ARTICLES

If policies reliably changed behaviour, businesses that had the most comprehensive policy libraries would have the healthiest cultures. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Policies are necessary. They establish the standard, create legal defensibility and provide a reference point when conduct is in dispute. But knowing a policy exists does not cause someone to act in accordance with it, particularly when the culture around them signals that the policy is aspirational rather than operational.

Behaviour at work is shaped by what people observe being modelled, what they experience being rewarded and what they witness being tolerated. These three signals, operating continuously and largely informally, are far more powerful determinants of how people actually behave than any documented standard.

This means that a business can have an excellent anti-bullying policy and a bullying culture. It can have a thorough performance management framework and almost no honest performance conversations. It can espouse values it consistently undermines through the conduct it permits.

Closing the gap between policy and practice is a leadership challenge, not a documentation one.

It requires leaders to model the behaviours the policy describes, to address deviations clearly and consistently and to create the conditions in which the formal standard and the informal norm are actually the same thing.

Adding more policies to a culture that is not acting on the ones it already has solves nothing. The question is never whether the standard is written down. It is whether the people with the most influence in the organisation are visibly living it.

 

If you want practical support reviewing your workplace policies, contracts, leadership capability, or workplace culture, Blue Kite HR Consulting can help you take a proactive approach before issues become bigger problems.