A question of policy
A question of policy
Like all of you, I have regularly had employees say to me,
"this is the policy of the company", when justifying a policy or
procedure implemented by their management. And that's it; you
have to accept the decision even if the policy or procedure is
obviously nonsense, counterproductive or not at all customer-
friendly (in our opinion, of course!).
From this week only, I can give three such examples from
Bandung:
1. Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI)'s newly installed ATM system: The
system has many shortcomings. The way they are justified by BRI
employees is going to scare away all the people who moved from
private banks in 1998 to state BRI. The ATM system does not work
during the weekend and outside office hours, and very often there
are connection problems or breakdowns during the day. So the
system is not reliable at all. As with the BRI security guards
and system of lining up to see the cashiers, this is the worst I
have experienced in eight years in Indonesia. No employee can
give an explanation and just regrets the poor ATM service. The
security guards in BRI are just speechless when we give
suggestions as to how to fix the problems.
2. I went to Santo Borromeus Hospital recently to see a doctor. I
did not have enough money on me and could not buy all my medicine
right there. The doctor's prescription was unreadable (as is
often true, even in Belgium), so I asked the clerk to give me the
names of the medicines (she had already checked them to calculate
my bill), but she said that it was hospital policy not to write
down the names of medicine on a piece of paper and that I should
call from the pharmacy if there was a problem. Can you imagine?
She simply refused to write down the names of the medicines I
needed to buy just because of "company policy".
She even checked the policy with her manager and it was
confirmed. I wonder what kind of manager is coming up with such a
policy and if she/he had a good reason for doing so.
3. Indonesian passport procedures: Indonesian Immigration
officials request identification, family card, birth certificate,
marriage certificate and sponsor letter. Well, in Belgium, ID is
enough. And don't tell me that an Indonesian ID cannot be
trusted, because then you would need to clean up the whole civil
registration service ....
My question is why do Indonesian policy and procedure makers
(both in the private and public sectors) make things much more
complicated than they already are, and why are employees unable
to explain why such policies or procedures are being implemented
by them?
YVAN MAGAIN
Bandung