An original Barry Spud satire. The five-year review rule  requires every procedure to be reviewed whether it still serves a purpose or not.

Sadie Tater arrived in my office carrying the COVID folder.

Not a folder about COVID.

The folder.

It required a trolley and obstructed the doorway, which Sadie immediately identified as somebody else’s housekeeping failure.

“Five years,” she announced.

“Since what?”

“Since we wrote some of these procedures. They’re due for review.”

“Are they still relevant?”

She looked at me as though I had suggested conducting an induction without slides.

“Barry. Relevance is not a field in the document-control register.”

Remember when people listened?

Sadie misses the authority of the pandemic period.

Not the illness, disruption or loss.

The floor markings.

“People stood exactly where we told them,” she sighed. “They followed arrows. They requested permission. We could rearrange an entire workplace before breakfast.”

She opened a photograph of the staff kitchen.

“Look at that. One person at the microwave. Nobody questioning the laminated instruction.”

I reminded her that those arrangements and COVID-era toolbox talks had been developed for particular circumstances.

“Yes,” she said. “And now people have become accustomed to making decisions again.”

Apparently, the company had suffered a serious decline in obedience.

Workers were moving chairs without consultation. Choosing meeting rooms. Entering through whichever door was convenient.

One had opened a window.

“We need to reel them back in,” she said.

Review does not mean remove

Our document-control procedure offers three review outcomes:

Retain. Revise. Expand.

There used to be a fourth option, “Withdraw”, but Sadie removed it during a review.

“It encouraged people to give up on controls.”

We began with the one-way corridor procedure.

The original arrangement sent employees past reception, through accounts and around the photocopier to reach a kitchen three metres from their desks.

“Can this go?” I asked.

“Absolutely not. It establishes predictable movement.”

“It establishes a queue at the photocopier.”

“Then we need a queue-management procedure.”

Within twenty minutes, reviewing one obsolete document had generated four new ones.

Our paperwork and bureaucracy were reproducing beautifully.

Repurposing the controls

Sadie has a gift for recognising that a temporary control can become permanent if you change the heading.

The visitor declaration is now a Personal Readiness Statement.

The distancing markers are Interpersonal Boundary Indicators.

The room-capacity signs are Collaborative Density Controls.

“And the hand-sanitiser stations?” I asked.

“Leave them. They make the entrance look managed.”

She considered reinstating daily declarations.

“Declarations about what?”

“Commitment, attitude, willingness to comply. We can finalise the questions after launching the form.”

The home-office problem

Working from home particularly troubles Sadie.

“There are people carrying out company business in rooms I have never inspected.”

I suggested their work might still be getting done.

“That isn’t the point. I don’t know where they keep their scissors.”

She showed me her proposed Domestic Workplace Assurance Programme.

It began reasonably enough with questions about workstations and working arrangements.

By page twelve, employees had to identify household members who might influence organisational culture.

By page nineteen, pets required a behavioural assessment.

My colleague Kevin asked whether his cat needed an induction.

“Does it enter the workspace?” Sadie replied.

“It lives there.”

“Then it should know the rules.”

A home is just an unaudited workplace

Sadie’s concern about remote work soon became enthusiasm.

“Barry,” she whispered, “we’ve been thinking too small.”

Previously, Safety’s influence stopped at the company gate.

Now it could reach kitchens, spare bedrooms and garden sheds.

She proposed photographs of every home workstation, weekly inspections and declarations confirming that nobody had moved the desk.

One worker declined to photograph the rest of her home.

Sadie recorded “limited visibility of potential hazards”.

“She’s asking for privacy,” I said.

“I know. Very difficult to inspect.”

I suggested that trust and engagement might be more useful than expanding surveillance.

Sadie agreed.

She added a mandatory trust declaration.

Consultation with the household

Employees would receive a household consultation pack.

Partners would acknowledge their responsibilities. Children would complete an age-appropriate compliance activity. Dogs would be classified by barking frequency.

Kevin asked who would pay for the changes.

Sadie explained that wellbeing required shared responsibility.

This meant the company would share the instructions and Kevin would assume the expense.

His wife returned the form unsigned.

“She says you have no business deciding where we keep our kettle.”

Sadie paused.

“Is that a formal objection or a failure to engage?”

The return-to-office solution

Despite these exciting opportunities, Sadie still favours getting everyone back into the office.

“Culture is easier when you can see it sitting at a desk.”

She proposed a mandatory attendance policy under the heading Reconnecting Through Trust.

Employees asked whether their different circumstances could be considered.

Sadie agreed to consider them collectively.

The collective answer was no.

One employee explained that working from home allowed uninterrupted concentration.

“We’re trying to rebuild collaboration,” Sadie said.

“Most of my office meetings are online.”

“Exactly. You should be here to attend them.”

Someone mentioned psychosocial hazards, consultation and the effects of poorly managed change.

Sadie thanked them for identifying the need for a change-resilience webinar.

Attendance would be compulsory.

From the office.

An emerging opportunity with feathers

Just as we were finishing, Sadie added BIRD FLU — EMERGING RISK to the register.

“What does that mean for our workplace?” I asked.

“We need to assess the actual exposure, consult appropriate guidance and consider proportionate measures.”

I was impressed.

“Who said that?”

“Occupational health. I’ve asked them to shorten it. Meanwhile, I’ve prepared a declaration.”

The declaration required employees to disclose contact with poultry, ownership of feather pillows and whether they had recently felt peckish.

I suggested these were not equivalent indicators of exposure.

Sadie underlined “precautionary”.

Kevin made the mistake of mentioning that he kept chickens.

“Do they enter your home office?” she asked.

“No.”

“Have you communicated that restriction to them?”

“They’re chickens.”

“Then pictorial signage would be appropriate.”

Within an hour, his home-workplace assessment included a poultry exclusion zone, a coop visitor register and a proposed induction titled Beak Aware.

Kevin asked whether any of this addressed a risk relevant to his desk job.

Sadie explained that identifying relevance was phase two.

Phase one was distributing the forms.

A pigeon then landed outside the meeting-room window.

Sadie closed the blinds.

“Exposure eliminated.”

“The bird is still there,” I said.

“Yes, but it’s no longer on the dashboard.”

She added a bird-flu appendix to the COVID folder and smiled.

“The beauty of emerging risks, Barry, is that our authority can emerge before the assessment does.”

Evidence of success

Our review is now complete.

We have retained twelve procedures, revised eighteen and created twenty-three.

Nobody has established whether the changes make work better, but every document has a current date.

Sadie’s dashboard is entirely green.

I wondered whether we were measuring the paperwork rather than understanding the work.

Sadie showed me the completion rate.

One hundred per cent.

Apparently, my concern had been resolved numerically.

Kevin asked whether we could instead discuss which arrangements genuinely help people work well.

Sadie handed him a consultation form.

He asked why it needed his home floor plan.

“Context,” she said.

As she left, I noticed that the COVID folder had a new title:

PERMANENT ORGANISATIONAL READINESS AND CONTROL.

“Doesn’t that rather change its purpose?” I asked.

Sadie smiled.

“Only the stated one.”

The emergency had ended. Fortunately, the procedures had a continuity plan.