Big Companies And Looser HR Policies

Erik was recently talking to a good friend of his over the phone. This friend works at a big company. A hospital to be more precise. His friend was telling him how he was trying to get time off from work to attend a conference. The friend’s boss did not approve the request stating things were too busy at work. Erik asked his friend how he put in the request for time off. The friend replied he had emailed his boss to ask for the time. Erik followed up his question by asking how he had put in the formal request, and his friend replied the email was the formal request. This really surprised Erik. He was shocked to learn that a large corporation such as a hospital would have such an informal process.

Here at Array Digital we have a much more formal process in place for requesting time off. If an employee wants to take some time they are to fill out the time-off request form. That form gets sent to their direct supervisor, who then approves the time. The approval gets put into our online task manager, which then puts it in the company calendar so everyone is aware. Although we have an open PTO policy the employee taking time off is to figure out how the work will get done in their absence. This could mean doing the work ahead of time or distributing the work to others.

It was really interesting for Erik to hear how Corporate America, who usually has strict guidelines regarding hiring and firing, can have such informal processes for things like PTO. It's definitely something to think about when putting HR processes together.

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Erik J. Olson is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. The Founder & CEO of Array Digital, he is also the host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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Kevin Daisey is an award-winning digital marketer & entrepreneur. He started his first company when he was just 23, and is the Founder & CMO of Array Digital. Kevin is also the co-host of the Journey to $100 Million Flash Briefing and daily podcast, and the co-organizer of the Marketers Anonymous monthly meetups.

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