Open door policies and actual behavior in regard to company guidelines are a challenge.
On the one hand, you want employees to feel comfortable talking with managers at any level in your organization. You want employees to feel and believe that they have options when they are not able to work out a situation or concern with the person they report to in your organization's chain of command. On the other hand, you also want to honor and take advantage of the structure for order and decision making that you created in your organization via your job titles and organization chart.
An area of frequent reader questions, your open door policy needs guidelines, support and follow through from managers, and education and understanding by all employees.
A reader asks:
"I currently work for a company that says they have an open door policy and do not use the chain of command. It is alright for the front line employee to contact regional and corporate leaders above their CEO without the CEO being given a heads up or any knowledge of the communication."The CEO finds this undermining and totally disrespectful. In this organization, directors are encouraged to work around the CEO with actions and questions to corporate people without even addressing anything with the CEO or giving the CEO a heads up before going to corporate. The issues don't even have to do with a complaint about the CEO, just a company norm of bypassing the CEO. I'd like to change this. Please advise."
My Response: Your company's interpretation of how an open door policy ought to work to benefit employees and the organization is mistaken. The objective of an open door policy is not to bypass normal supervisory relationships. Nor is the objective of an open door policy to encourage employees to go around the structure your organization created to provide order, responsibility, accountability, and clear decision making authority.
This is my opinion about how an open door policy is supposed to work so that it doesn't undermine decision making, chain of command, and relationships within an organization. In my recommended open door policy, these issues are spelled out and addressed.
Recommended Actions Re: Open Door Policy
In your situation, I'd take these actions.
- Address the impact of the current policy (or the lack thereof) with your boss and find a way to open the discussion at the corporate level. Involve HR staff. You might need a cross-functional team to review the policy and practice and make recommendations to gain support for new practices.
- Look at the current open door policy, if one exists. Make sure that it specifies expected behavior, steps in pursuing the chain of command, so to say, so employees know what is expected and recommended. Train all employees as you would with any policy.
- Emphasize (train) all managers about acceptable behavior such as: employees are free to address any employee at any time, about any issue. But, if a problem or complaint, or a need for direction arises that should involve the employee's supervisor, that the employee is encouraged to address the issue first with the supervisor. If managers, at all levels, adhered to this standard of conduct, much of the problem would disappear. Effective organization communication would be encouraged and supported.
- Establish the expectation with your reporting staff that you will adhere to and reinforce the policy guidelines and that you expect that they will do so, too. You can also tell your organization, informally, that these are your expectations about the chain of command: that you try to solve problems locally first. Tell them that if they are unable to solve the problem locally, they are welcome to go above you. Explain to them why solving locally first is better. Praise and recognize people who try to solve problems locally first.
- Periodically review and assess progress about how the open door policy is working. Solicit problems or suggestions in regular face-to-face discussion with employees and in employee satisfaction surveys.
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What if the complaint is about the supervisor or the manager? We have a HR Director who is openly bullying and intimidating 23 of the 26 people reporting to her. Her manager (a top level employee) will not accept appointments to speak to her employees without her employees first notifying the HR Director. She has intimidated her employees and they will not confront her. The employees continue to complain to HR (me) and have recently threatened to seek outside help from the EEOC and other outside sources. I have spoken to the HR Director’s manager and informed him of the consequences to no avail. (By the way, I also report to the HR Director also, but I’m assertive enough to set boundaries on her overly assertive behaviors.) I have recommended that the HR Director make use of our mediation program to improve the worst of the relationships with her subordinates. But, she has declined saying “nothing is wrong with her.” I would think that the manager of the HR Director would make an exception to his rule in order to resolve this issue in house.