heartharmony.com.au

Who ever heard of a company’s employee handbook being discussed around the world? Well that is precisely what has happened this past week.

Billionaire property Tycoon Sam Zell has just taken over the Tribune – a major newspaper in the USA. One of the first things he did to shift the organisation culture was to throw away the old company manual and rewrite it in his own unique way.

So why is it making headlines in newspapers and magazines? Why is it being talked about in blog posts around the world? Well – it could be the way that it is written.

Rule # 1: Use your best judgment

Rule #2: See Rule 1.

That’s it. That is the one hard and fast rule. Unless a serious mistake was made when you were hired, you have pretty good judgment.

One of the clauses causing the most debate includes “working at Tribune means accepting that sometimes you might hear a word that you, personally, might not use. You might experience an attitude that you don’t share. You might hear a joke that you might not consider funny. That is because a loose, fun, non-linear atmosphere is important to the creative process. This should be understood, should not be a surprise and not considered harassment”

Great idea – but it won’t stand up in court! Employee handbooks are seen as a company declaring how it intends to deal with a situation. While the manual does go on to say how they will handle any allegations of harassment – the damage is done by the first paragraph. The reason it is damaging as it declares the company believes that poor language, racial vilification or sexual harassment in its widest sense should be tolerated within a company. This will mean that the company will have a very hard time arguing they took reasonable steps to prevent such harassment occuring.

I did say it was quirky – and quite funny in places – “Making the building too hot, banging on trash can lids or loud bagpipe music are annoyances you can complain about …”

That said – there are a lot of great features you may want to consider incorporating into your manual – particularly the core values of keep your word, collaborate, no surprises, compete, play fair, take intelligent risk, reward successful performance, question authority, serve our local communities.

There is no doubt that the quirkiness has certainly raised the awareness of the manual to all staff and potential employees in a way few companies have been able to do. The test will be when someone (and they will) tries to defeat the manual in court – what will the court think about the quirkiness and humour.

Personally I love humour, but given all of the cases I have seen I would say leave the humour out of critical business documents such as employee handbooks. It only comes back to haunt you.

If you would like to check out their manual in full I have uploaded a copy of the Tribune Employee Manual here in PDF for your thoughts and opinions.

Is the Tribune manual great or a problem that could have been avoided?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

Heart Harmony<