hello Dinesh
It appears that you need to have a correct perspective of HR role. HR's role is that of a people's advocate to empathise with people's causes, a facilitator to help the operational managers to sort out people's issues and a change agent to initiate transformational processes that add value to business.Therefore what the HR shall know is not how to maintain distance with people but how to narrow the distance between him and the people and how to bridge gaps in human interactions in the organisiation. It does not mean that you shall not maintain confidentiality. You shall maintain confidentiality whenever required but without distancing people.
once you strike a chord of harmony with people, the incidence of breach of policies by itself comes down. To start with,you can call a meeting of the staff and inform them that the HR policies are made to enlist the cooperation between the employees and teh organisation in achieving goals and thus request all of them to follow the policies both in letter and spirit.If some continue to violate the policies, pick them for counselling at your level in the first instance and in teh presence of a senior leader in the second instance, clearly alerting him to the possibility of inviting stricter action, if the conduct is repeated.If the employee concerned is still persisting in his objectionable conduct, you can issue him a memorandum. You can thus deal with the problem in phases, while keeping a record of the same.
Hope this helps.
B.Saikumar
HR & IR Advisor