Open Door Policies In The Workplace

Used by a company with competent leaders, an open door policy, where employees are invited to provide any feedback or complaints to management, leads to benevolent employers hearing of asinine dealings within the workplace they were not aware of and then actually doing what they can to end them.  Literally or not, it is as if the door is open for anyone to step inside to discuss something with an employer, with management, or with HR.  This is the ideal implementation of an open door policy in business, and it is at least what some employers pay lip service to when they encourage their workers to immediately bring any concerns to leadership.  It is not impossible for a company to use this in legitimate ways, yes.

Since many people are irrationalists and business leaders are people, open door policies do not necessarily result in something like an oppressive manager being fired or demoted or someone illicitly discriminating against employees being dealt with.  No, the first priority of an egoistic employee would be to preserve the stability of their business or their own standing at the expense of whatever problems are present or how those problems are impacting workers.  The concept of an open door policies is wonderful for the transparency it could allow for, but fools can always prevent the best of policies from being utilized rationally or effectively.

Complain about dehumanizing or hypocritical work expectations, and it probably will not lead to anything other than superficial appearances getting altered.  Articulate legitimate objections about the company's top figures on the hierarchy, and it is very unlikely that they will suddenly align with reason or treat others justly.  Their reaction to power is to do whatever they can to ensure they feel special, mighty, or insulated from their flaws even though they do not deserve it, and any open door policy they offer is just a way to make it seem like employees will be listened to and given what they need to 1) be treated as human beings and 2) succeed in their roles.

The illusion of relief for employees is the real goal of open door policies in a company like this.  All that the person in charge, such as the president of an exploitative small business, either intends to do or ends up doing is simply having employees talk with him/her or with HR in order to feel like they are getting somewhere by voicing their objections.  In reality, the objections fall on the deaf ears of apathetic, selfish, or assumption-enslaved irrationalists who will only maintain whatever they can of the business's status quo for as long as possible.

Open door policies are also are no replacement for worker's unions and are not a guarantee that a workplace's real woes will be resolved, much less addressed competently on any level, as some employers might pretend.  At the same time, they are not inevitably misused.  The people in a company decide if their business misuses them or not.  These truths are logical necessities, not the happenstance of a particular example or experience in the world.  Even if everyone had only positive or only negative experiences with open door policies, these truths do not change.  There is no such thing as a business being honest, transparent, and morally innocent or being any of the alternatives to these things by default.  A company is made that way by the people who comprise it.