Employee Handbook Quotes

Achieve employee change adoption through: Awareness, Understanding, Involvement, Learning and Motivation

Employee handbook, thou art a beotch.

Ambition. Yes, that is my God. When Ambition is your God, the office is your temple, the employee handbook your holy book. The sacred drink, coffee, is imbibed five times a day. When you worship Ambition, there is no Sabbath, no day of rest. Every day, you rise early and kneel before the God Ambition, facing in the direction of your PC. You pray alone, always alone, even though others may be present. Ambition is a vengeful God. He will smite those who fail to worship faithfully, but that is nothing compared to what He has in store for the faithful. They suffer the worst fate of all. For it is only when they are old are tired, entombed in the corner office, that the realize hits like a Biblical thunderclap. The God Ambition is a false God and has always been.

Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new...If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low. These organizations have people who will try to patch problems over after the fact, instead of motivated people eager to delight on the spot. The alternative, it seems, is to organize for joy. These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and the expectation) that they will create, connect and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who make a difference, as opposed to searching the employee handbook for a rule that was violated.

Nordstrom believes that great service begins with showing courtesy to everyone—customers, employees, and vendors.

His eyes traveled the length of me and as they were doing this, he cut me off again. “Jesus, what the f**k you got on?” I looked down at my yoga clothes then back at him. “I just got back from yoga.” His eyes took their time sliding back up my body before they locked on mine. “You finish that Employee Handbook, you make that,” he tipped his head to me, “the dress code.

The CEO of a major publishing house was concerned about the lack of creativity among his editorial and marketing staffs. He hired a group of high-priced psychologists to find out what differentiated the creative employees from the others. After studying the staff for one year, the psychologists discovered only one difference between the two groups: The creative people believed they were creative and the less creative people believed they were not.

Values define who we are, and if they change we will become something else,” Peter Nordstrom wrote in the employee publication, Loop. He described practices as “ways of doing things” and “behaviors that express our values.

Often, CEOs try to find early employees a place where they won’t do much harm, versus a place they will excel. If you find yourself thinking this way, 99% of the time the right answer is to part ways with the early employee. You can let them go with grace and they may be relieved to be free to do something new.

How to build a strong culture44 1. Have strong hiring filters in place. Explicitly filter for people with common values. You need to be careful that this does not act as a mechanism to inadvertently filter out diverse populations. You can have both a common sense of purpose and a diverse employee base at the same time. See later sections and the interview with Joelle Emerson for more information. 2. Constantly emphasize values day-to-day. Repeat them until you are blue in the face. The second you are really sick of saying the same thing over and over, you will find people have started repeating it back to you. 3. Reward people based on performance as well as culture. People should be rewarded (with promotions, financially, etc.) for both productivity and for living the company’s values. 4. Get rid of bad culture fits quickly. Fire bad culture fits even faster than you fire low performers.45 This chapter focuses on #1 above:

Disparity, Education and Economy Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity. Citizens of earth could force big tech to pay their employees fair wages tomorrow, if they just stop buying their fancy, overpriced products and go for humbler alternatives unless the companies bring down their disparities in salary. The CEO may enjoy certain benefits of their position, but not until those working at the bottom can afford the fundamentals of life for their family. I'll say it to you plainly. An employee wronged is a company wronged. You see, trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy. So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe. So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization. Ambition to climb the ladder of status so that you could be on the affluent side of disparity, is no ambition of a civilized human, it's the ambition of a caveman. So, before you pursue an ambition in life, educate yourself on a civilized definition of ambition. Yet the situation in our world is so pathetic that that's exactly the kind of ambition educational institutes sell. Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration. Concern for the society should be the bedrock of education - collective welfare should be the bedrock of economy - if not, we might as well start living as hobos on the streets, because with greed as the driving principle of education and economy, sooner or later all of us will end up on the streets.

I created a letter campaign that opened with, “What would it be worth to your company if new employees made fewer mistakes?

for those organizations that provided a stock ticker symbol, we found that high performers had 50% higher market capitalization growth over three years. They also had higher employee job satisfaction, lower rates of employee burnout, and their employees were 2.2 times more likely to recommend their organization to friends as a great place to work.

