Dear Evil HR Lady,
Annually my company’s HR lady requests us to review and acknowledge reviewing all documents pertaining to corporate policies. She does this without informing us which documents have actually changed forcing us to re-read the same documents every year. It takes days to re-read the documents. My question follows; Do all HR professionals use this ploy to force others to proof read the error ridden gibberish they produce? And how could I apply this proof-read concept onto others for my peer code reviews.
Bitter? Party of one?
I agree that your HR lady is unprofessional. Sending out things that are error ridden is inexcusable. (Although I won’t mention that just yesterday someone called me about a general release I had written that said they needed to “executive” the release rather than “execute.” Darn non-omniscient spell checker!)
Is she the one who made this policy or does she carry it out? Even though we HR types seem to love paper more than life itself, it’s rarely HR that decides such things need to happen. It’s usually finance or legal that comes up with the idea that everyone needs to sign off on the Code of Conduct every year. HR has to carry it out and we get blamed for wasting time.
Even so, she should be professional.
Refrain from the urge to fill the documents with red pencil marks. That will just make her angry. Although I do give you permission to tell your staff that they are never to send out something without proper proof-reading.
Now, I’m really scared I’ve made a spelling or grammatical error in this post. I spell checked on Microsoft Word, and I hope that is enough.
Sincerely,
Evil HR Lady
Obviously, this tactic is huge overkill, and dumb to boot. The only thing I can say with pretty much total confidence is that it’s some lawyer’s CYA idea. I doubt that the HR person actually WANTS to do this. What a great way to demonstrate the value HR brings to the organization!
There are legal requirements that certain (mostly benefits) documents be sent out on an annual basis, but I’ve never heard of requiring employees to acknowledge actually reading those things, let alone all policies. Most HR people that I know HATE this kind of bureaucratic BS, while many lawyers seem to love it. Getting all those acknowlegements back must be really fun.
EvilHRlady, I was going to send you an email yesterday, but it came up as evihrlady@hotmail.com
Irony aside…is that spelling correct?
anonymous–evilhrlady at hotmail dot com or click on the “ask Evil HR Lady a Question” link to your right.
Mike–
I totally agree. This is not HR’s idea. HR hates this stuff. But, if HR has to do it, they should do it professionally.
Evil HR Lady,
What is your email address? I’m trying to send you a question, and keep getting it bounced back to me. đ I’m using the email address that is listed on your profile.
Thanks,
SM
Turns out my address was wrong in my profile. It is evilhrlady at hotmail dot com.
Profile should work now!