8.11 Disciplinary Processes for Performance Issues
Defining Discipline
If an employee is not meeting the expectations, discipline might need to occur. Discipline is defined as the process that corrects undesirable behaviour. The goal of a discipline process shouldn’t necessarily be to punish but to help the employee meet performance expectations. Often supervisors choose not to apply discipline procedures because they have not documented past employee actions or did not want to take the time to handle the situation. When this occurs, the organization lacks consistency among managers, possibly resulting in motivational issues for other employees and loss of productivity.
To have an effective discipline process, rules, and policies need to be in place and communicated so all employees know the expectations. Here are some guidelines on the creation of rules and organizational policies:
- All rules or procedures should be in a written document.
- Rules should be related to the safety and productivity of the organization.
- Rules should be written clearly, so no ambiguity occurs between different managers.
- Supervisors, managers, and human resources should communicate rules clearly in orientation, training, and via other methods.
- Rules should be revised periodically as the organization’s needs change.
Of course, there is a balance between too many “rules” and giving employees the freedom to do their work. However, the point of written rules is to maintain consistency. Suppose, for example, you have a manager in operations and a manager in marketing. They both lead with a different style; the operations manager has a more rigid management style, while the marketing manager uses more of a laissez-faire approach. Suppose one employee in each of the areas is constantly late to work. The marketing manager may not do anything about it, while the operations manager may decide each tardy day merits a “write-up,” and after three write-ups, the employee is let go. See how lack of consistency might be a problem? If this employee is let go, he or she might be able to successfully file a lawsuit for wrongful termination, since another employee with the same performance issue was not let go. Wrongful termination means an employer has fired or laid off an employee for illegal reasons, such as violation of discrimination laws or violation of oral and/or written employee agreements. To avoid such situations, a consistent approach to managing employee performance is a crucial part of the human resources job.
The Role of the Performance Appraisal in Discipline
Besides the written rules, each individual job analysis should have rules and policies that apply to that specific job. The performance appraisal is a systematic process to evaluate employees on (at least) an annual basis. The organization’s performance appraisal and general rules and policies should be the tools that measure the employee’s overall performance. If an employee breaks the rules or does not meet the expectations of the performance appraisal, the performance issue model, which we will discuss next, can be used to correct the behaviour.
Performance Issue Model
Because of the variety of performance issues, we will not discuss how to handle each type in detail here. Instead, we present a model that can be used to develop policies around performance, for fairness and consistency.
We can view performance issues in one of five areas. First, the mandated issue is serious and must be addressed immediately. Usually, the mandated issue is one that goes beyond the company and could be a law. Examples of mandated issues might include an employee sharing information that violates privacy laws, not following safety procedures, or engaging in sexual harassment. For example, let’s say a hospital employee posts something on his Facebook page that violates patient privacy. This would be considered a mandated issue (to not violate privacy laws) and could put the hospital in serious trouble. These types of issues need to be handled swiftly.
A written policy detailing how this type of issue would be handled is crucial. In the example above, the policy may state that the employee is immediately fired for this type of violation. The policy may also state that this employee is required to go through privacy training again and is given a written warning. Whatever the result, developing a policy on how mandated issues will be handled is important for consistency.
The second performance issue can be called a single incident. Perhaps the employee misspeaks and insults some colleagues or perhaps he or she was over budget or late on a project. These types of incidents are usually best solved with a casual conversation to let the employee know what he or she did was not appropriate. Consider this type of misstep a development opportunity for your employee. Coaching and working with the employee on the issue can be the best way to eliminate the problem before it gets worse.
Often when single incidents are not immediately corrected, they can evolve into a behaviour pattern, which is our third type of performance issue. This can occur when the employee does not think the incident is a big deal because he has not been corrected before or may not even realize he is doing something wrong. In this case, it is important to talk with the employee and let him know what is expected.
If the employee has been corrected for a behaviour pattern but continues to exhibit the same behaviour, we call this a persistent pattern. Often you see employees correct the problem after an initial discussion but then fall back into old habits. If they do not self-correct, it could be that they do not have the training or the skills to perform the job. In this phase of handling performance issues, it is important to let the employee know that the problem is serious and further action will be taken if it continues. If you believe the employee just does not have the skills or knowledge to perform the job, asking him or her about this could be helpful to getting to the root of the problem as well. If the employee continues to be non-performing, you may consider utilizing the progressive discipline process before initiating an employee separation. However, investigating the performance issue should occur before implementing any sort of discipline. Addressing drug and alcohol issues in the workplace must be managed with care as a drug or alcohol dependency can be considered a disability.
“8.11 Disciplinary Processes for Performance Issues” from Human Resources Management – 3rd Edition by Debra Patterson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
