Designing Human-Centered Workplace Policies

Cristina Amigoni: “It’s not to say that there are potential for abusing in unlimited PTO policy. There is a potential for that. Hopefully, most people show up with accountability, self-accountability, and self-responsibility.”

Alex Cullimore: Welcome to Uncover the Human where every conversation revolves around enhancing all the connections in our lives.

Cristina Amigoni: Whether that's with our families, coworkers, or even ourselves.

Alex Cullimore: When we can be our authentic selves, magic happens.

Cristina Amigoni: This is Cristina Amigoni.

Alex Cullimore: This is Alex Cullimore. 

Both: Let's dive in.

“Authenticity means freedom.”

“Authenticity means going with your gut.”

“Authenticity is bringing 100% of yourself not just the parts you think people want to see, but all of you.”

“Being authentic means that you have integrity to yourself.”

“It's the way our intuition is whispering something deep-rooted and true.”

“Authenticity is when you truly know yourself. You remember and connect to who you were before others told you who you should be.”

“It's transparency, relatability. No frills. No makeup. Just being.”

[EPISODE]

Alex Cullimore: Welcome back to this episode of Uncover the Human. Today, it's a host today. Cristina, talking about one thing that's very just near and dear to our cause it happens all the time and always there's just a lot of easy ways to miss the mark on this one. But thinking about designing and implementing human-based policies and incentives. So, thinking about things that make sense for people when we're trying to create structures and rules that govern large bodies of people.

Cristina Amigoni: Sorry. I'm completely distracted by the fact that you didn't say just hosts, which is very impressive.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. You were waiting for me to say.

Cristina Amigoni: Which is very impressive. Almost completely distracted by the fact that a friend of mine commented on one of our posts on LinkedIn where we talk about here's the three words that we avoid saying and just as one of them. She says like, “Oh, what's your opinion on only?” I'm like, “Huh. I would say only goes into the same category as just. Use it wisely and make sure it's not used in a way of demeaning or undermining or undervaluing the actual full picture of something.”

Alex Cullimore: Yes. It's very easy to use only in like, “Oh, we're only changing this department. It's the same as just this department or just this thing or just this one. We're

just doing it this week. It's only for one week.” Use it sparingly or use it very deliberately. 

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. So, now that we're completely off track, what are we talking about? Oh, human incentives and positive policies.

Alex Cullimore: Yes.

Cristina Amigoni: You only get five sick days in a year.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. I was just talking to a friend of mine who was talking about their corporate bereavement policy. So unfortunately, they had multiple losses in their family within like a month. But the bereavement is like five days in a year. I mean, that's the kind of thing that like, what happens if you have a deeply unlucky year that happens to fall in the same calendar year? What happens when you do – is that really a reasonable expectation? Now, I'm not sure that a lot of companies I would hope would really like stand by that so firmly that they'd be upset if you used more bereavement days. It's just insane to think about things like that. Sick days. 

Yes, you're likely, I would hope, just for your own health and well-being, not going to get sick for more than five days in a year to the point where it's just not worth getting up and it's not going to be helpful to you or to anybody that you're working with. But what if you do? What if you end up with some kind of long-term? Yes, there's long-term, there's leaves, there's whatever else, but is it really helpful to designate that you get five sick days?

Cristina Amigoni: I actually remember when I started my corporate career in New York 20 some years ago. For corporate, for the standard corporate America, I learned later on it was a very generous PTO and sick day policy. Coming from Europe, I thought it was abysmal. So, it was a culture shock when I actually learned that this was one of the best time off policies out there because I had no idea how bad it could actually be, until I got other jobs and then I learned.

But I remember when there's some point the company I was working for had, again from US standards, a generous PTO policy, plus a number of sick days and I think it were around five. Five sounds about right. Also, as a company, they closed – the whole company would shut down for a week or 10 days or so between Christmas and New Year’s. About a week between Christmas and New Year’s. So, that was kind of an additional like everybody's off so that's your time off. I remember when after maybe the first year I was there, they decided to not have to distinguish. It was more work to have to distinguish between sick days and PTO days. So, it just became like a large pool. And so now you take whatever days you need for whatever reason you need, and you don't have to worry about like, “Oh, I only have five sick days and I got the flu and I used three in January and now I can't get sick.”

