At a previous job the CEO/owner had the idea that you'd get some percentage of any cost saving your could find as a bonus. Something like 20% of the savings for the first year.
My colleague in the IT department had one idea, replace our commercial certificates with Let's Encrypt and drop the EV requirement. In total he'd stand to get a bonus of a little over €2000. He never got the money, because things like that was part of his job apparently.
Wow, that's pretty silly. 2000 Euros is almost nothing in the grand scheme of things, and it would have showed that the policy was sincere.
Even dumber, they've now got a disgruntled employee, and everyone around them knows they were cheated by the company.
If the policy is wrong and needs to be more specific, pay it out this time and change the policy. Don't just break your word.
The policy they think they've implemented is stupid. "Save money in someone else's department" is just going to create a ton of anger as people rush to step on each other's toes, and then those people have to constantly re-justify all the decisions they've made.
It's absolutely brain-dead.
Freefall has a discussion of that (mini-arc starting here: https://freefallmirror.com/ff4300/fv04289.htm).
> a disgruntled employee
With access to the SSL certificates.