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For many employees having time off work can be a hassle, e.g forms to fill out, managers to approve and other obstacles to overcome. What happened to good old give and take?

I’ll tell you what happened, once again as is so often the case, trust has been eroded by a few lazy employees that believe in taking more than what they are prepared to give.

This has ruined the basic principles that so many of us live by. Simple things that are hard to put into a policy, but end up being fair to both parties, with little or nothing needing to be said.

In the world of averages the mistakes of so few, should not upset the natural balance to much, however when money is involved (e.g salarys, wages) this tends to bring out the worst in people.

An HR department can be both a blessing and a curse, I will give you an example. A long term employee requires a couple of days leave, however they are not currently owed any. Now a junior HR advisor may tell them that they will need to take this time off with out pay (As the company policy states) not realising that in the time spent with the company this employee has probably given up weekends, evenings etc for the company, what harm would it do to forward them a couple of days of extra leave? Do you think after 9 years with the company they are going to run off with 2 days pay?

These are the kind of issues that HR departments face each and everyday, when in some respects a lot of these kind of decisions should be made by the employees immediate manager. Mismanagement of this kind of situation can cause irreparable harm to what used to be a fine employer/employee relationship.