones is used to protect company secrets. Cell phones cause various kinds of distractions in offices while people are working.
Employees talking on their cell phones, sharing pictures and videos, and loud ringtones are annoying factors that result in banning cell phones at the office. So companies follow this policy. However. banning cell phones will always result in employees finding other ways to use them. Some may have legitimate reasons to use their cell phones which may affect the employee’s ability to work. Anyone who uses their cell phones just to avoid doing work will find another way of using a cell phone or wasting time.
Companies like Concentrix, Genpact, American Express, Accenture and Fidelity have the No Cellphone Policy in their offices.
Companies just need rules to protect their privacy. So they should allow cell phones during break time. So that in an emergency, employees would be able to use them.
Dress Code Policy
The debate over whether or not companies should have a dress code policy or not is going on for a long time. Some organizations believe it’s essential that their employees should have certain standards regarding the way they dress up at the office. This is mandatory when employees have to attend face-to-face interactions with the clients on a daily basis.
While many employees don’t mind following the dress code, others feel that as adults, they are more than capable of deciding how to be at the office without having a formal dress code.
Companies like Wipro, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase have a strict dress code. Wipro and JPMorgan Chase allow their employees to wear casual clothes on Friday.
If the company is deciding to implement a formal dress code in the office, the company should try to get a balance between guidelines that give the employees the need for comfort and style and also a policy that requires them to dress in a way that reflects the values of the company. If the dress code is implemented in the right way, employees will have no reason to oppose it.
Conclusion
Employees should be trusted at the office by the manager. Employees are all adults who should not be treated like under-performed employees by the company. Just because of the mistake of a few employees, not everyone should be punished.