But psychologically, it helped a lot because it was no longer this, do I count a sick day or if I want to go on vacation and I only have seven days left, can I count two sick days to allow me to fly in out, or all of that complication?

Alex Cullimore: There's no reason not to use the sick days. We've used the example before. We had friends who worked at DISH, which is a major employer in Colorado. At one point, they instituted like, they wanted people in the office from nine to five. They wanted people literally for those hours, and so the people who were working long hours were suddenly incentivized to only work those hours, and the people who weren't working all of those hours were still not more productive during those times.

You can see the impetus behind these policies. You can see why it started. So, let's talk a little bit about those first, like the reasons that we end up creating policies and why they end up going awry. There's good reason. You can see why people want – they think they want more productivity so they're going to like demand more time in the office. The thing is, that's not incentivizing people to work more in the office. People being in their chairs doesn't mean they're working. It never did. It never will.

Cristina Amigoni: Doesn’t.

Alex Cullimore: You're not actually incentivized to do that work. So, we need to think about what we're really trying to incentivize and what the human response to that is. It's easy to throw out these policies. It's easy to throw out five sick days because it sounds right, and it's easy for that to immediately become, “Okay, so since I want more vacation time and I didn't get sick this year, I'm going to use three sick days on the end of this vacation. I'm very ill on the beach in Barbados right now,” so it will happen to be ill in the last three days.

Cristina Amigoni: Got food poisoning. It's so true. Actually, it ties to an article we both read at the beginning of the week, which was actually about measures and how I was talking about something that we are very passionate about, and we actually had a podcast on. A measure is not a target. And this is the same thing. The incentive is not the target. If you incentivize people to come to the office or take only a number of sick days, they're going to find a way to do that. So, what are you actually after? What do you want to see happening?

Alex Cullimore: I have to guess that most of the time what we are really looking for is people who would use that in an earnest way, who aren't going to abuse the system, but know that they have the flexibility to do things, like take time off and have some sick days. We want people who we can trust to do that. The interesting thing about putting a policy on that is it breeds some level of mistrust. Because the corporate culture can be so, it's very similar to like the legal structures, at least in America, like the don't tend to matter, the things like contracts, things like laws, they don't matter until they're broken. Then you can really dig into the nitty gritty and the line-by-line details.

So, people might understand that this is mostly a kind of follow the spirit of the law type of thing where it's, yes, you're generally five sick days. Nobody's going to get too mad if you end up having seven in a year or whatever. People might understand that overall. But if you end up in hot water or you have a frustrating manager or you have some other politics that are being played and suddenly that's now used against you, everybody's really reticent to misuse a policy because it can be then evaluated as like, “Oh, look at these times, you didn't follow the rules,” even though maybe at the time, that was just, it felt like that was the spirit of it and nobody was upset that you used more sick days because everybody understands you happen to get COVID that year or something.

Whatever it is, it makes people really worried not to follow these policies. While simultaneously, that's why I think it ends up removing the trust because you can't know when that's going to be used against you, so you think you have to try and follow the policy, but if the policy doesn't make sense, then you just get frustrated and you're like, “Wait, why am I throwing sick days on the end of my vacation?”

Cristina Amigoni: Well, and it's very similar to just looking at a one-way policy or a one-way accountability to the policy. For example, let's say you have sick days and you don't use any of them, or you have five in a year and you use three. So, there's no giving back. Typically, sick days are not given back, which means you lose the other two. Then the next year, you need seven sick days, but the policy is five. So, you get punished potentially, depending on how the policy is enforced and the human side of actually looking at things is you could potentially be in the losing of like, “I'm only allowed five sick days because I will be imposed, but the two that I didn't use last year don't count.”

It has to be a two-way door. If the policy requires accountability on one end, then accountability has to show up on the other end as well. So, whether it's an accumulative sick day, if you only use three one year, you get two more the next year. But it can be this one way of like, “Well, if you don't use them, then we take them away. But if you need more, well, that's a no.”

