How Can I Enforce HR Policies When Senior Staff Are Resistant to Change?

Hi All,

I am working in an IT company that is just 1 year old as an HR manager. I got stuck in a horrible situation.

Most of the senior employees (president, GM, MD, and almost all team leads) in my company are childhood friends, and when the company started its operations, there was no HR personnel to take care of any policies or implement them. All the decisions were taken by the friends together.

Now, once I am recruited (I am a fresher who started my career as an HR Manager with my current company), I got the opportunity to frame the policies, and I did. However, now none of the employees are supporting me to implement them. And if I want to take action on the employees, my GM says I am young and taking hasty decisions.

One such example can be: None of the employees are submitting the leave forms before/after they take leave. I sent request emails twice to all the employees to follow the leave procedure, and the third time, I want to make it loss of pay (it was already mentioned in the HR policies that if an employee doesn't submit a leave form, it will be considered as LOP).

After many discussions with the management, the final decision is that we are at the service of employees, and it is our duty to go to each and every employee at the end of the month, show him the attendance register, give him the leave form, get the form filled, and then prepare the pay slips. This is the scenario with almost all HR issues. Seeing the seniors, no other employees are willing to follow the policies.

I need some suggestions from you all about how I should handle this situation.

Hi,

These kinds of things happen in many organizations as initially there will be no implementation of HR dept, i.e., at the start of companies. Once the company grows, they think of an HR dept that can take care of employee needs, etc. Due to the non-practice of these companies, the importance of the HR dept will be at a low level.

The same has happened with you. Your employees feel that it was going well before you entered the organization and will go smoothly without any change. I think you must make them practice the policies laid by you by showing them the importance of it; one way or another, they are laid for the employees' benefit.

As you said, they are not showing interest in submitting a leave letter. Ask them to just send an email for that; maybe they will show interest as it would be a simple thing. Ultimately, there is only one way to make your employees implement the policies by showing them how they will benefit.

Thanks,
Madhu

That's called the "working in lala-baniya firm trauma"..ya, seriously! It seems to be a small setup (As of now) and they aim to make it a big Organization. That's why they have kept you. But these guys (MD, TL etc) are completely "non-technical"..as in not aware of how HR works. I'm sure you're going to have a good amount of trouble. I don't want to scare you, but the big guys are not taking you very seriously. I'm not very experienced in such "worst-case scenarios", so I hope some other seniors help you. But if you don't find a solution, then either face it like a challenge and live with it...OR...get good exposure and learning experience and go ahead (this time for a structured company).

Best of Luck!