There are organizations that will tell you "No one really reads all the policies in our employee handbook or our policy manual — we just ignore them" but when you find yourself on the wrong end of one of those policies, things may change!
The fact is that a company handbook is a window into the corporate soul.
The words in the employee handbook are the ones your company's leaders chose to communicate their preferred relationship with their employees.
If the handbook is full of policies that treat employees like criminals or wayward children instead of qualified, competent adults, how good can the culture possibly be?
Here are seven policies that signal a no-trust culture:
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No-Reference Policy
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Attendance as a Disciplinary Issue
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No Flexibility in Work Time or Place
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Employee Ranking
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Managers Approve Internal Transfers
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Doctor's Notes
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Funeral Notice
If you hire or promote someone into a management job, presumably you trust them.
However, many large organizations forbid their managers from giving references for former employees — making it that much harder for the former employee to get a new job!
These companies don't trust their own managers to give a reference without sliming the former employee and creating a defamation claim. How could you entrust your brand to an organization that doesn't trust its own managers to give references?
Attendance is a non-issue in a healthy organization. People naturally come to work when they feel valued and empowered. If a company treats attendance as a disciplinary issue, particularly for salaried employees, there there's no trust in the organization.
I ran HR for a Fortune 500 company whose attendance policy for salaried employees was "Please let your manager know if you won't be at work."
We had zero problems with attendance issues because we treated employees as adults — the way every trusting leadership team does.
High-trust organizations are flexible. They understand that their employees have busy lives outside of work. If your prospective employer offers no flexibility at all regarding work hours and doesn't allow people to work from home no matter what, run away!
Only no-trust organizations line up their employees and compare them to one another in a forced ranking program. These programs have no business benefit, but they keep employees feeling afraid and vulnerable.
Some management teams like it that way.
If an employee wants to quit their job and go to work for your competitor, they don't need their manager's approval to do it. If they want to transfer to another department, they shouldn't need approval for that, either.
If a company has no trust, they'll put managers in complete control of their employees' career progress — the perfect way to send your best employees out the door!
Companies that hire adults don't require employees to bring in a doctor's note when they miss a couple of days of work due to illness or injury.
Many people don't go to the doctor when they have the flu, for instance — and some doctors tell people to stay home so they don't infect other patients in the waiting room!
If your employer doesn't trust you, it doesn't matter how well they pay or how nice the view is from their office windows. You can't afford to dim your flame working for people who don't see you as an equal — and a valued contributor.
Even worse than the doctor's note requirement is the common HR policy that requires employees to bring in a funeral notice in order to receive a few days' bereavement pay when a family member passes away.
This despicable policy has no place in a healthy culture.
Creativity, innovation and collaboration will never spring from a fearful work environment. Good managers know that!
You can ask your manager Lynn about the handbook, but I would read Glassdoor reviews instead. There are good companies that still have outdated, evil employee handbooks full of Mad Men-era policies, but there are fewer of them all the time.
If you really want the job, tell Lynn that you're interested in the assignment but concerned about the low level of trust communicated in the employee handbook. Tell her you want to take the job on a contract basis for six months.
As a contractor you may not be bound by the employee handbook. If Lynn balks, maybe it's a sign it's not the right job for you!
All the best,
Liz
Liz Ryan is CEO/founder of Human Workplace and author of Reinvention Roadmap. Follow her on Twitter and read Forbes columns.