Alex Cullimore: That's a perfect way of describing it. It is down to the relationship of the employer. I mean, that is playing well to the social contract, not just the contract. So, the social contract between employer and employee of assuming that there is a two-way door here. For a long time, we've kind of treated this like, employers get to do whatever they want to employees. They could just designate these. And to some extent, that's true. They have the ability to fire people. They have the ability to take people out of companies.

So, it's always a bit of an unequal power structure. Given that, there's so many studies out there that are like, “Oh, the high-performing teams have trust. High-performing teams have trust.” That's part of creating that trust, is having those two-way policies and showing that, yes, we're giving these things and we understand that this is what we're asking of you, and in return, here's what we're willing to give, is what we can do to help you get there, and that builds that builds that trust, builds that relationship.

Obviously, it happens on the person-to-person level when the manager is the one enforcing it, but that still comes from the company level, and it does read trust or lack of trust to the larger organization. I can already feel, in anybody who is listening and is worried about policies, the resistance and the holding onto things like, “Well, what happens when people start taking advantage of this?” I said, “Okay, you can have as many sick days as you want, and now suddenly I have employees who are gone for months at a time.”

First of all, I would be shocked if somebody is out there doing that. That's usually not what people. If it is, that's probably a different culture issue or a different specific personality issue. First off, you've hired the wrong people or you've created a vast system of mistrust that people really want to abuse because they don't feel listened to or they feel very taken advantage of, and so they're happy to take advantage in return. That's first off.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, and it goes with the unlimited PTO policies, as that has become enormous in a lot of places. It's that kind of worry, like, “Well, if I do unlimited PTO, then somebody's going to be gone for three months at a time.” Well, again, it goes back to the problem is now that they're taking advantage of the unlimited PTO policy. The problem is that the culture is either too miserable for them to want to work or you hire the wrong person that doesn't want to work, or doesn't feel like they're providing value, or whatever the reason is for taking the time off. It becomes something that's a necessity that's when you have FMLA, the leave conversations and whatever other policies you can impose.

The funny thing is that if you look at the data, the data shows that in companies where you have unlimited PTO, people actually take less PTO than in companies where they have a certain number of PTO days.

Alex Cullimore: And you can see how that happens. We've been part of a few companies and usually the policy is you can take all the time off you want, just make sure your work is covered, which given the infinite scope and wheel of work and the fact that we tend to burn down to the minimum staff possible to do anything, it's really hard to often get that work covered to have that available or to feel like you're not leaving people in a lurch, which people tend to not want to do. So, you end up not taking that PTO or you feel like culturally people aren't taking that PTO so I don't know if I can. That doesn't send a great message either because then what are you saying to your people if people aren't taking advantage of that or they can't or they get guilt when they do, then you end up with this, again, violates that two-way door because it's saying that you can do as much as you want, but the second you do that, then there's other little pushback or whatever or the reasons that you I feel like you can take that.

I get why people set these policies. I get that people are worried about it being taken advantage of, but it really – if that trust has already been violated, yes, I guess you would have to rule much more by an iron fist and you're still going to burn everybody out. There's still a very short-term play in that. You might be able to do that for some amount of time until other companies can offer a better system of trust that they can go jump to. 

Cristina Amigoni: It's also amazing because if you actually have that trust and relationship with the employees, you don't even need to count how many days off they take. You just know. You know whether they're showing up and being fully productive when they're there. It's not even a thing. I remember one of the people that was working in our teams in the past has recently – once we moved on, has recently said like, “Oh, God, I kind of feel bad because on the team. I was the one that took the most PTO and you kept encouraging me to take more.” I realized like, “Oh, first of all, I never felt like you weren't here and producing and I probably encouraged more because it felt like you were doing so much work and providing so much value that I was hoping we were taking breaks. But I never actually sat down and counted how many days of PTO you took versus somebody else on the team.”

The feeling of providing value was very equal. Sometimes it was the point of like, “Please take time off.”

