4 ms·

Out little company has a "no drama" policy - highly recommend it. It gives people guidance on what is acceptable behavior at work, and at the same time gives a

Out little company has a "no drama" policy - highly recommend it. It gives people guidance on what is acceptable behavior at work, and at the same time gives a reason if you accept that drama distracts from the work

soganess 6y ago
I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I'd like to start a discussion about this! Could you elaborate some? Judging just from your one liner, this sounds like it is ripe for misuse. Dumb examples off the top of my head: - Lets pretend my spouse died in an accident. Everyone is understanding and I'm afforded whatever time-off I need. While I'm out, someone quits and my boss asks (they don't assume I will say yes) me if I can be in the office a couple hours on Friday to help with an important deployment. I say yes, but an hour in I spontaneously start crying at my desk. This makes it difficult for my neighbor to get their work done. Would I be breaking the no drama policy? - What if instead of spouse's death, war erupts in my country-of-origin and I may never be able to return there. A coworker asks what's up and instead of saying "nada," I tell them and it makes them uncomfortable. - What if I was at a rally for $opposite_political_thing and a coworker sees me on the news and asks me about it. I tell them, and contrary to what I think I know about them, they don't react well to my response and feel really uncomfortable? Clearly we've got more and less borderline cases, but from the right purview all of the examples could be considered drama. "No drama" feels like the HR equivalent to "your taillight is out." How does your office decide what is drama? What if you don't think it is drama? Is there some type of arbitration? What happens if you win your arbitration case, but that spoils the office? Sorry for all the questions, I'm genuinely interested.
- benjohnson 6y ago
  Perhaps better phrasing would be "No unnecessary drama" If civil war breaks out - just say "my family is in danger and I need help" Counter intuitively it can really help in sticky situations: I'm white and one of my employees is black. He didn't get a raise. Instead of getting mad at me because he didn't get a raise, he put in our issue tracker - "Employees don't know how to calculate their pay range" We now have an open skill system and and open salary system. We all know why each of us is paid our various rares and all of us know how to get to the next level. We're also allowed to make mistakes - because there's not much drama, when some real drama comes up, we can deal with it. One of my employees has nervous breakdowns now and then - not a problem because she's not having a breakdown while someone is kicking the copier and some else is playing CNN doom-news on their computer. I can help her because I'm not already tapped out.
  - soganess 6y ago
    Wow. I really like that ticketing system resolution. I'm going to keep that in my back pocket. Seems like it would really help having a formal and public (to the office) way of handling sticky situations. I can tell you see the policy as a net positive. Have you noticed other employees didn't like policy as much? What were their grievances with it?
    - benjohnson 6y ago
      You have very thoughtful questions: Nobody has complained - though if they used the issue tracker, we all would find it meta-amusing. In my opinion, the issue system needs to be used all the time for everything - so that nobody feels that thyr're the only squeaky wheel. It does require trust however. We have been known to punt an issue to let us all collect our thoughts. I know the system keeps me from micro-managing, keeps one of my guys from just complaining (we ask for a potential solution), and keeps another employee from feeling un-empowered. The only bad second-order effect I've seen is sometimes people wait to fix simple problems - they tend to it in the system instead of just fixing it. But... Usually I'm wrong, the issue usually is deeper upon reflection.

soganess 6y ago

I feel like I'm in the minority here, but I'd like to start a discussion about this! Could you elaborate some? Judging just from your one liner, this sounds like it is ripe for misuse. Dumb examples off the top of my head: - Lets pretend my spouse died in an accident. Everyone is understanding and I'm afforded whatever time-off I need. While I'm out, someone quits and my boss asks (they don't assume I will say yes) me if I can be in the office a couple hours on Friday to help with an important deployment. I say yes, but an hour in I spontaneously start crying at my desk. This makes it difficult for my neighbor to get their work done. Would I be breaking the no drama policy? - What if instead of spouse's death, war erupts in my country-of-origin and I may never be able to return there. A coworker asks what's up and instead of saying "nada," I tell them and it makes them uncomfortable. - What if I was at a rally for $opposite_political_thing and a coworker sees me on the news and asks me about it. I tell them, and contrary to what I think I know about them, they don't react well to my response and feel really uncomfortable? Clearly we've got more and less borderline cases, but from the right purview all of the examples could be considered drama. "No drama" feels like the HR equivalent to "your taillight is out." How does your office decide what is drama? What if you don't think it is drama? Is there some type of arbitration? What happens if you win your arbitration case, but that spoils the office? Sorry for all the questions, I'm genuinely interested.

benjohnson 6y ago
Perhaps better phrasing would be "No unnecessary drama" If civil war breaks out - just say "my family is in danger and I need help" Counter intuitively it can really help in sticky situations: I'm white and one of my employees is black. He didn't get a raise. Instead of getting mad at me because he didn't get a raise, he put in our issue tracker - "Employees don't know how to calculate their pay range" We now have an open skill system and and open salary system. We all know why each of us is paid our various rares and all of us know how to get to the next level. We're also allowed to make mistakes - because there's not much drama, when some real drama comes up, we can deal with it. One of my employees has nervous breakdowns now and then - not a problem because she's not having a breakdown while someone is kicking the copier and some else is playing CNN doom-news on their computer. I can help her because I'm not already tapped out.
- soganess 6y ago
  Wow. I really like that ticketing system resolution. I'm going to keep that in my back pocket. Seems like it would really help having a formal and public (to the office) way of handling sticky situations. I can tell you see the policy as a net positive. Have you noticed other employees didn't like policy as much? What were their grievances with it?
  - benjohnson 6y ago
    You have very thoughtful questions: Nobody has complained - though if they used the issue tracker, we all would find it meta-amusing. In my opinion, the issue system needs to be used all the time for everything - so that nobody feels that thyr're the only squeaky wheel. It does require trust however. We have been known to punt an issue to let us all collect our thoughts. I know the system keeps me from micro-managing, keeps one of my guys from just complaining (we ask for a potential solution), and keeps another employee from feeling un-empowered. The only bad second-order effect I've seen is sometimes people wait to fix simple problems - they tend to it in the system instead of just fixing it. But... Usually I'm wrong, the issue usually is deeper upon reflection.