This is a question I use all the time for an improv prompt. The audience then suggests a law and the scene begins.

Now, while Switzerland has all the normal laws about not stealing and not murdering and not speeding (they really mean that last one–there are speed cameras EVERYWHERE), the audience always picks the Swiss laws that we find funny. For example:

No recycling on Sunday
Garbage cannot go out until 7:00 PM the night before
You have to shake hands with everyone when you walk into a room. (There was a court case about this, by the way, involving a teacher and male students who wouldn’t shake her hand.)
Absolutely no crossing the road against the light.

The scene is always hilarious and fun to play.

But here’s a bit of a reality bite. We make fun of these “silly rules” but they are also the reason people love living here.

Our streets are clean because people take care of our garbage. People can live next to the recycling collection spots because they aren’t disturbed at all hours of the night and weekend by the clanking of bottles.

And I think this is true about a lot of things. The little things that make a country or a company attractive are the very things that people say are silly.

Remove the overly stiff rules and you run the risk of losing the very thing that made your company a great place to work.

This is not me arguing that we should put an old Swiss lady with a cane in charge of every business, allowing her to smack anyone that gets out of hand. But it is me arguing that before you get rid of a policy or practice, ask yourself what that policy or practice leads to and say, “Are we ready to lose this result?”

I can laugh about the overly rigid rules of when you can put your garbage out, but I certainly don’t want to live in a place where people put their garbage out all the time.

(The notes on these garbage bags say, “Please observe the designated times for putting out garbage for collection! Collection days in this neighborhood: Monday and Thursday. Put out garbage the evening before.)

The post Beware of losing the rule you hate appeared first on Improve Your HR.

I informed her that many people had successfully done this job without this certification and that we had several internal candidates who were more than capable of doing it and lacked the certification.

She insisted. She said I was trying to violate her managerial authority by telling her not to include the certification requirement.

I didn’t have the authority to remove the certification requirement, so the job search continued.

Internal people who lacked the certification didn’t apply because she made it very clear they wouldn’t be considered.

She ended up hiring an external person who (wait for it) also did not have the certification. Now, this person can absolutely do the job. But the current staff is furious. Not at the new hire–they recognize it’s not her fault–but at the manager. They didn’t apply for the job because the manager made it very clear she would not consider them.

Now we have a morale issue. Lesson from this: If you’re going to make a rule, you need to enforce it. Making a rule and then not enforcing it is incredibly damaging to your employees.

The post The Reason You Can’t Break Rules appeared first on Improve Your HR.

No eating hair

No climbing on the table

Everyone goes potty before we leave the house

The post Why The Rules Exist appeared first on Improve Your HR.

“You should know that they need gym shoes in third grade.”

This was an actual line my son’s teacher said to me (albeit in German).

Please understand that from Kindergarten (two years’ worth) through second grade, gym shoes were forbidden, and they needed “Stoppersocken” (those socks with rubber on the bottom).

I asked her how I could have known that there was a change in grade three when there had been no list sent home. She replied, “Because academics start in grade three, and so we are serious about gym.”

I still didn’t see the logic, but she acted like it was the most obvious thing in the world to her.

And it was obvious to her. But I’d never had a third grader in the Swiss school system before. There was no way for me to know without someone telling me. And most of the other parents knew as well–because they were Swiss and knew that grade three was a big academic change and that it related to gym shoes. So the teacher looked around and thought, “20 kids in the class and 18 knew to bring gym shoes. These two mothers are idiots.” No, we were just foreigners who weren’t raised in that system.

So often we do this to our employees. We make up rules in our heads, and then we just expect people to know them and punish them for not knowing.

We say, “Oh, we don’t need a dress code, we just tell people to ‘dress for your day.'” Or “Don’t sexually harass people,” but we don’t lay out what the boundaries are.

Just because it’s in your head and very clear to you and the executive team doesn’t mean it will be clear to everyone.

Say what you mean. And follow that up with meaning what you say. It’s a kindness for everyone to have clear understanding of expectations.

The post Say what you mean appeared first on Improve Your HR.

Katyayani Shukla posted this on Twitter. Now she is in India, and I don’t know anything about Indian employment law, and generally write from a US (and sometimes European) perspective, but this is a question that comes up often. Why are employees expected to give two weeks’ (or more) notice, and employers can kick you to the curb via an early morning email?

It’s a good question. It seems incredibly unfair. One of my least favorite things is when an employee offers a notice period, and the employer terminates the person immediately. I find that to be absolutely immoral.

I once had a manager call me, enraged because an employee had told him on a Friday afternoon that today was his last day, handed over his laptop and badge, and left. The manager raged, “How could he be so unprofessional?”

I asked a simple question: What did you do the last time an employee gave two weeks’ notice?

The manager replied, “Well, he was going to a competitor, so I terminated him immediately.”

I still don’t think the manager understood that these were the clear consequences of his previous actions.

There is a rationale for terminating someone without prior notice. Now, if you’re terminating for cause or poor performance, the employee should be well aware that this is coming.

