The No. 1 Reason Why Employees Break the Rules

On several occasions in the last few weeks, I’ve watched as employees have quite determinedly ignored company policy. A lot of managers might rush to punishment. But slow down: I think there’s more going on here than meets the eye.

Flying across the Atlantic, a PA announcement quite clearly told passengers what drinks would cost. But none of the cabin crew wanted to collect the money. They kept saying they’d come back; they never did. They know their competitors don’t charge for drinks on long haul flights – and they didn’t want to carry out a policy they didn’t agree with.

On another occasion, checking into a hotel, a receptionist couldn’t get clearance on my credit card. She was more embarrassed than I and finally said, “Oh well. Let’s just imagine it went through.”

Picture Credits 

And a train company employee told me about a special pricing that “we aren’t supposed to offer. You’re supposed to ask about it. But how can you ask if you don’t know?”

Stupid Policies Don’t Work

I’m struck dumb by the idiocy of managements trying to impose rules so ghastly that even their employees are disgusted by them. This suggests that there are a lot of conflicting agendas at work in these organisations and not everyone is on the side of the customer.

What moves me is that the front line employees, forced to choose, are prepared to rebel. They don’t want to treat people badly. They don’t wish to be the means by which people who are already pretty stressed and uncomfortable have an even worse time. This frontline staff knows how tough things are. It would appear their managements don’t.

I haven’t named any of the companies here because I don’t want to get their employees into trouble. If the leadership were sufficiently enlightened, they should want to embrace these subversive employees who are protecting the company’s reputation. But I’m guessing that wouldn’t be the first management response.

Why People Rebel

What every manager needs to learn, however, is a principle well established by social sciences: the more rules you throw in peoples’ way, the more they have to subvert them – because that’s the only way they can resist being infantilised, the only means they have to protect their sense of themselves as adult and autonomous.

That, I think, is what I’ve been watching: lots of good people who, being treated like machines, rebel to save their own humanity. And their customers’.

So what’s going on in your business?

Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur and author. She has been chief executive of InfoMation Corporation, ZineZone Corporation, and iCAST Corporation. Her motto: “Let’s not play the game, let’s change it.”