Corporate Provocateur April 16, 2010, 2:51PM EST

Five Destructive Company HR Policies

Theft-of-time, no-references, and certain other HR rules take the "human" out of "human resources" and drive talent to your competitors

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Thinking about the problems facing the business, a CEO is likely to pinpoint such bogeymen as competitive pressures and labor costs. The organization's internal policies aren't likely to make the list of things that keep a leader up at night. Maybe they should. Most organizations of more than a few hundred people are burdened by unfortunate and misguided policies that serve to slow operations and drive away talented employees.

Overwritten or heavy-handed policy manuals hurt your business in three ways. First, they take your employees out of the realm known to sports psychologists as The Zone—the most productive mental place to be. It's the arena where staffers can push your agenda in a fully engaged, minimally distracted way. Bad policies force an employee to stop and look up a rule or consult a manager, slowing down the action. Second, policies are expensive to disseminate and costly to administer. Third and most destructive, policies speak loudly about CEOs' trust in themselves and their management teams. Where trust abounds, policies are few. In organizations where trust exists, leaders have confidence in themselves to hire and manage team members without minute-to-minute supervision. In fear-filled environments, policies rule the day.

Here's our list of the five most destructive human resources policies we've come across. If several of these protocols are in place in your company, the sucking sound you hear may be your profits gushing down the drain, as smart and capable employees flee your shop for more adult environments.

1. Sorry, We Can't Accommodate Your Life

A sure sign of a second-rate organization is a time-off policy oblivious to a normal person's entanglements and obligations. One young friend of mine began a job with a multinational bank, only to be told on orientation day: "I'm sorry, we can't accommodate the two hours of time off you need for a court date three weeks from now. You'll have earned enough time off to take that two-hour break in a few months." She walked out halfway through the day. Employers who can't flex in small ways to accommodate carbon-based life forms don't deserve their talents.

Why this unaccommodating policy reeks: It broadcasts to employees that "your personal life has no value to us; invest your mental and emotional energy in us accordingly."

2. We'll Transfer You When We Feel Like It

It's reasonable to expect a new employee to stay in his or her job for a year, but to put your managers forever in charge of your employees' career progress is a very bad idea. Smart people who don't love their assignments can leave your company and join your competitors, and if you make it too hard for them to apply for an internal opening, that's what they'll do. Don't make managers the decisionmakers on their employees' transfer requests. Let hiring managers in other groups interview and hire (or not) your current team members the same way they consider outside applicants.

Why a manager-driven transfer policy is the pits: It lets employees know that if they can't trust their boss to look out for their interests when an appealing job in the company is available, their best bet is to bail on the organization entirely.

3. Sorry, We Don't Give References

It's stunning and horrifying to realize, if you haven't heard it before, that many employers do not allow their managers to give references for people who have worked on their teams in the past. The boneheaded logic here is that managers might say something unfortunate, subjecting the employer to defamation charges. Withholding positive references for people who served your interests is unethical and shameful. Put your managers back in the reference-giving game if you want talented people to invest brain cells in your success.