Even high-profile product and feature releases become routine by using dark launch techniques. Long before the launch date, we put all the required code for the feature into production, invisible to everyone except internal employees and small cohorts of real users, allowing us to test and evolve the feature until it achieves the desired business goal.

With these two elements in place you can now . . . - Reduce controls. Start by ripping pages from the employee handbook. Travel policies, expense policies, vacation policies—these can all go. Later, as talent becomes increasingly denser and feedback more frequent and candid, you can remove approval processes throughout the organization, teaching your managers principles like, “Lead with context, not control,” and coaching your employees using such guidelines as, “Don’t seek to please your boss.

Social media guidelines are shared with all employees who participate and are posted for the public to view at the company website.

The compensation philosophy must actively reinforce the company’s strategy and vision to achieve its objectives.      •   Compensation programs must be consistent with legal and regulatory requirements.      •   Compensation should be consistent with the financial requirements and administrative capabilities of the company.      •   Compensation must be consistent with both internal equity and external requirements to attract, retain, and motivate talented employees.      •   Compensation program details must be based on clearly defined jobs and their role within the buying and selling process.

An employee handbook both protects you and your employees when things in the workplace get difficult. Here

Government servants. These provisions are applicable only to the employees of the various Ministries, Departments and Attached and Subordinate Offices.Further, the employees, being citizens of the country also enjoy Fundamental Rights guaranteed under Part III of the Constitution and can enforce them though the Writ jurisdiction of the Courts. In addition to the constitutional provisions, there are certain rules which are applicable to the conduct of the proceedings for taking action against the erring employees. Central Civil Services (Classification, Control, and Appeal) Rules 1965 cover a vast majority of the Central Government employees.Besides, there are also several other Rules which are applicable to various sections of the employees in a number of services.(b) Semi Governmental Organisations: By this, we mean the Public Sector Undertakings and Autonomous Bodies and Societies controlled by the Government. Provisions of Part XIV of the Constitution do not apply to the employees of these Organisations.However, as these organisations can be brought within the definition of the term ‘State’ as contained in Article 12 of the Constitution, the employees of these organisations are protected against the violation of their Fundamental Rights by the orders of their employer. The action of the employer can be challenged by the employees of these organisations on the grounds of arbitrariness, etc. These organisations also have their own sets of rules for processing the cases for conducting the disciplinary proceedings against their employees.(c) Purely private organisations: These are governed by the various industrial and labour laws of the country and the approved standing orders applicable for the establishment.4. Although the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 apply only to a limited number of employees in the Government, essentially these are the codification of the Principles of Natural Justice, which are required to be followed in any quasi judicial proceedings. Even the Constitutional protections which are contained in Part XIV of the Constitution are the codification of the above Principles.Hence, the procedures which are followed in most of the Government and semi-governmental organisations are more or less similar. This handout is predominantly based on the CCS (CCA) Rules 1965.5. Complexity of the statutory provisions, significance of the stakes involved, high proportion and frequency of the affected employees seeking judicial intervention, high percentage of the cases being subjected to judicial scrutiny, huge volume of case law on the subject - are some of the features of this subject.These, among others have sparked the need for a ready reference material on the subject. Hence this handbook2

What is the relationship between Appointing Authority and Disciplinary Authority? Appointing Authorities are empowered to impose major penalties. It may be recalled that Article 311 clause (1) provides that no one can be dismissed or removed from service by an authority subordinate to the Authority which appointed him. In fact under most of the situations, the powers for imposing major penalties are generally entrusted to the Appointing Authorities. Thus Appointing Authorities happen to be disciplinary authorities. However there may be other authorities who may be empowered only to impose minor penalties. Such authorities are often referred to as lower disciplinary authorities for the sake of convenience. In this handbook, the term Disciplinary Authority has been used to signify any authority who has been empowered to impose penalty. Thereby the term includes appointing authorities also.5. How to decide the Appointing Authority, when a person acquires several appointments in the course of his/her career? CCA Rule 2(a) lays down the procedure for determining the Appointing Authority in respect of a person by considering four authorities.Besides, it must also be borne in mind that Appointing Authority goes by factum and not by rule.i.e. where an employee has been actually appointed by an authority higher than the one empowered to make such appointment as per the rules, the former shall be taken as the Appointing Authority in respect of such employee.6. What should be the over-all approach of the Disciplinary Authority? Disciplinary authorities are expected to act like a Hot Stove, which has the following characteristics: � Advance warning – One may feel the radiated heat while approaching the Hot stove.Similarly, the Disciplinary Authority should also keep the employees informed of the expected behavior and the consequences of deviant behavior. � Consistency: Hot stove always, without exception, burns those who touch it.Similarly, the disciplinary authority should also be consistent in approach. Taking a casual and lenient view during one point of time and having rigid and strict spell later is not fair for a Disciplinary Authority 4

