12.8 Investigations and Discipline

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:

1. All rules or procedures should be in a written document.
2. Rules should be related to the safety and productivity of the organization.
3. Rules should be written clearly, so no ambiguity occurs between different managers.
4. Supervisors, managers, and human resources should communicate rules clearly in orientation, training, and via other methods.
5. 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 crucial.

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.

Employee Separation

Employee separation can occur in any of these scenarios. First, the employee resigns and decides to leave the organization. Second, the employee is terminated for one or more of the performance issues listed previously. Lastly, absconding is when the employee leaves the organization without resigning and following the normal process. For example, if an employee simply stops showing up to work without notifying anyone of his or her departure, this would be considered absconding.

Resignation means the employee chooses to leave the organization. First, if an employee resigns, normally they will provide the manager with a formal resignation written notification – letter or e-mail. Then the human resources team will schedule an exit interview, which can consist of an informal confidential discussion as to why the employee is leaving the organization. If the human resources team thinks the issue or reasons for leaving can be fixed, he or she may discuss with the manager if the resignation will be accepted. Assuming the resignation is accepted, the employee will work with the manager to determine a plan for his or her workload. Some managers may prefer the employee leave right away and will redistribute the workload. For some jobs, it may make sense for the employee to finish the current project and then depart. This will vary from job to job, but two weeks’ notice is normally the standard time for resignations.

If it is determined that an employee should be terminated, different steps would be taken then in a resignation situation. First, documentation is necessary, which should have occurred in the progressive discipline process. Performance appraisals, performance improvement plans, and any other performance warnings the employee received should be readily available before meeting with the employee. It should be noted that the reliability and validity of performance appraisals should be checked before dismissing an employee based upon them. Questionable performance appraisals come from the real-world conditions common to rating situations, particularly because of limitations in the abilities of the raters.^[1]

Remember that if the discipline process is followed as previously outlined, a termination for nonperformance should never be a surprise to an employee. Normally, the manager and HR manager would meet with the employee to deliver the news. It should be delivered with compassion but be direct and to the point. Depending on previous contracts, the employee may be entitled to a severance package. A severance package can include pay, benefits, or other compensation for which an employee is entitled when they leave the organization. The purpose of a severance plan is to assist the employee while he or she seeks other employment. The human resources team in conjunction with legal counsel develops the severance package and follow legislative requirements such as employment standards language.

The last topic that we should discuss in this section is the case of an absconded employee. If an employee stops showing up to work, a good effort to contact this person should be the first priority. It would be prudent to stop pay and seek legal help to recover any company items he or she has, such as laptops or parking passes.

Sometimes rather than dealing with individual performance issues and/or terminations, we find ourselves having to perform layoffs of several to hundreds of employees. Let us address your role in this process next.

Rightsizing and Layoffs

Rightsizing refers to the process of reducing the total size of employees to ultimately save on costs. Downsizing ultimately means the same thing as rightsizing, but the usage of the word has changed, in that rightsizing seems to better define the organization’s goals, which would be to reduce staff to save money, or rightsize. When a company decides to rightsize and, ultimately, engage in layoffs, some aspects should be considered.

First, is the downturn temporary? There is nothing worse than laying people off, only to find that as business increases, you need to hire again. Second, has the organization looked at other ways to cut expenses? Perhaps cutting expenses in other areas would be advisable before choosing to lay people off. Finally, consideration should be given to offering temporary sabbaticals, voluntary retirement, or changing from a full- to a part-time position. Some employees may even be willing to take a temporary pay cut to reduce costs. Organizations find they can still keep good people by looking at some alternatives that may work for the employee and the organization, even on a temporary basis.

If the company has decided the only way to reduce costs is to cut full-time employees, this is often where HR and/or an employment lawyer should be directly involved to ensure legal and ethical guidelines are met. Articulating the reasons for layoffs and establishing a formalized approach to layoffs is the first consideration. Before it is decided who should get cut, criteria should be developed on how these decisions will be made. Similar to how selection criteria might be developed, the development of criteria that determines which jobs will be cut makes the process of cutting more fair, albeit still difficult. Establishing the criteria ahead of time can also help avoid managers’ trying to “save” certain people from their own departments. After the development of criteria, the next phase would be to sit down with management and decide who does or does not meet the criteria and who will be laid off. It is key to have a solid communication plan as to how the layoffs will be announced. The important thing to remember during layoffs is to keep your employees’ dignity; they did not do anything wrong to lose their job—it was just a result of circumstances.

“Managing Performance Issues” in Human Resources Management – 2nd Ontario Edition by Elizabeth Cameron is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.