Can HR Act Beyond Company Policies?

An employee approaching the HR Dept. for clarifications on a query always leads to certain phenomenal answers that have become much of a part of rote every employee remembers – “It’s written in the Co. Policies that’s the reason why it needs to be done this way!”

Infact quite many times the employees seem to know the answer well in advance before they decide to give another shot in the HR Dept. But can the HR folks really go beyond what the HR policies say? Can there be exceptions? Can there be genuine reasons when the HR needs to leap beyond the Co. boundaries and oblige employees? What’s the guarantee the employee may not get deceitful next time to avail those privileges?

The strongest of policy implementations always take place w.r.t. leaves and mediclaim issues. I remember coming across this one instance, when while the employees’ were on way to the office, one of the employee met with an accident on a deserted road. He was found injured by another employee belonging to the same organization nearly 20 minutes later. As an impulse the injured employee was rushed to the nearest medical aid centre for treatment. This resulted to non-reporting to the office of those 2 men. Now the blue collar workers are not among those privileged lot who can avail CL (Casual Leave) at their disposal nor can their work be taken care by some replacement, coz in a manufacturing more or less everybody has fixed roles. Late coming to office would in turn mean loss of pay for loss of hours in productivity.

So out here basically while the employee is heading for work and chances upon somebody who’s met with an accident, should he pass the person and reach office at stated time as given in the policy? Or should he bring the injured employee first to the office, mark their attendance and first avail medical aid present in company premises, before going elsewhere? Or alike the above stated example, straightaway take the injured for treatment, resulting to late coming and loss of pay?

What can HR ensure in such situations for the benefit of the employees’ as well as not making ways for future deceits? For this case stated above, HR for once did grant leniency on attendance and late coming and provided relief to the injured employee too, but how long is the question? People take no time in analyzing how best they can get more out of the situation, how can things be manipulated to get more of the benefits, how to get everything fixed coz of some friend/colleague happening to be at critical positions of the hierarchy?