Employee will not come into the office and managers will not enforce it [closed]

Question

So the company's CEO sent out a mandate for employees to return to the offices this week. However, there were several employees in my building that have not come back when I do my rounds checking that employees have returned.I am an HR analyst so it is part of my job to manage these sorts of things.

One employee replied that he was healing from foot surgery and said that his manager exempted him from returning and planned to let him work remotely for the next two weeks. I asked him why he couldn't use crutches as the memo had no exemptions listed. He didn't reply, but just forwarded me to his manager. I questioned his manager about it and he said that I could take it up with his manager if I was so insistent. Not wanting to jump around, I messaged the Managing Director -- New York and North America Seaboard and she replied that if this persons manager feels that this employee should get an exemption to heal, she is fine with that, especially when his role is not client facing anyway.

The memo did not allow for any exemptions so I messaged another managing director for a different office to see what he thought of what this other managing director did. He did not reply at all. I tried yet another managing director, the one for San Francisco and he replied to say that city operations are the responsibility of the local managing director.

So I emailed the employee to tell him that he risked termination and his manager's manager apparently got hold of that email and told him no and asked my boss to explain the meaning of my email and my boss doesn't want to pursue the matter further.

I don't know what I should do at this point. Nobody seems to want to enforce the mandate.

Where in the USA do people value rules? Would the MD of Denver be more likely to agree with me?

Answer 1

Working from home temporarily for medical reasons has been a thing since long before the pandemic; even in offices that normally have a strict butts in seats policy.

At a minimum, I recommend you drop this immediately. Apologizing for acting like an insensitive jerk would also be a good idea.

Answer 2

I would raise the concern with whomever has given you the direction to enforce the CEO's mandate. If no such direction had been given, it is not your job to ensure that every single individual is present.

You said the memo didn't allow for any exemptions. Have all employees had their vacation/sick time revoked? If not, clearly there are some reasonable exceptions. The world is not nearly as black and white as you seem to think. Traversing the gray areas is particularly important in HR.

Your actions here are incredibly unprofessional: digging into an employee's personal situation, questioning the manager's judgment, and trying to get Managing Directors from other offices to override each other. I would be very surprised if you don't get hard, pointed feedback from your boss.

Answer 3

What you're describing here is, to put it bluntly, very unprofessional and downright obsessive. Who cares if he works from home for an extra two weeks due to a surgery? Why are you so determined to make sure that no one gets any exemptions for any reason, even when multiple layers of management are ok with it - just to say that you followed all of the rules?

It's not at all clear to me that the CEO even intended for their memo to be carried out so literally and rigidly - at least 3 managers in your firm (including a Managing Director), who I assume read the memo, apparently didn't think so, which suggests to me that you're not understanding it. The mere fact that they didn't list any exceptions in the memo doesn't mean that they didn't think that there should be any. They probably simply didn't think of spelling out "recently received foot surgery" as an exemption (or they regarded circumstances like that as obvious enough of an exception that they didn't think that it was necessary). The mere existence of a memo or policy on something doesn't mean that you shouldn't use your common sense in carrying it out.

Also, dragging unrelated third parties in (and especially shopping around for a managing director who will agree with you, even though they have no involvement in managing the individual in question) is extremely manipulative. Don't do that.

That kind of obsessive, rigid thinking can be a sign of mental illness, such as Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder. (Note that a major characteristic of this condition is that this behavior seems perfectly normal to people who have it, so even if you think everything is ok that doesn't mean that it is). I would strongly encourage you to get evaluated by a competent medical professional to see if this is the case.

Even if you don't have a diagnosable medical condition, I would strongly encourage you to read several books by Albert Ellis to help you be more flexible in your thinking patterns - otherwise, I 100% guarantee you that this kind of behavior will have major professional and personal consequences down the road (if you haven't already started having them).

Answer 4

It sounds like you need to have a chat with your boss about what your job actually is. From what I've read about "the job of an HR analyst", your job is to report on the behavior of people, not to try to force them to do anything. Managing their behavior is the job of their manager.

The question ends with something that can't be answered here, but the real question appears to be based on: "I don't know what I should do at this point."

So what you should do is ask your manager about your responsibilities. I'd normally add that you should tell them how you've been handling this situation, but I'm also hesitant to suggest it because you might be fired on the spot if you do. (Yeah, what you're doing sounds that bad.)

Answer 5

I'll try to answer with another perspective. Look at it this way. The authority has decided that people should be back to office. Things are not happening as planned, for many reasons (someone being ill, amongst others).

One possible conclusion (yours) is that people should follow authority whatever happens. Another possible conclusion (everyone else's, here or in your firm) is that the initial order may have been brutal and excessive, and therefore, things not happening as planned is not that bad.

Orders are given by human beings, not by god(s), in our corporate world. Human beings are by definition fallible. So the order was not perfect - it did forget to allow for exemptions (health or others). That's life. Mistakes happen. Bosses do mistakes, not only us mere low-level employees. And they know it : they don't think enforcing the new regulation upon someone with health problems will would be a good idea.

I can understand where you come from. In some cultures, obeying the boss's orders blindly at any cost is considered as a religious duty. But this does not apply to the corporate world. You have to follow the direction, of course, but sometimes you meet a special case, not forecasted by the authority, that require sidewards thinking. This is exactly the situation you are in. That person has a health problem making work from home especially fit for him/her, so the authority's decision has to be bent to adapt this specific case.

Which does not mean people should not be back to the office overall - just that one needs to consider specific cases. Which your own management did. You'd be well inspired to follow their example.