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While I don’t know if regulations are to blame or what their contribution this is quite true. Corporate policies are all designed around one thing - reducing li

While I don’t know if regulations are to blame or what their contribution this is quite true. Corporate policies are all designed around one thing - reducing litigation risk, wellness, health and safety, “ethics”, inclusivity etc. training/policies are all designed to cover their asses rather than actually improve outcomes. Now whether this is purely an outcome of the regulatory landscape and how the legal system works or the outcome of simply natural selection for large entities regardless of the environment I don’t know. Anyone that ever was in a position of a people manager in any corporate entity even a relatively small one knows exactly just how poorly these policies are structured from an individual perspective. I manage people right now and if I see someone struggling whether it’s on a personal level or professional one my options are severely limited. If I have a direct report that is clearly struggling with some personal issues taking them out for a coffee and asking them about what is going on would pretty much be against company policies and could put my position and the company at risk. The best I could do is essentially send out a refresher on some mental health help line that the company uses anything else opens me to a liability.

hliyan 5y ago
Interesting. Last year I moved from a large corporation with well defined policies to a startup. The options you mentioned are fortunately very much on the table for me. If someone's struggling with something at home for example, I could literally send them some sort of help, within a reasonable budget of course. It's a win-win: they're happy, I'm happy and more often than not, it translates to higher motivation once the crisis is over. I'd hate to see those options be policified away one day.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  It’s a win win when things don’t go wrong, the litigation environment means that anyone taking offense or claim that they have been discriminated poses a pretty big risk to a big enough company. It also assumes that managers are always competent enough and have sufficiently good soft skills to handle these sort of situations since involving HR is always “against the employee” as HR is there to protect the company. Unions might solve this issue but sadly unions aren’t immune to the same corruption that plagues any sufficiently large and political organization so the union becomes self serving rather than serving the employees. Some countries have better solutions like having an employee board in every company but in large corps these tend to be plagued by corruption as well.

hliyan 5y ago

Interesting. Last year I moved from a large corporation with well defined policies to a startup. The options you mentioned are fortunately very much on the table for me. If someone's struggling with something at home for example, I could literally send them some sort of help, within a reasonable budget of course. It's a win-win: they're happy, I'm happy and more often than not, it translates to higher motivation once the crisis is over. I'd hate to see those options be policified away one day.

dogma1138 5y ago
It’s a win win when things don’t go wrong, the litigation environment means that anyone taking offense or claim that they have been discriminated poses a pretty big risk to a big enough company. It also assumes that managers are always competent enough and have sufficiently good soft skills to handle these sort of situations since involving HR is always “against the employee” as HR is there to protect the company. Unions might solve this issue but sadly unions aren’t immune to the same corruption that plagues any sufficiently large and political organization so the union becomes self serving rather than serving the employees. Some countries have better solutions like having an employee board in every company but in large corps these tend to be plagued by corruption as well.