Modern HR Policies

An employee's average workload should be reasonably commensurate with compensation. An employer's short-term productivity requirements can be expected to occasionally conflict with important long term factors such as reduced productivity caused by interference with an acceptable quality of life, burnout, and turnover. HR's role is to support the employer and the employee by ensuring that the employer gets its money's worth while at the same time not shooting itself in the foot by overstressing the employee.

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Employee off-track, put idea on schedule, expect benefit eventually ...

...For example, if a programmer raises idea about getting Unit C to communicate directly with Unit G, thereby making intervening sensors, controllers, and feedback systems unnecessary, add idea to schedule with low priority. Eventually, this idea will come up at a meeting, and you can say "I've already got one of my best people working on that - I'll make it a priority". If the programmer says "I already finished that on my own time", give the programmer a big bonus. If the programmer also says, "by the way, I looked at all the redundant systems, and we'll need to keep the monitoring data from Unit D, to keep net output in equilibrium with gross input. Otherwise, it will all blow up." In this case, forget the bonus, give the programmer a promotion!

Workaholics: Enjoy, but HR needs to help them get a life before they burn out.