The policy
What the policy says and does not say
Reading a hybrid policy for its silences — the days it does not name, the exceptions it does not write down, the purpose it assumes.
Days this part is about, hour by hour
Monday, the third week
0 of 7Came in to make up a day missed through illness
Wednesday, the third week
1 of 7Tuesday, the second week
0 of 7three days · 21 hours logged · one of them was only possible there · two of the three days contained no such hour at all · four were made worse by being there
Three days the policy treats as identical.
Reading a policy for its silences
A hybrid policy is mostly notable for what it leaves out. Six questions to ask of the document, and what each answer tells you about who will be deciding.
The days it does not name
The biggest silence in a hybrid policy, and the reason it is usually deliberate: naming days means owning the result.
The exception nobody wrote down
Unwritten arrangements are granted to the people who can afford to ask. What that does to a rule, and why the fix is writing them down rather than removing them.
What the rule assumes about you
Every policy has an implied person in it. Naming the assumptions makes clear why the same rule is trivial for some people and expensive for others.
Compliance is not the outcome
Thirty-four days of near-perfect compliance produced thirty-one hours of what the policy was for.
Counting bodies, and what it measures
Badge data answers a question nobody is really asking. What it can and cannot show, and the predictable ways a counted rule gets satisfied.
The purpose that was never stated
Without a stated purpose a day cannot be judged, a policy cannot be improved, and every disagreement about it becomes a disagreement about motives.
When the arrangement changes under you
People hired on one basis and moved to another. What is usually true, what varies by jurisdiction and contract, and how to find out which applies to you.
Three policies and what each leaves open
The same three days, written three ways, and the quite different weeks each one produces. A worked comparison rather than a recommendation.