When Best practices comes out to be worst

In the northern part of India is an ITES company, which in turn is the part of a big group. I served this organization for several years. Divya (changed name) used to work in the Graphics department. She had taken a week's leave to visit her hometown to see her ailing father. But when she returned after 15 days, her name was enlisted in the absconding list. She meet the HR Manager and informed him that her father passed away the very morning she was supposed to come back. With this started the Q & A round. "You could have informed us" said the HR Manager. She explain that her mobile had no signal and that she comes from a village in Bihar which is yet to see electricity. "Do you have your father's death certificate with you?" was the next question. The answer was 'no' as in her village people does not follow the process of collecting Birth certificate or death certificate. The HR Manager asked Divya to produce the receipt of woods that might have been purchased at cremation ground. She was shocked. In that place, people are not given receipt on purchase of anything. She had no choice other than putting down her papers.

I entered the cabin to seek some information on recruitment drive and came to know about the issue. Few minutes later, I came out of his cabin. HR Manager was talking policies and procedures and the poor female was explaining where she comes from. I could not take this and spoken to several other managers and we all had the same thing to say about the issue. How could Human Resource person be so inhumane. Finally, HR Manager came to know about the general feelings of employees across the organization and considered Divya's situation. Divya continued there for several months and then moved to a different organization. Obviously, staying there would keep reminding her this incident.

I've also moved to the other challenges of the industry and no more part of that organization. But I can't forget this incident in my lifetime.

I believe the reason of this incident was not the HR Manager alone. He was playing safe so that his seniors may not question him. The old economy organizations follows only rules and policies and the mindset in such organizations stops people to use their cognitive abilities for critical thinking and analyzing any situation freely.