Alex Cullimore: Yes. That is a perfect example of what the balance looks like and what the intention is. So, the intention of an unlimited PTO policy is that people should have the flexibility – well, in my perfect world of any policy I would design, the intention would be to let people have all the time that they possibly can have, like you should have all that time to have life, to be able to do these things. With the understanding that obviously if you've been hired to do a job, we need that accomplished at some level. It needs to be at least run or run smoothly.

If you can find ways to do that, and to your point, it doesn't even feel like that person's gone because they've just, they've done enough. They've made sure they're covering their bases when they're gone and nobody's feeling burnt out by that. Everybody's happy to do that coverage, live in that hole, then there's no reason not to take as much of that as possible and to continue to encourage that.

So, what you really want is people to provide that value and that will be maximized as we all know by having time away as well. It's good to have that time off and what you really want is the good value to come out of that. When we think about designing policies, really think about what the outcome we're looking for is. It's not, “Oh, we want to make sure that we are competitive in the market with how many vacation days we're offering, or what that looks like.” Yes, maybe, I guess, to some extent, you don't want people to immediately be like, “Wow, I get two days off a year, but anywhere else I would get three weeks. I'm out of here.” Yes, I guess you should look around a little bit.

But again, what are the behaviors you're really looking for? And what do you really want from this? If you want people to be in the office, what are you looking for from that? How can you encourage that? How can you make sure that's happening when people are there? How can you make sure that it's flexible enough for the edge cases of, “Oh, I have a doctor's appointment?” That's still okay, that people don't feel like, “Oh, I've been told there's a really strict be-in-the-office these days, policy, and I can't take this appointment.” How do you make sure that you have that balance? And I think the key is really just thinking about it from what you really actually want and building the trust enough to allow that to happen. If people are taking advantage of that, knowing what the accountability structures are to reinforce like you're abusing this policy, we don't feel like we're getting the fair agreement out of this.

So, trying to rule by that like what's the spirit of this? If somebody does that, maybe be transparent about it, not only to them, but to everybody else so that they don't feel like this is just randomly punishing and oh I don't know where the where the line is on unlimited PTO or something, make sure that people know like, “Yes, this person we haven't limited PTO. It's not like this person was wrong for taking those days, but we have so little coverage now we're being hurt as a company and everything that we're trying to do. So, we are now violating the second clause in this where it's no longer supporting the mission and we can't keep going forward.” 

Cristina Amigoni: Indeed. It's not to say that there are potential for abusing an unlimited PTO policy. There is the potential for that. Hopefully, most people show up with accountability, self-accountability, and self-responsibility and don't do that. And again, like dig deeper on why that may be happening when it is happening and have those conversations. So, I think that's also a big piece. When there is lack of value being provided, like a productivity being provided, and then have the conversation, like figure out like what is going on and adjust as needed. Maybe this isn't the right type of – if this is a culture where the work is needed all the time and there is no flexibility because it has a huge impact, then maybe it is the wrong environment for somebody who needs more flexibility in when they can show up and when they don't need to necessarily show up as productive.

But those are all conversations. That's where it becomes a human thing, not just the, this is the policy on paper thing. We all drive in speed at some point, but we know we're not supposed to. That's not the rule. So, where's that flexibility?

Alex Cullimore: At some point, yes. I don't think I've ever not sped.

Cristina Amigoni: The 10 miles over, that's acceptable.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, at least. That's exactly it. I remember at one point, and I was either a coach or a therapist at some point, talks about boundaries, and boundaries aren't just what you won't do, but the circumstances under which you will or won't do something. I'm able to give this much time or this much type of time for under these circumstances and not these circumstances. So, getting a little bit more nuanced with it and allowing for those edge cases and understanding where those lines are and being able to articulate that and then have that conversation with somebody when boundaries are violated. Having a boundary or like setting up a rule or any kind of policy, there's going to be things you didn't predict. That doesn’t mean, you can't adjust and change those things to try and help clarify over time. But again, it's all conversations and being very upfront about why things are changing.

