[femto113]

IMO of the three examples only the last one is a clear case of a company policy that can and should be followed even at the expense of productivity, and if their argument is really "how would anyone find out" you need to kick that up the management chain--this person could be putting your company at risk. For the other two your rationale is essentially "doing it the standard way makes the team more productive", but clearly comes at the cost of making this employee less productive, and your argument is empty--they are already seeking to be as productive as they think they can be. Assuming this person on net is more productive than average just assign someone else to backfill their unit tests and learn to live with the overly complex PRs.