Maybe you should check my archives.

By definition “blanket policies” are designed to keep control over all employees.

What my point was: out of 100% of the people in a company, I’ll say 10% of people are a problem in one way or another (10% pulled out of thin air). Suppose the 10% have a problem with spending 7 hours a day on personal phone calls. A blanket policy that says “No personal phone calls during working hours” is really targeted at the 10%, but serves to annoy the heck out of the remaining 90% who either are never on a personal call during working hours or only in an emergency (sick kid winding up at a hospital or something). Any single blanket policy may be meaningless, but there is never just one and they typically become more and more myopic like the bathroom break schedule. Over time idiotic blanket policies serve to drive the productive workers out of the company and all that’s left are managers and nonproducers.

A blanket policy saying that everyone must put in at least 8 hours of work per day when 2 people are only putting in 4 hours is going to really make everyone but the 2 want to leave.

@Jen,

You are right on the money. It is difficult in some cities to even find an employment lawyer to take a case. Unfortunately, mine was against a municipality, where damages are limited. It was a good case, but they could not get rich off of me, so turned me away. I finally found one, and we got a reasonable settlement.

Being in HR myself, I find this type of management behavior as hard to understand and unacceptable when management treats others as children, rather than the professional adults we are.. To me is shows lack of trust, can be demeaning, disrespectful, de-moralizing, and definitely a control issue. It would be good to have human resources involved to help explain how this will negatively impact the group she managers and offer a different viewpoint. If someone is abusing the break and lunch policies, then that is another issue that should be handled on an individual basis.

Yes, and one spot in which blanket policies hurt employees is with those companies that, seemingly for fear of lawsuits, do not allow any managers to give references. The managers are instructed to always refer such calls to HR.

Of course, this might prevent some managers telling a reference checker that so-and-so is a bad apple which may or may not be true; but, it also prevents good, really good, former staff from getting good references.

Now, some might argue that if an employee was really that good the manager would ignore the policy. But, don’t bet on it; not many managers want to risk losing their jobs (and perhaps their pensions) by breaking the rules; and I would not want any former manager to put themselves at risk for me.

Off topic; but the companies that have these “no references” policies are also often the very companies that do NOT hire without references! Go figure.

I’m an attorney who lives in the United States and has represented both plaintiffs against employers and companies AND employers at various times in my career. Yes, there are lots of frivolous lawsuits. A LOT. Yes, it’s a problem. Yes, there are even a lot of unscrupulous attorneys who use threats of wage and hour violations (with no knowledge any are actually occurring but figuring through discovery they are bound to find SOME little tiny insignificant violation — like the recent one about a street address being left off a form that in no way hurt any employee– that will cause them to get 100% of their attorneys fees for the case and make the employer settle for THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of dollars). California, in particular, is really bad, and I wish the state legislator would wake up and do something about it.

i’d love to see you as concerned with helping the people who DO suffer actionable things at the hands of their employers as you are dismissing the much smaller percentage of frivolous ones.