Who is Disciplinary Authority? The term Disciplinary Authorities refers to such authorities who have been entrusted with powers to impose any penalty on the employees. In respect of the organizations falling under the purview of CCS (CCA) Rules 1965, the term Disciplinary Authority is defined in Rule 2 (g) of the CCA Rules as the authority competent to impose on a government servant any of the penalties specified in Rule 11. In this Handbook, CCS (CCA) Rules 1965 is henceforth referred to as “the Rules” Disciplinary authority is defined with reference to the post held by the employee. Various Disciplinary authorities are specified in Rule 12 of the Rules. Thus there may be more than one disciplinary authority in every organization.2. What are the kinds of Disciplinary Authorities? Normally, there are two categories of Disciplinary Authorities viz. those who can impose all penalties on the employees and the authorities who can impose only minor penalties.3. What are the powers and responsibilities of the Disciplinary Authorities? Although it is not explicitly stated anywhere, main responsibility of the Disciplinary Authority is to ensure discipline in the organization. Towards this, the disciplinary authorities are required to identify acts of indiscipline and take appropriate remedial action such as counseling, cautioning, admonition, imposition of penalties, criminal prosecution, etc3

Traditional managers will often object to hiring engineers with generalist skill sets, arguing that they are more expensive and that ‘I can hire two server administrators for every multi-skilled operations engineer.’” However, the business benefits of enabling faster flow are overwhelming. Furthermore, as Prugh notes, “[ I] nvesting in cross training is the right thing for [employees’] career growth, and makes everyone’s work more fun.

Greenfield DevOps projects are often pilots to demonstrate feasibility of public or private clouds, piloting deployment automation, and similar tools. An example of a greenfield DevOps project is the Hosted LabVIEW product in 2009 at National Instruments, a thirty-year-old organization with five thousand employees and $1 billion in annual revenue. To bring this product to market quickly, a new team was created and allowed to operate outside of the existing IT processes and explore the use of public clouds. The initial team included an applications architect, a systems architect, two developers, a system automation developer, an operations lead, and two offshore operations staff. By using DevOps practices, they were able to deliver Hosted LabVIEW to market in half the time of their normal product introductions.

If employees are viewed as mere cost factors, they will only do what they are told to do - if employees are treated as thinking and feeling beings, they will care, fight for improvements and voluntarily go the extra mile.

The first step in building trust is to trust a person.

When empathy is present, the tension eases. That is when we can move on.

People with different talents and personalities are a gift. They help us see things from a different perspective and balance out our weaknesses.

Valuing differences is the beginning of leveraging the strengths of each team member.

A sustained state of flow - a psychological state in which a person is completely immersed in an activity, experiencing optimal concentration and performance - is a good indicator that we have found our purpose.

Designing the path to the future generates energy. Contributing to the path generates engagement.

Inspiration leads to a changed mindset. A changed mindset triggers a change in behaviour.

Only what is practiced regularly generates real impact.

When the mindset of the industrial age meets the demands of today’s workplace, profound tensions arise.

Insufficient freedom of action leads to a dull implementation of given guidelines and shuts down the creative parts of our brain. Demotivation follows.

We can grow either through unintentional lessons that life teaches us or through intentional learning experiences that we consciously choose for ourselves.

Trusting employees to do the right thing is another essential element of empowerment.

