Shy Turkeys.....

Every Head of Department in a corporation should be given a Human Resource Handbook or Human Resource FAQ that provide some guidance on "How to Handle Delinquent Employees", especially "what you should NOT do". Not many people are aware of the principle of condonation. Even with the highly publicised Enron's story on how Andrew Fastow became the CFO of Enron, I am surprised to see many corporate leaders did not learn from the mistakes of Ken Lay or Jeff Skilling.

Here's the story...Eddy is the Head of Department of our local unit of a multinational corporation. He has been working in the same company for over 30 years. He is seen to be a great leader by many other high power executives in the company. However, he has several huge flaws, which I consider them to be fatal, if left uncontrolled. One of it is the inability to handle and manage delinquent employees under his charge.

One of his employee, Arthur, has been working in the company for the past 15 years. Intelligent, swarve, highly qualified professional, groomed by Eddy personally. Arthur has the ability to exploit just about anyone's weakness. He knows that Eddy has a huge ego (then again, which corporate leader doesn't). Arthur will use every opportunity he has to fan and feed Eddy's ego. In a few years, Arthur is one of Eddy's trusted lieutenant, so much so that Eddy will refuse to see or acknowledge Arthur's flaws. He has been warned by various executives in the company about Arthur's integrity but refused to acknowledge them. He would brush them off as people who are jealous of Arthur's position.

Sometime last June, the CEO, Keith, discovered that Arthur has requested for a huge amount of unjustifiable advance. He asked the Finance to conduct an investigation on all expense claims made by Arthur. Finance reported that Arthur has made few hundred outstation mileage claims in the past 2 years, all of which were unsupported by any document. Keith directed Finance to pass the report to Eddy for his further action.

For the sake of complying with Keith's order, Eddy passed the report to Arthur and asked him to submit a written explanation, to which Arthur did, on the next day. His explanation was basically the senior management of clients are aware of the trips he made and that the clients have all paid the bills without raising any issue. Eddy then passed Arthur's reply and Finance report to Arthur's 3 immediate supervisors and instructed them to speak to Arthur. Why couldn't he speak to Arthur directly? Is it because he is not the confrontational type?

Anyways, the 3 supervisors did not really do anything about it. About 10 months later, Eddy proposed Arthur to be promoted to be the Head of a new department. What??? Keith remembered the issue about his claims and confronted Eddy about it. Keith put Arthur's promotion on hold until Eddy close the loop on that. So what did Eddy? he passed the file to the HR department and instructed Finance to work with HR to get to the bottom of this. No, Eddy doesn't want to get his hands dirty.

After 2 more months of investigation (that is 1 year after Eddy was instructed to deal with this), the company found that Arthur has made few hundred fictitious mileage claims amounting to a few hundred thousand dollars, purporting to be expenses incurred in the course of work, when in fact he had not made any of those trips. Phew! Isn't the company lucky to have someone like Keith? Imagine, had Keith not confronted Eddy, one day, this crook, Arthur, may even be the CFO or even CEO of the company.....and it will be Enron or Tyco all over again.

Arthur has been sacked just a few days ago. When Eddy passed the letter of termination to Arthur, Eddy said it wasn't his decision. Of course not! If he is capable of making difficult decision, Arthur wouldn't have been able to gone this far. Apparently, Eddy knew that Arthur has been siphoning off monies as far as back in 2001! When HR insisted on reprimanding Arthur, not only that he did not reprimand Arthur, he had given Arthur assurance that the incident will not have any impact on his future in the company.

Question is, why is Eddy still around? Shouldn't he be removed from his position as he has proven himself to be an incompetent leader? Last I heard, he was still thinking of competing for the CEO position when Keith retires next year. God bless the company!