HR Policies: Break rules for your exceptional talent

Every organization has a small set of employees who are exceptional and always deliver exceptional value from their hard work and their creative capabilities. These creative minds often require certain degree of freedom and flexibility at work to give their best. Curbing their sense of freedom and imposing any restrictive policies can create significant and at times irreparable damage to their abilities and eventually to the organization. It is, therefore, important that the HR Department in any company identify these exceptional people and ensure exceptions are made when it comes to these people.

Where To Break?

“One of the most common HR policies that require exceptional treatment is on Office timings and Leaves”.

Most organizations design a flat attendance policy for all employees to ensure every employee is punctual and giving their full shift of hours. They impose penalties for any violation such as deducting a late fee or deducting a leave when an employee is late to work. While these policies are okay for an average and below average employee (and hopefully you don’t have them) , they will certainly create a wall of restrictions for the exceptional performing employees. So when it comes exceptional people, HR needs to break rules from the norm and create exceptions when it comes to enforcing attendance and Leave policies.

When Did We Break?

To add some context here, we had this tribe of exceptionally performing employees and they belonged to neither one department, one job cadre or one reporting manager. They were there across the organization. These were the guys that used to independently own responsibilities and were always on. They would work Sundays, Saturdays or holidays. They least bothered about leaves.  In fact, we had to force them at times to take a vacation (and they still carried their laptops with them!). Enforcing any kind of restrictive leave and attendance policy on them would only demotivate them and send wrong signals to them that their outlier traits and commitment to their work mean nothing to the organization. So we designed a special leave plan that is completely relaxed with no restrictions or penalties something that makes them feel that they aren’t bound by any restrictions in the organization when it comes to measuring their time.

Ways To Break?

If you are using Keka as your HRMS software, you can easily design policies in attendance and Leaves to accommodate for these hard working honey bees. In your work shift policies, create a policy called Flexi-hours and define their shift that has no late coming or early leaving restrictions. In other words, the system never complains that they are late or left work early. And that’s absolutely fine, since you know they put in long hours anyway.

Have a leave policy where they have a committed paid days per annum (lets call them privileged leaves), that would be paid at the end of the year when not consumed. In addition have an unlimited supply of paid days that would expire (let’s say casual leaves) at the end of the year. In most cases these employees wouldn’t even consume their privileged leaves. But the feeling that there is no restriction on their leaves alone is a motivating factor for these guys that you do not want to take away from them.