Attendance policy or attendance strategy?

Photo credit:  Microsoft

As most of you know, I used to work in the HR field.  I had the pleasure of working in different operational areas, sometimes within the same company.  I’d have to say my favorite was supporting technology the three times I was able to work in that realm because those folks used their HR partners in a different manner than most of the rest of the world seems to.  HR can be a very polarizing career, wrought with enforcing rules and regulations while offering very little value to the business and its bottom line unless your company goes out of its way to utilize the wealth of knowledge their HR partner can contribute to growing the company.  It’s old-school personnel and it’s changing, albeit slowly.  

I spent more than ten years in this field, so it’s not surprising from time-to-time I think about it in terms of what I could have done differently, many times playing “what if” scenarios in my head.  Last night was one such evening, which had me lying in the dark thinking about the call center environment and attendance policies.  I know, I know, there are better things to think about … what should happen next in the books I am writing? Should I blog about this or that?  What does my week look like?  Regardless, it happened and I had an epiphany of sorts.

The most recent call center I worked at had an attendance policy as most seem to.  It was fairly punitive as most call center attendance policies are, and I thought to myself, “What if there wasn’t a policy?  What if, instead, it was more about an incentive to get people to come to work and love what they do instead of being afraid of calling out sick?”  Since leaving the HR field, I’ve done a lot of soul searching over why companies treat people like children, especially when it comes to attendance and warning them about being out sick too much (this shit even happens to the salaried, non-hourly folks where their contributions should be counted, not how many days they make it to work).  Never mind the fact we kill ourselves even when we are sick by working from home and far into the night and early morning when we should be resting and getting better.  No company ever sees that, and if they do, they turn the other cheek.  It’s all about butts-in-seats.  

So, I got to thinking about attendance policies and wondered about offering incentives instead.  Blow away the attendance policy, let people manage their own health and bodies, and give them something as “thanks” for being at work regularly.  My first thought was to offer an extra day off each month for perfect attendance, but as I sit here writing this, I am reminded that we’re not all cookie-cutter and some people may prefer a different kind of incentive.  That’s when knowing your people comes in very handy (Love ‘Em or Lose ‘Em is a great book to get you started on why this is important).  What do they like to do in their spare time?  Is there something they’ve been saving for or would prefer to have as motivation to continue contributing to the company?  

The idea is that, given a choice to obtain something they want, people will think twice about making one decision over another in order to get that thing they want.  Companies should have less of a problem of people calling out if they make attendance at work a positive thing.  

This really is just a thought swirling in my head at the moment, and of course I don’t have a company I could contribute this to because I’m not in HR anymore.  There are little details that would need to be worked out as well, such as what to do when people get sick and should stay home if they are contagious.  Perhaps some kind of incentive for those that maybe made it half-way through the month with perfect attendance?  In any event, I’ll leave it to my HR friends to look at doing something completely different and employee-friendly by spring-boarding off this idea.  Maybe this could start a new dawn of making work a positive thing that people don’t dread?

Apparently, honesty is not the best policy

Can you feel the severe eye roll?  I’m doing it right now … and every day, it seems (incidentally, I'm a firm believer that Facebook needs an eye-roll reaction right next to the "like" button--can someone over there get on that, please?).  My biggest pet peeve, if you can call it that, is dishonesty.  I can’t stand people that lie and lie consistently.  Why is it so damn hard to tell the truth?  Often, I ponder why a person might lie – do they really believe what they’re saying is true?  Are they just out there to gain sympathy or showboat a fake confidence when inside, they house an inner crumbling personality with low self-esteem?

It’s not hard to spend a lot of time thinking about this as of late.  It’s frustrating to me to turn on the television and see the current government administration lying out of their teeth day in and day out, while muttering under my breath, “Jesus Fucking Christ, do people really buy into this bullshit?”

The egregious behavior stabbing at my annoyance got me thinking about people in history and characters in stories that had such a power over words that they were able to get people to buy into what they were saying, even if they didn’t emanate it or believe it themselves.  Hitler is a prime example.  He believed in a perfect race of tall blue-eyed, blonde-haired people, yet he himself did not have blonde hair and standing at 5’9 really doesn’t equate to “tall” in today’s terms.  So, why did so many people buy into what he was selling when he didn’t even fit his own description?  Voldemort is another.  While a fictional character, it’s the same type of thing.  He was able to gain a huge following based on the idea that true wizards and witches were full-blood, yet he himself was only half-blood.  No one ever called him out on that shit and I wonder why?

This brings me to the current situation we find sitting in the White House.  It’s ridiculous to me that Trump goes to these rallies and talks about “draining the swamp” when he in fact has put people in positions of power within the White House that meet the very definition of the swamp.  He says he supports LGBTQ rights, but he wants to ban transgender service members in our military based on incorrect data about medical costs associated with hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery.  Hello, did you know the military spends more on Viagra???  Jesus, did he botch the Charlottesville thing.   It took the guy way too long to denounce White Supremacists and Nazi hate groups and even then, he flip-flopped on his views from one day to the next.  And the stories coming from him or the people working for him …  Bowling Green massacre?  General Pershing and the pig-blood bullets?  You’ve done more in six months than any other President?  Stop.  Just stop already.  

My point is, don’t people see these lies?  Don’t they see he’s not even doing what he says he’ll do?  Don’t they see that he doesn’t care and that he’s only out there to profit off the highest office in the country?  

While our current state of affairs is quite fascinating and history-making, it’s also very frustrating and disheartening.  I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m embarrassed, and I hate the fact I have to listen to people that are supposed to have integrity stand up and lie through their teeth on a daily basis meanwhile blaming the news outlets and calling the reputable ones “fake.”  Seriously?  What has our country come to that this is okay and is now an expected modus operandi?  I know someday I will look back on this time and lament on what a wild ride it was.  Right now, all I can do is just look forward to the future where we’ll be out of this madness and in a more honest and humble environment.  I can’t lose what little faith in humanity I have left.