What was supposed to be a simple communication from HR to the rest of the company has turned into one of the most fiery workplace debates on the internet. An employee's Reddit post at a private company went viral after the announcement of a very significant change in the company's leave policy, which many commenters describe as inhuman, exhausting, and possibly illegal.
By the employee's statement, the company has eliminated casual and sick leaves entirely from its policy. Instead, there is a very limited system that provides only 12 days of paid leave per year, which are credited at the rate of one day per month. Any absence due to a sick condition is no longer sick leave unless it is hospitalisation supported by a medical certificate.
The employee posted the screenshot of the internal Slack message that was allegedly from the HR department and was informing about the changes as a usual policy update. The message indicated that all types of leave, casual, sick, and priviledge, have been combined into one annual pool, with infraction of the limit resulting in pay cuts and official warnings among other strict penalties.
The new system leaves only two types of leave: annual paid leave and hospitalisation leave. Annual leave can be used as off-time from work, holidays, or general needs. Hospitalisation leave, however, is the one that is kept strictly for medical emergencies that require admission to a hospital. Cold, fever, migraine, or food poisoning? Apparently not.
“They posted this in our general channel like it was just another normal update,” the Reddit user wrote. “Casual leave gone. Sick leave gone. Now it’s one day of leave per month, and if you’re sick it only counts if you’re literally hospitalised.”
The employee further stated that they needed to read the message twice to understand it. What troubled them the most was not only the policy but also the manner in which it was communicated. It felt very much like the HR department was being utterly oblivious to the situation when they referred to it as a mere 'policy update'.
The post attracted comments from hundreds of users within a very short period of time, and many of them expressed their disbelief and anger. Several of them raise the issue of legalities of such a policy, and others advise the employee to reveal the company's name publicly so that job seekers will be able to avoid it.
One of the users argued that making the employees ill with the virus that must be COVID-19 to work is a counterproductive measure, as the workers' productivity is lowered and the illness is prolonged. A user ironically offers that every sick employee should visit the HR department in person just to make a point. Others bring up their own experiences and say that while their companies have flawed policies, this one is beyond the line.
Besides the anger, the episode has rekindled a wider conversation about work culture, the issue of employee burnout, and the diminishing gap between productivity and the basic human rights of the employees. This policy delivery has been taken by many as a step backward in a period when companies are still talking about mental health, empathy, and work-life balance.
The employee says that at the moment, they only wanted to vent. However, the reaction online indicates that this is not a problem of one single company but rather a portent of how the trust of the employees is so easily shattered when the corporate policy lacks compassion.
