I have an unpopular opinion — many businesses are still in the dark ages of human resources. What do I mean by this? I mean that about 95 percent of your employees have your company’s best interests in mind. But, too often companies “protect” themselves by writing their HR policies for their worst employees, while enforcing equally.

Surely you catch my drift. If a company enforces policies equally, regardless of person or circumstance, you may end up treating a model employee like a marginal employee. This will inevitably lead to losing your best employees and losing momentum towards your business goals.

I’d like to shed some light on poor HR policies, and suggest alternatives that will help you bring your human resources department out of the dark ages.

4 Ways to Drag Your HR Department Out of the Dark Ages

Being clear with HR policies is important, but over-outlining a simple policy can quickly become inappropriate by communicating a layer of distrust between management and workers. Such inappropriate policies can destroy trust, zap morale and slow operations, not to mention diminish the accountability of both employer and employee. Here are three places where HR departments can easily update their policies and get with the times.

1. Trust Your Employees to Dress for Success

Undeniably, dress code is probably the most visible policy in your handbook.Don’t make the mistake General Motors did and create a 10-page novel about what employees can and can’t wear. Such policies negatively assume your team members lack good judgment and create a troublesome parent-child dynamic between corporate and frontline employees.

As General Motors recently did, ditch the novel and simply trust your employees to “dress appropriately.” If a team member fails to live up to your policy, meet with them individually to coach them on what might better fit your company’s specific work setting.

2. Abandon Sickening Paid Leave Practices

Many companies still require “proof of sickness” to receive paid leave. We’re not in kindergarten anymore, and yet this policy assumes your employees are all lying toddlers.

Trust your employees — open communication and good judgment will allow you to toe the line between leniency and over-leniency so as not to invite the belief that it is valid and acceptable to take “X” time off as part of the benefits package. You should counsel with your sick team member and express concern for their needs, while determining how much time off they may need. In a high performance workplace, you should expect your employees to come to work on time, every time. That being said, people get sick, and should be paid for “reasonable and necessary” absences due to illness.

3. Only One Day for In-Laws?

If requiring proof of sickness seemed barbaric, it should truly astonish you that many companies still require proof for bereavement leave. Beyond communicating distrust, it such policies devalue your employees while at their most vulnerable. This just won’t do — sometimes the hardest death is one of a friend rather than an in-law. For instance, my husband can be quoted saying he would need tow weeks if his dog, Shiloh, died, but might only need about 15 minutes and a strong cup of joe if his mother-in-law (my mom) died. He was joking, I’m sure?

Regardless, we need to move past these Neanderthal practices. Each circumstance should be handled on a case-by-case basis, following a caring, adult-to-adult conversation about factors influencing the time needed.

Follow the lead of this outstanding company. They had a new plant employee start work and suffer the loss of his mother the following day. The newly-hired employee was compassionately asked how much time he needed, and was given eight days paid leave. It’s doubtful this person will ever leave a company that treated him with such respect.

4. Thou Shall Not Rewrite the 10 Commandments

Don’t fall into the trap of writing a 10 Commandments-style collection of catch-all rules. You know the type I’m talking about. They start with “Employees may not” and usually end with a host of offending statements that assume your team members are childish or out of control. Some examples include:

Employees may not:

• Possess dangerous weapons on the premises
• Falsify records, reports, time cards
• Misappropriate the property belonging to any co-worker
• Fight, threaten or intimidate customers

Take cues from Knight Transportation, who demonstrated trust in their employees by completely distilling their lengthy employee handbook down to fewer than 20 pages. Don’t insult your team by treating them all like marginal employees. Instead, high performing workplaces set high expectations for their employees. Something along the lines of “We expect each employee to exhibit character and contribute to the company’s success” should just about do it.

5. Leave Probation to the Criminals

Don’t center your employment practices on the outdated assumption that someone can be terminated more easily if it happens within 90 days. First of all, how many bad apple employees can behave for 90 days? (Almost all of them). Second, what does this say to the new hire we have so diligently recruited and tried to persuade to work for us? We more commonly think of probation as the period of time that criminals and/or ex-convict must serve following sentencing or release from prison.

Instead, focus on finding the best person to fill the role. Once both the company and employee believe the job to be a good fit, both should enter an agreement with positive assumptions of success.

Trade Out Negative Assumptions for Positive Ones

All of the above policy modifications have three things in common. They all embrace positive assumptions about people. They all empower leaders to use their best judgment to interpret situations on a case by case basis through open communication. And lastly, they all abandon the idea of being equal in favor of being fair. In essence, high performance is about doing the right thing in every situation. People are different and circumstances are different. In actuality, it’s unfair if we treat everyone exactly the same. Implement these three ideas into your HR policies, and you’re sure to move out of the dark ages.

I wrote this piece as a freelance writer for Influence & Co. for Sue Bingham of HPWP Consulting.