Instead of feeling like there's just very off-the-cuff or rod strokes, this applies to everybody and we're going to totally ignore all the edge cases and good luck fitting your life into this. Those are the things that drive down morale that make you feel untrusted, that stop the ability to keep people where you want, that would keep the behaviors you want to keep.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, indeed. There's also something else that has shifted quite dramatically, which impacts the social contract between employers and employees and the policies is the fact that now work follows us everywhere. We have computers at home. We have personal computers at home. We have smartphones that have everything or more than our personal computers do. So, that social contract of I only get paid for 40 hours a week if I'm in it, example, I can’t remember which one is it, is employee and I don't get paid for working over. I only get five sick days a year. I only get a certain number of PTOs. That's great.

Which really means when I get an email or a request at 5:01, I cannot be expected to actually answer it. Again, it can be a one-way thing where I get punished for working less or having a doctor's appointment or needing one more day of sick days a year. But then, I also get taken advantage about the fact that I am reachable 24/7. If I don't actually respond, that's the problem, that it doesn't work.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, you can't demand both things. I think, that's again, that two-way, and that's like people are worried about being taken advantage of on both sides of the spectrum. We're very worried about being taken advantage of by our employers because there is a power dynamic mismatch. We're very worried about our employees taking advantage of our policies because we have some goal we want from them. But instead of approaching that as human to human where here's what we need and would like from our employees versus here's what we're just going to demand. It's a very different conversation. It's a very different moral field and there's just a different respect on both sides. If you show that respect, you're likely to get that respect. If you're not getting it, that might be more of a singular person issue or some way that the policy is being announced that is really turning people off rather than this is now we have to get even stricter on our policies.

I remember early in my career, I was doing daily stand-ups or something for some project and it was at 8:30 in the morning, which was already, a little, little bit early, but there was one employee who was consistently late, wasn't showing up to that 8:30. And so the choice by the manager was to turn this into 7am meetings. We all had to be there. And that was very discouraging for the 80 % of the team that showed up at 8”30 and was able to do it. Then suddenly, had to show up way earlier, change their entire personal schedule. Like people who had kids had had to change their dropping off at school schedules, people who had to catch trains or whatever. Now, it's a different train. It's a different time of day. You're waking up in the dark, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all for one employee. 

That's the problem with trying to rule by exception and trying to stamp out all the exceptions and put everything in firm black-and-white print. It doesn't leave enough flexibility for the ones who can accept the flexibility who are likely the ones driving a lot more value.

Cristina Amigoni: Well, which again, like address the situation with the one individual. If everybody else is showing up and the one individual is not showing up, have that conversation. Is it going to be hard? Yes, it is going to be hard. Welcome to the world. It's one individual or two individuals you address the problem with them. I had a similar actually experience where we were trying to figure out a stand up, a daily stand up or not even daily, but it was like two or three times a week. And because of our calendars being so booked, the suggestion was, let's do it at 6.30am, which is not ideal for anybody involved. There was that, like, can we all, is this okay? It was actually asked. It was like, do we all agree to 6.30am? And we all said, “Okay, fine.” We realized how much more difficult it is to do it at other times. Let's give the flexibility to the team because we all said yes, we all committed to that.

Well, lo and behold, come to show up to this meeting and the same individual wasn't showing up at all, weeks and weeks on end. Then when we brought that up, it was like, “Why are we having this meeting if one crucial individual keeps not showing up?” I had the conversation with the individual and I asked, like, “What's going on?” And he says, like, “Well, I said yes, but I never agreed that that would work for me.” I'm like, “Well, first of all, then say no.”

Alex Cullimore: That's not saying yes, then is it?

Cristina Amigoni: That's not a yes. And second of all, from the manager in that coin, it's like, have the conversation with him. You notice he's not here. We all do. This is a team of five. This is not 50. It's very clear that the same person is not showing up. So, what kind of culture and morale does that show? And what kind of type of ethical behavior does that show? Address it. Let's not pretend that nobody notices that the same individual is not showing up every single day.

