Disciplining Employees – 5 Steps to Ease the Pain

Do you have a plan for disciplining employees when behavior or performance is lacking? Disciplining employees is never an easy process because of the human factor involved. Having a plan in place will help you address the issues and keep some of the emotion out of the picture. Of course, having solid HR policies is where this process starts. Let’s look at 5 simple ways to make this process easy for your business.

Its About Standards
Disciplining employees is a task no one wants to engage in, but if you remove the emotional factor and make this about policies and procedures, it can make the process easier. Another factor is performance standards associated with the employee’s position and job description. The more clear you are to your employees about what is expected out of them, the less of a surprise it will be when you have to have a counseling or discipline session. Without standards, its becomes a free for all and potentially unfair process.

Don’t Stray from Standard Employment Actions
Of course, there are legal ramifications to disciplining employees. Legally and practically, employee discipline should be focused on verbal and written counseling or warnings, suspension, or – if appropriate, termination. Employers and Managers and should not cut work hours, change work schedules, assign unpleasant tasks to employees, deny vacation requests or otherwise subtly punish an errant worker.

Keep it Positive if Possible
More appropriately, using a positive approach may have far better results and prevent worse problems from occurring. Approaching disciplinary problems from a counseling standpoint can help encourage a worker to improve and result in better performance and behavior. A large part of being an employer is developing people and helping them get past personal obstacles and achieve greater things, hopefully for your business! However, sometimes unacceptable behavior cannot be tolerated, and management’s actions should be commensurate with the severity or pervasiveness of the issue.

Progressive Discipline Policy
A common misconception is that of the “progressive discipline policy”. Simply put, progressive discipline entails a predefined set of actions that can be taken in response to employee actions or behavior issues. This practice is not typically used much anymore because it is inflexible and could expose your company to bigger problems when you try to work outside a defined policy. You may have employees that can show they were treated unfairly compared to another employee because the policy stated that you must use progressive discipline. Keep it flexible.

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Defined Culture and Policies
The most important factor in all this, is having clearly defined employment policies and procedures established for your business. Additionally, the company culture that you develop should be clear. Are your employees expected to be right on time or do you allow flexible start and stop times? Is the work flow open and cooperative or are employees supposed to work more independently? What are you as a manager demonstrating in your behavior to your employees? Are you expecting them to demonstrate something different?

Culture and communication are keys to having a workplace that simply, works. Employees that don’t know what the culture is, or what policies they should adhere to are far more likely to stray from right path and cause a need for disciplinary situation. Make sure you have set forth a culture by example and have clearly defined policies for these issues:

• Attendance and Tardiness
• Calling out Sick
• Timekeeping
• Sick Pay and Vacation
• Meal and Rest Break
• Computer and Cell Phone Use
• Teamwork

These are just a few of the major policies you should have in writing. Every workplace is different, make sure you define what’s different about your workplace and communicate it to your employees.

Infinium HR is here to help. Our complete workforce management solution help you create the type of policies that help your business work more efficiently, and deal with issues when they occur.

If you need help with updating your employee handbook, or implementing specific policies that will better communicate your culture, contact the experts at Infinium HR. info@infiniumhr.com