A turbulent environment awakens the primal fears within us, causing our instincts to call for more control.

Inherently formed feelings and emotions such as employee motivation or trust cannot be imposed or commanded.

Effective learning changes the brain structure which in turn induces the desired behaviour.

Forcing people through pressure brings short-term results at best - in the long run it backfires and the relationship suffers.

A fertile soil, quality seeds, photosynthesis and deep roots make a tree endure. A trusting environment, inspired employees, a learning mentality and anchoring effective behaviours make a High Performing Organisation successful.

Leadership is about influencing people. Influencing people is about inspiration. Inspiration is about resonating communication.

To remain in mediocrity is the recipe for regrets in life. Development and courage are the antidote.

When opposing leadership principles clash, mistrust, conflicts and poor results usually emerge.

Mediocrity is often accepted and justified by the fear of leaving the comfort zone.

Carrot-and-stick leads to fear and proving. Empathic connection leads to development and improving.

In today’s age, we are confronted with an abundance of information. What we truly need are learning experiences that empower us to apply this information - not just the mere transmission of content.

Principles give us direction when we make decisions, even in the most turbulent environments.

Listening leads to understanding. Understanding leads to connection. Connection leads to openness.

Companies must adapt to the demands of today’s workforce and radically change their management style.

Development happens through the alternation of discomfort and stress with renewal and recovery.

Principles help us turn the values into actions.

Being clear and succinct in these moments is actually the most respectful thing you can do: you’re treating your employee like a mature adult and giving them the information they need to do better.

A Sentient Incompetent employee is preferable to one who is Insentient Competent

An employee wronged is a company wronged.

Are you an employer of choice in the minds of your employees? How do they feel about your sustainability and ESG efforts? Have you ever asked? You may want to think about the upcoming battle for talent. And that battle is on a personal level.

I can teach anybody [the computer operating system] Linux,” said La Gesse. “I can’t teach them to actually care.” Rackspace specifically looks for people like this, who fit the company’s customer-focused culture. Here’s a passage from its Fanatical Support Promise: We cannot promise that hardware won’t break, that software won’t fail, or that we will always be perfect. What we can promise is that if something goes wrong, we will rise to the occasion, take action, and help resolve the issue.

DevOps requires potentially new cultural and management norms and changes in our technical practices and architecture. This requires a coalition that spans business leadership, Product Management, Development, QA, IT Operations, Information Security, and even Marketing, where many technology initiatives originate. When all these teams work together, we can create a safe system of work, enabling small teams to quickly and independently develop and validate code that can be safely deployed to customers. This results in maximizing developer productivity, organizational learning, high employee satisfaction, and the ability to win in the marketplace.

Our human ancestors have evolved in specific evolutionary environments that shaped our cognitive systems in specific ways, prioritizing safety and security in our immediate environments and focusing our attention to immediate threats of survival and uncertainty. Because of these cognitive limitations, when faced with contexts of increased uncertainty, employees use available cognitive resources to cope with the perceived uncertainty to regain a sense of control, and therefore, they are unlikely to engage in discretionary or high-performance behaviors that would require additional cognitive demands. As a consequence, desirable behavior such as organizational citizenship behavior (Kenrick et al., 2010) is likely to be reduced.

Valve: Handbook for New Employees” from Gabe’s company. As Chris put it: “It’s the only HR document you will ever knowingly want to read.

The janitor shouted something at us that the FunJungle Employee Handbook expressly forbade employees to say in front of the guests.

I have identified seven elements essential to Apple’s software success: Inspiration: Thinking big ideas and imagining what might be possible Collaboration: Working together well with other people and seeking to combine your complementary strengths Craft: Applying skill to achieve high-quality results and always striving to do better Diligence: Doing the necessary grunt work and never resorting to shortcuts or half measures Decisiveness: Making tough choices and refusing to delay or procrastinate Taste: Developing a refined sense of judgment and finding the balance that produces a pleasing and integrated whole Empathy: Trying to see the world from other people’s perspectives and creating work that fits into their lives and adapts to their needs There weren’t any company handbooks describing these elements. Nobody outlined this list in a new-employee orientation. There weren’t any signs affixed to the walls of our Cupertino campus exhorting us to “Collaborate!” On the contrary, we felt, on an instinctive level, that imposing a fixed methodology might snuff out the innovation we were seeking. Therefore, our approach flowed from the work. This happened from the top down, stemming from the unquestioned authority and uncompromising vision of Steve Jobs, and it happened from the ground up, through the daily efforts of designers and programmers you’ve never heard of, people like me and my colleagues, some of whom I’ll tell you about.

