Disciplining workers is rarely pleasant but sooner or later, it is a reality for just about every employer. Whether you're dealing with minor work rule infractions to the most severe of offenses or somewhere in-between, having a discipline program in place can help make the process less painful and avoid possible legal complications.
If your small business has employees and therefore, workplace rules, at some point these rules are bound to be broken by one of your employees. When this happens, you'll likely have to enforce the rules with some form of discipline.
In most small businesses, enforcement of rules is done on a casual basis. For example, if someone is spending too much time on the phone taking personal calls, you'd probably just aim a few well-placed hints in his or her direction. If that doesn't work, you might informally take the person aside and explain to them how this affects your business and the person's value as an employee.
When you're working closely with someone on a daily basis, it's usually best to talk to them about any behavior that is inappropriate, without waiting until the problem gets so bad that you need to issue a formal warning. Sometimes employees are unaware of what they've been doing and what you expect of them, and a few words will be enough to set them on the right track. Keep the lines of communication open and flowing in both directions, so that your employees can discuss their concerns and problems with you as well. If you deal with small problems as they arise, you can often avoid the big blowups that can occur when bottled-up feelings are finally let loose.
Sadly, open and frequent communication doesn't always do the trick. In fact, if you have more than one or two workers, it's almost certain that at some point you will have to discipline an employee for something, but don't wait until then to set up a program. Employees need to know the consequences of bad behavior or poor performance before it happens.
Discipline doesn't mean automatic termination. In all but the most serious cases, you'll want to try to avoid terminating employees, especially if they are good workers. In fact, terminating a worker without some form of discipline policy and procedure could land you in court. Without a clear policy and evidence that the policy was used for the terminated employee, you could end up in a "your word against the employee's" situation.
What makes a good disciplinary system? More than anything else, a good disciplinary system is the result of having a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with your disciplinary system. Do you want to punish or do you want to correct and educate?
In formulating your discipline philosophy and program, consider:
An effective, comprehensive, and successful discipline program should contain the following elements:
Ensuring fair discipline. Keep in mind that a system that is viewed as fair by the employees who must live under it is more likely to receive their support and cooperation. A fair policy also means that discipline must be applied consistently to all employees in an unbiased way. A fair policy does not mean a lax policy - discipline can be serious and even harsh, but fair. Fair discipline is also easier to defend and justify in court, should the need arise.
A basic foundation of fairness in discipline is:
In this philosophy, the purposes of discipline are to:
Systems designed to punish rather than educate are much more likely to be viewed by employees as arbitrary and unfair than those designed to educate and correct. That's in part because disciplinary systems designed to educate and correct are less likely to use the ultimate form of discipline - termination - until after an employee has been disciplined less severely in a series of progressive steps.
There will be times when an employee violates a policy or standard of conduct that will require immediate termination. However, in most cases, the problems aren't that serious, or at least they don't start out that way. In many situations, a minor sanction or coaching can be the answer.
But what about the employee who continues to break rules or ignore work policies or continues to have performance problems? While your immediate impulse may be to terminate the employee, there is an alternative that allows you and the employee every chance to salvage the employment relationship before you resort to termination. That alternative is known as progressive discipline.
What is progressive discipline? Progressive discipline is a discipline system where the severity of the penalty increases each time an employee breaks the rules. Typically the progression is from oral warnings to written warnings to suspension and, finally, to termination.
Is progressive discipline realistic for small businesses? There are advantages to using progressive discipline, especially when it's used in conjunction with a set of work rules (that are thoroughly communicated to employees) and an explanation of the disciplinary system.
For very small businesses, progressive discipline may be too time consuming to use, especially if discipline are problems rare. Or, you may decide to use it only for the most common rule infractions, such as unexcused absences or tardiness. Before you adopt a progressive discipline system, you should understand how progressive discipline works, including its advantages and disadvantages, and how to develop a policy of your own.
In a progressive discipline system, the severity of the penalty increases with each infringement of the rules. Typically, the progression is:
Elements of a progressive discipline system. A progressive discipline system contains the following elements:
Usually, after a specified time period (like six months or a year) passes without another infraction, the worker gets a "clean slate." Any later infractions will start the process again with an oral warning.
