Thought Picnic: Beyond the call of duty

So they were burnt?

Someone came up with a policy that reeks of exploitation much longer before it suggests a leaning toward loyalty. Yet there might be a historical view to the situation, but that does not make it right.

When you toil and sweat at the coal face, knowing duty and responsibility, there is remuneration and recompense for your work. That is a contract of confidence properly rewarded as it should be.

Yet for an organisation whose main stock in trade is wheelbarrows of money, a parsimonious tendency to extract for claims to be made on expense much later cannot be right, even if it is the established standard.

It is unfair

There might be many who have the means and breath to face up to a large extraction from their wallets, however, the truth is in this business moneys in churn, everyone is left at a disadvantage, but the organisation and that is hardly fair, if the call is the organisation requiring you risk much for it.

At a point, where one finds oneself demanding a review, embarrassment and shame might find inroads into the conversation, but that should never be the case. The requirement is well beyond the call of duty, it makes extraneous demands of loyalties and it might bring along its own stress.

Shoulder this responsibility

The incidental and the limited can in terms be expensed, but there is nothing wrong even in the era of cost-cutting drives that cut down to the bone in having the organisation itself organise trips, accommodation and much else that pertains to the comforts and the accoutrements that will allow one carrying a responsibility to do what they are engaged to do without distraction.

Besides, the organisation has the heft to negotiate the best deals in bulk and with a standing relationship, it should not be devolved to individuals to namedrop to be eligible. There are invisible costs to all these devolved arrangements and that all makes for a feeling being put under unnecessary duress.

Beyond the call of duty

Reassurances of reimbursement are not enough, someone eventually has to take the pain as it starts from the employee through the employee’s agency and rarely the organisation, interest lost and the organisation that scrimps on pennies to save pounds to rain upon a few in truckloads of bonuses does not have to laugh all the way to the bank. It is the money store, itself.

Then you think of other places, too long a list of places where no one has to bear the cost, because all is in hand, borne by the organisation and those with the responsibility to approve such.

There is no doubt in one’s mind, what is being required is well beyond the call of duty. It definitely is, and it must change.