Task 2 Disciplinary Procedures
Disciplinary action should always be preceded by a warning. It's the organization's responsibility to communicate the operating rules, as well as the consequences of violating those rules. An employee should never be surprised by a disciplinary action. Disciplinary action should immediately follow the wrong doing. The longer the delay between the employee behavior and the punishment; the less behavior change might happen. Discipline should be enforced consistently, in an impersonal and unbiased way. The severity of disciplinary action in organizations should depend on the severity of the offense, not the personal characteristics of the employee. Virtually all unionized employers and most nonunionized employers use some variation of a progressive discipline procedure (Freedman 1994). In a progressive discipline approach, the organization develops a series of disciplinary steps. The first offense committed by an employee may evoke a relatively mild disciplinary reaction from the organization, but as employee offenses accumulate, the disciplinary response of the organization becomes progressively more severe. Repeated offenses within a category will advance the employee through the disciplinary process, but offenses in different categories initiate separate disciplinary sequences. Because the employee's safety rule violations all constitute the same type of offense, each violation advances the disciplinary process. However, an employee with a history of absenteeism should have that problem disciplined separately from performance issues (Freedman 1994).
The choice between the progressive and positive approaches to discipline is one that a company needs to make within the context of the larger organizational culture. The company may find that a traditional progressive discipline system conflicts with the goals of its other human resource management systems. If the company made an effort to develop its employees and involve them in day-to-day decision making, they may be sending a conflicting message when the company imposes unilateral punishments as a way of correcting behavior. Progressive discipline systems emphasize the firm's role as a judge. Its primary responsibility is determining when the rules have been broken, and meting out appropriate punishments. In contrast, positive discipline requires a coach style. It's hard to say which system is more challenging for a manager. On the one hand, coaching an employee through the disciplinary process requires considerable patience and interpersonal skills. It may be easier, in the short run at least, to play the judge. In the long run, that approach may result in more productive working relationship Mares 2004). Disciplinary action should be consistent and fair, without regard for the personal characteristics of the employee. Bending the rules for an employee that frequently absents himself/herself sends a message to his coworkers that absences are tolerated for some but not others. But a disciplinary discussion doesn't have to be de motivating. Often employee behavior falls into an ambiguous gray area wherein the behavior doesn't violate any explicit company rules, but nonetheless the behavior is problematic. Rather than treating this as a disciplinary problem, it might be better handled as part of the performance management process. A business should clarify its expectations on how the personnel interact with customers, and explain that these expectations are part of what the company considers to be good performance. If the behavior fails to improve, the can later take disciplinary action in response to their failure to meet performance standards, knowing that they made every effort to make sure that the employee had knowledge of those standards (Mares 2004).
0 comments:
Post a Comment