Being terminated for any of the items listed below may constitute wrongful termination: Discrimination: The employer cannot terminate employment because the employee is a certain race, nationality, religion, sex, age, or (in some jurisdictions) sexual orientation. Retaliation: An employer cannot fire an employee because the employee filed a claim of discrimination or is participating in an investigation for discrimination. In the US, this "retaliation" is forbidden under civil rights law. Reporting a Violation of Law to Government Authorities: also known as a whistleblower law, an employee who falls under whistleblower protections may not lawfully be fired for reporting an employer's legal violation or for similar activity that is protected by the law. Employee's refusal to commit an illegal act: An employer is not permitted to fire an employee because the employee refuses to commit an act that is illegal. Employer is not following the company's own termination procedures: In some cases, an employee handbook or company policy outlines a procedure that must be followed before an employee is terminated. If the employer fires an employee without following this procedure, depending upon the laws of the jurisdiction in which the termination occurs, the employee may have a claim for wrongful termination. … In the United States, termination of employment is not legal if it is based on your membership in a group protected from discrimination by law. It is unlawful for an employer to terminate an employee based upon factors including employee's race, religion, national origin, sex, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, or age (over 40), pursuant to U.S. federal laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967. … Many laws also prohibit termination, even of at-will employees. For example, whistleblower laws may protect an employee who reports a legal or safety violation by the employer to an appropriate oversight agency. Most states prohibit employers from firing employees in retaliation for filing a workers' compensation claim, or making a wage complaint over unpaid wages. [firing someone for political affiliation or activism away from work is not on the list]

Sooner or later you realize the need for my stress relief workshop. The latest research shows the more employees relieve stress, the more productivity employers see in the workplace. And you can imagine the benefit of more productivity, can you not? The sooner you call me; the more options you have for convenient scheduling. Try to resist the urge to call me today because relieving stress makes you feel so good!

John Patterson, president of National Cash Register, was a fan of Napoleon. Patterson rode horseback with his executives every day at 5 a.m. He demanded that they maintain a "little red book" to record daily activities, thoughts, ideas, and so on. He ruthlessly fired many an employee who failed to maintain a notebook.

Whenever Thomas Edison was about to hire a new employee, he would invite the applicant over for a bowl of soup. If the person salted his soup before tasting it, Edison would not offer him the job. He did not hire people who had too many assumptions built into their everyday life. Edison wanted people who consistently challenged assumptions.

the IBM Surveillance Insight for Financial Services dashboard is a “cognitive surveillance engine” that uses the power of Watson (yes, the Jeopardy-playing computer) to take in and piece together unstructured data, such as employee email, as well as structured data, such as trade transactions, to create a thorough surveillance system that can alert flesh-and-blood compliance personnel to potential issues.

«Valve: Handbook for New Employees»,

In most business books, the role of the CEO boils down to a small number of key responsibilities. The CEO: Sets the overall direction and strategy of the company and communicates this direction regularly to employees, customers, investors, etc. Hires, trains, and allocates company employees against this overall direction while maintaining company culture. Raises and/or allocates capital against this overall direction. Acts as chief psychologist of the company. Founders are often surprised by the extent to which people and organizational issues start to dominate their time.

Recognition is powerful, as long as it’s authentic and specific. Whatever their level on the inverted pyramid, employees wants to feel needed and valued.

Awareness is the number one step in ensuring security, both physical security and information security. Awareness ensures that the chances or risks of vulnerability and threats to security are reduced considerably. Toward this end, it is essential to provide organizationwide security awareness programs to all employees (permanent or temporary), contractors, suppliers/vendors, customers, and all other relevant stakeholders who have access to the organization or its information.