Office rules are a set of written rules for employees to be a professional and a polite person. While office rules depend on the company, generally, some office rules are made to allow employees to correct their behaviour in the office. These office rules affect everyone. But there’s no need to give these kinds of rules to every employee just because there are one or two employees who are not doing their work properly.
Here are some of the set of rules that no one wants to follow in the office
1. Attendance policy
Attendance is the part of the office in any organization. It is basically the record of how many days you have been in the office at the proper time and how many days you were late for the office. Also how many days you have not come to office. All these records are saved in any kind of tools for attendance that particularly depends on the organization.
Company expects the employees to do the first thing after coming to the office is putting their attendance in the log of the office. However, those who want to cheat with the attendance log can and the organization should use other tools for keeping a record of attendance.
2. Restricting the internet policy
There is no doubt that the internet has become a very necessary part of the office work in any organization. Giving employees access to the web, however, is not a very trustable thing.
Instead of working at the workplace employees will do timepass in various other non professional platforms. To make sure that the employees are working and not doing other things, companies restrict the internet for the employees in office. Just because one person at the office spent time watching other stuff rather than writing important mails.
But because of this does not mean that the other employees should get punished for this. The company should allow the responsible employees to use the internet in break time, as long as work does not suffer. Besides, these rules are preventing employees from doing research and using the internet as a useful tool.
Also Read: How to Build Best Company Culture - Things to Avoid
3.Time policy
It is being asked by the employees, “ what were you doing all day?” and it’s a very humiliating question for most and no one wants to answer this especially when they have to work all day in the office.
Though the toughest challenge faced by a company’s manager is to keep records of work and time spent by the employees.
As un-tracked work hours could be costing massive losses that business incur on a daily basis across the world. But keeping record of every employee can be difficult for any organization. A company manager is always concerned about the lost time and that’s natural because that directly impacts the company's growth. But the employees working on a daily basis don’t like to be questioned in turn.
Trust is the essential for successful cooperation in the organization. A company manager should trust their employees.
4. Email policy
Policy for email in any company is a management of documents that formally sets guidelines for what is considered acceptable for use and what is unacceptable for use.
An organization keeps an email policy for the employees in place to warn and guide against company privacy guidelines. This policy places limits on what types of files employees should get access to open, download or exchange with others.
This email policy also includes language that is used in companies for corporate communication systems. These policies make the employee restricted to using some documents.
Also Read: Finding the right office space for lease
5. Bathroom policy
Some organizations have a policy of how many times a person can use the bathroom in the office. Managers should not add these kinds of policies in the office. When an employee has to go, an employee has to go. Unless that employee is not abusing bathroom rights and spending unnecessary time without completing his work.
While there is a clear public policy of allowing employees access to bathrooms, it does not support that employees may leave their tasks at any time without responsibly completing it.
Seriously, limiting people's trips to the bathroom is only going to give them UTI’s and health problems.
6. Counting with miles policy
Some companies have the policy that any employee going on a work trip from the company side, they have to give the record of how many miles they have traveled.
This policy is a bit unnecessary one, if the employee is going on his own expenses. There’s no need for the keeping record of how many miles the employee travelled.
Employees generally hate to do this because there should be trust between the company and the employee and the employee feels like the company does not trust them. And also the company should not send that employee if he is not that much trustworthy.
7. Overtime policy
Overtime is the period for which an employee has worked more than their working hours. Under the overtime rules and policies defining work hours, an employee should work 8-9 hours per day in India which equals to a total of 48-50 hours a week.
The company sometimes offers employees more work to do as overtime and also the company pays for it. Employees do not like to do overtime but they have to fulfill the company requirements.
8. Rigid ranking policy
We live in a world where benchmarks and rankings are set to judge performance of a person.When rankings are used at the office for praising employees performance, many managers think that doing this can inspire them to become more competitive. This will help them in working hard to catch up more.
But in reality, the opposite happens, employees become demotivated. People who ranked highly will always think that they are already at the highest position, so why try harder? And people who are ranked too low can become depressed about their work and they just give up.
Giving feedback is another thing but comparing employees to other employees is not good for the company’s growth. Companies can compare the individual performance of an employee and that will help them in growing their confidence.
Also Read: The Ultimate Office Setup Guide for Entrepreneurs
9. Banning cell phones policy
The use of cell phones at the office can cause extended personal interaction during walk hours. Banning of cell phones is used to protect company secrets. It is known that cell phones can save any kind of document whether it’s in the form of text, image, video. Cell phones cause various kinds of distractions in offices.
Employees talking on their cell phones, sharing pictures and videos, loud ringtones are annoying factors that result in banning cell phones at the office.
But banning cell phones will always result in employees finding other ways to use them. Some may have legitimate reasons to use their cell phones which may affect the employee's ability to work. Anyone who uses their cell phones just to avoid doing work will find another way of using cell phone or wasting time
Companies just need rules to protect their privacy. So they should allow cell phones at break time. So that in any emergency employee would be able to connect to them.
10. Dress Code Policy
The debate over whether or not companies should have dress code policy or not. Some organizations believe it’s essential that their employees should have certain standards regarding the way they dress up at office. This is true when employees have to attend face-to-face interaction with the clients on a daily basis.
And while many employees don’t mind following the dress code, others feel that as adults , they are more capable of dressing at office without having a formal dress code.
If the company is deciding to implement a formal dress code in the office, the company should try to get balance between guidelines that give the employees need for comfort and style and also a policy that requires them dress in a way that reflects the values of the company. If the dress code is implemented in the right way, employees will have no reason to oppose it. There are better ways to treat employees who are not sure how to dress themselves in a professional manner.
Conclusion
Employees should be trusted at the office by the manager. Employees are all adults who should not be treated like an under-performed employee always by the company. Every employee should not be punished due to mistakes by few employees.
Link : https://startuptalky.com/office-rules/
Author :- Sweta kumari
June 07, 2020 at 11:51PM
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