If you’re conducting a layoff, then the reason for not notice is practical. Terminated employees tend not to be happy to work. At best, they come to work angry and feeling betrayed. At worst, they sabotage things. The employees who were not terminated are unsure how to interact with their coworker.

It’s very difficult. In fact, so difficult and unpleasant that in the case of things like a company shut down or merger, where you need to keep a transition team who know they will be terminated, you have to offer large stay bonuses to keep them working.

What I recommend:

–Employees who offer a notice period and you don’t want them to work it: Terminate them immediately and provide them with pay through the end of the (reasonable) notice period.

–Terminate for cause/performance: The employee should know it’s coming and that they could have fixed it and chose not to, so just let them go.

–Termination as a position elimination: Immediate termination with severance and benefits continuation.

It’s better all around if disgruntled employees can move on, but do pay them, at a minimum, the amount you would ask from them for a notice period.

Position eliminations are sometimes necessary. Don’t be a jerk about it. Pay out a reasonable notice period and offer severance.

The post Why Do Employers Demand Notice When They Fire At-Will? appeared first on Improve Your HR.

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These are questions a divorce attorney found when she subpoenaed ChatGPT records from the opposing side.

Divorce attorneys aren’t the only ones who will look at your ChatGPT (or Claude, or Grok, or whatever) history. So will employment attorneys. Do you have questions like:

“How can I fire a black woman and not be sued?”
“Can I reject a pregnant candidate?”
“How can I communicate better with my autistic employee?”
“Can I deny FMLA to a poor performer?”

Suzanne, you say, three of those seem awful, but don’t we want to communicate better with our autistic employees? Sure we do. But did your employee tell you about their autism, or are you making assumptions? And if you get sued for ADA violations, this is just another bit of info to show you considered them to be autistic.

Now, I’m no lawyer, and I don’t give legal advice, but I know a whole bunch of lawyers who do give legal advice if you pay them. And also, you can ask them all these sketchy questions (after you’ve contracted with them) and it’s considered privileged.

So maybe don’t use ChatGPT as your lawyer. Just saying. Again, I’m not giving legal advice. But I am advising you to get legal advice.

@lauren_thelawyer How I make the opposing side my exhibit A #familylawattorney #attorneysoftiktok #familylawyer #divorceattorney #divorcelawyer ♬ original sound – Is Lauren Your Lawyer?

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But everyone else saw that they weren’t there. Everyone else saw that you put in 21 years with a company, and the bigwigs don’t give a flying fig.

My bet, unless this was a family-owned company, is that this employee was there longer than anyone in the corner offices.

The message that the whole staff gets when execs are too busy to show up to such an event is that the staff is expendable.

Now, I will say that the bigger the company, the fewer retirements the CEO can show up to. But the senior person from that location should be there for such an event.

Or am I off my rocker, and this is no different than someone who just quit? We don’t throw a party when you quit to go work a different job.

The post Saying goodbye to a retiree appeared first on Improve Your HR.

Today, you feel awesome. You got an extra hour of sleep Sunday (unless you have small children or pets), and today you feel like a million bucks.

But, deep down, you know that the politicians will never end the back and forth between standard time and daylight savings’ time. Which means, come March, you’ll have to spring forward.

While others are whining about how much they hate it, Spring Forward HR is the opportunity to connect with other HR professionals, increase your skills, laugh, and maybe even win a prize or two.

While all the details havent’ been worked out yet, you can get your name on the list by registering here: Spring Forward HR

The post Spring Forward HR–Register Today appeared first on Improve Your HR.

Her boss valued Henrietta’s skills and begged her to come back. Henrietta agreed, provided that she could work remotely. Her boss agreed.

After salary negotiations, Henrietta received an offer letter, contingent on a background check, and a start date. Henrietta arranged daycare for the offspring, which she had to start paying for on her agreed-upon start date.

But that start date came and went, and she didn’t start working. Do you know why?

Big Company couldn’t verify her previous employment.

Do you remember who her previous employer was? Oh, that’s right, the same company she was working for now. Yet somehow, they couldn’t find a record of her working there.

Henrietta produced her last W2 from Big Company and has a new start date. However, she had to pay for a week of daycare that she didn’t need. It’s a real expense (as anyone who uses daycare knows).

She now considers HR to be incompetent. Her boss considers HR to be incompetent. Meanwhile, the business partner or employee relations person they will work with had absolutely nothing to do with this incompetence. Employment verification was likely outsourced to a third party who has nothing to do with Big Company’s policies or strategy.

This is the problem with HR and talent acquisition, and outsourcing. Many TA people emphasize that they are not HR. Both say they aren’t the outsourcing company. You can say, “Oh, that wasn’t HR or TA, that was the silly outsourcing company!”

It doesn’t matter. People develop negative attitudes toward the entire profession when one part of the HR realm falls apart.

When you consider outsourcing to focus on the strategic aspects of HR, remember that your employees will judge you based on the worst call center employee they encounter.

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