Some cases of misconduct are so severe that you may skip the first one, two, or even three steps. For example, assaults or fighting, stealing, intoxication on the job, gross insubordination, destruction of company property, etc., may all justify immediate action. But don't fire the worker on the spot! Firing someone is a serious action, not to be done off the cuff. Sometimes situations are not as they appear. Give yourself some time to investigate, and, at a minimum, to be sure of what really happened and who was responsible.
While a progressive discipline system may seem like a high-maintenance way to control employee behavior, it does have definite advantages. For instance:
These advantages are compelling ones, especially for businesses trying to build and sustain high employee morale. As is true with most policies, though, there are also some disadvantages to progressive discipline.
Progressive discipline can be an involved process. For very small businesses, it may be too involved to invest time in, especially if there are few discipline problems. Here are some of the other downsides of progressive discipline:
You make an exception to the at-will status of employees when your policy says, in effect, that they will not be subject to immediate termination for the specific disciplinary infractions included in your progressive discipline policy. Therefore, if absenteeism is one of the disciplinary infractions covered by your progressive discipline policy, you should follow your policy in disciplining an employee for absenteeism unless there are unusual mitigating circumstances.
If you decide to implement a progressive discipline policy, you will need to formulate a written policy, even if you do not give it to the employees (and we recommend that you don't).
In creating your progressive discipline policy, follow these guidelines:
If a suspension is one of the steps in your policy, consider the concept of suspended layoffs - layoffs or suspensions that are imposed on the employment record but are not actually enforced. This allows the next step to be termination but does not reward the employee with time off. In any event, suspensions should not be allowed to be taken with vacation or other paid or unpaid time off, including holidays.
Behaviors that are commonly excluded from a progressive discipline approach and that subject the employee to immediate discharge might include the following:
If you exempt these behaviors from your progressive discipline policy, be sure that you act on each occurrence of the behavior consistently. For example, if you specify suspension or termination as discipline for gambling and you do not allow any exceptions, then you must apply that rule to all forms of gambling, including office football pools.
The Business Tools contain a package of documents that will help you formulate, administer, and document a progressive discipline program, including a checklist for creating a progressive discipline, a sample policy, and sample forms to help you administer the program.
Should your policy be in writing for employees? We do not recommend that you put your system in writing for employees to see unless you have first consulted your attorney. Just be sure that you (and any other managers in your company) know what it is, and make every attempt to follow it.
In the same vein, while many large corporations include their disciplinary system in an employee handbook that they give out to workers, for a small employer, putting these rules in writing for employees may cause more problems than it solves.
If you include them in a handbook, you must be extremely careful of the language used (it's best to have an employment lawyer review it). Also, you must be certain that you follow your own rules to the letter, each and every time an incident arises. If you have only a handful of employees and problems are rare, you may have a hard time remembering what you were supposed to do. Finally, it becomes difficult to fine-tune your system as you gain more experience over time because the first written system you give to employees can create a legally enforceable expectation that it will not change.
While progressive discipline is designed to address the problem of employees who break work rules, it is not very effective when dealing with an employee who doesn't violate any rules, but is incompetent or is not performing work to an acceptable level.
For example, you may have a worker who can't seem to get much done or who keeps making mistakes that cost you a lot of money. Your business's survival demands that you get rid of this person. What do you do?
Assuming that the person has been with you for a while and that any new-hire probation period has passed, you can resolve this problem by establishing periodic performance reviews.
The easiest way to do this is to take some time every six months or so to meet with each employee and evaluate his or her work. During the meeting you should go over your expectations for the job the employee holds, and discuss how he or she is meeting these goals. If the employee is not meeting expectations, you should make clear exactly what he or she needs to do to correct performance, and give a time limit for improvement. If the employee needs further instruction or job training, explain how this can be achieved. Finally, write a memo for the employee's file describing your conversation, and have him or her sign and date it.
You should be aware that performance reviews can be a two-edged sword. A fired worker can use good appraisals as proof that he or she was not fired for incompetence, but for some reason such as racial, age, or gender discrimination. One of the worst positions you can be in is to fire an employee for poor performance, but have five years of appraisals that rate the employee as a good worker.
Hopefully, with this kind of feedback, your employee will be motivated to shape up. If sufficient improvement does not occur after a few negative reviews, at least you'll have proof that you tried to be fair. Only you can decide how many chances to improve you'll allow before dismissing the person, but you should consider factors such as the employee's length of service, whether good reviews were given in the past, and the seriousness of the employee's mistakes.