Alex Cullimore: Oh, it's so common. It's so common. Ultimately, if you want to go to sign some human incentives, first of all, think about the behaviors you're really trying to encourage and set those down as like, here's what we want to see people do. Then set down things like guidelines for like, here's situations where we might be wondering if this is really being followed. If you want to do the unlimited PTO example. Okay, we have unlimited PTO, that means you can take as many days as you want. Here's situations in which we'd be more concerned that people are taking advantage of that or it's no longer in the spirit of we want to give people the flexibility to take off when they want to take off.

Maybe now we're seeing projects struggle or we're suddenly missing key components at crucial deadlines or there's some gaps in knowledge that are being missed. It's not like all of those can be covered all the time, but knowing how much that impact is and starting to think of the dilemmas that you'll eventually face of, “Okay, now it seems like we're trying to decide whether this person is taking too much advantage to this policy or whether it's really in the spirit of it.” Those are the questions to ask yourself and try and lay down in the guidelines and then assume you'll have to iteratively improve this. There's going to be things you miss, there's going to be things that you want to improve over time, and just allow that to be the case that there's still that movement, that flexibility and make that the social contract that, “Hey, yes, what we're encouraging is we want people to be able to take whatever time they need to take for doctors, appointments, for et cetera.” What we need for that to happen is very clear communication. What we need for this to happen, and here's examples of when that would be happening. Here's examples of when that would not be happening.

We're not going to cover all the bases, but give them an idea. Give them the idea that this is spirit of what we're trying to accomplish. We would like to trust you to make that happen in the spirit of it, not in the letter of it. 

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, that's exactly it. It's like create those scenarios. Think of the possible scenarios, the human-based scenarios, and figure out how do we communicate the type of scenarios. And also, does the policy allow for those scenarios? Is it possible that somebody can take one hour or two hours off for a doctor's appointment and not have to take a whole sick day or a PTO day, especially if that person is also going to be required or expected to work until 7pm or 8pm most nights because that's when things need to happen or because there's deadlines.

So, where's that flexibility? And also, come up with those scenarios, as the policy allow for completely normal and possible scenarios. That can be part of the communication is like, here's some examples of scenarios and how we expect to show up in those scenarios.

Alex Cullimore: Yes, I think that's the best way to start thinking about like this is something that happens with change all the time and then changes really at the end of the day, essentially some type of policy direction. You're trying to say, “Hey, this is how we're going to do this. This is how we'd like this to work. If you're going to restructure how your organization is functioning, this is what we're trying to get out of it. Here's why that's important. Here's what we think this will do for us, and here's” – once you know that, you also have a way better feedback on whether that's actually accomplishing what you're hoping it's accomplishing. And everybody can try and make those on-the-ground decisions you couldn't possibly cover in a specific one policy or one idea that people can still make a decision towards the overall goal.

So, know the direction, know the intention, and let people get there and hold accountable to people who are not following towards the attention and the intention that has been set.

Cristina Amigoni: Exactly. So, remember there's humans on the other side of the policy. There is a middle ground.

Alex Cullimore: Yes. And we can all lower our stress levels a little bit if we can allow for that flexibility. It is hard to allow for that flexibility if you're unwilling to have the hard conversations. So, trade yourself up, rate crucial conversations, do some conflict restriction training, whatever it takes to help yourself get into those, because that's going to pay off so many dividends. If that's what you're essentially avoiding is hard conversations.

Cristina Amigoni: Yes, exactly. So good luck.

Alex Cullimore: Good luck. 

Cristina Amigoni: Thanks for listening. 

[OUTRO]

Cristina Amigoni: Thank you for listening to Uncover the Human, a Siamo podcast. 

Alex Cullimore: Special thanks to our podcast operations wizard, Jake Lara; and our score creator, Rachel Sherwood.

Cristina Amigoni: If you have enjoyed this episode, please share, review, and subscribe. You can find our episodes wherever you listen to podcasts. 

Alex Cullimore: We would love to hear from you with feedback, topic ideas or questions. You can reach us at podcast@wearesiamo.com, or at our website, wearesiamo.com, LinkedIn, Instagram, or Facebook. We Are Siamo is spelled W-E A-R-E S-I-A-M-O.

Cristina Amigoni: Until next time, listen to yourself, listen to others and always Uncover the Human.

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