Introduction
Warning! The traditional negative connotation of discipline in the workplace is an outdated vestige of the past. In today’s workplace, progressive discipline is going to assume a new role, more positive than anything we’ve seen up until now. So don’t pick up this book thinking that you’re about to enter a world of negative strategies to mandate employee compliance by wielding tools of control. Attracting and retaining the best talent has to do with encouraging people to be their best. It’s about leadership, fairness, and a willingness to address issues head-on.
Progressive discipline is a means of communicating problems directly and in a timely fashion so that employees can involve themselves in the problem-solving process. But proper communication—both verbal and written—is difficult to accomplish without a framework for structuring your thoughts and sharing your suggestions with your employees. The tools presented in this book offer solutions to one of the most difficult management issues: addressing the inevitable problems that surface in the workplace while maintaining worker loyalty, confidence, and buy-in.
The employee relations system presented here is focused on treating workers with dignity and respect. This simple premise seems easy enough to master, yet many companies have learned the hard way that mishandling disciplinary actions strips people of their dignity and provokes feelings of revenge and anger that all too often find outlet only in the courts.
This book will show you how to:
Enhance employee performance. Rather than hitting workplace performance problems head-on with negative or punitive measures—or worse, avoiding the problem until it becomes intolerable—you’ll learn to address minor infractions before they become major impediments. This book will model a system that will enable you to provide subpar performers with tools, direction, and training to turn unacceptable behavior into positive output.
Protect your company. This book attempts to incorporate all the legal theory floating around out there into one usable format that simultaneously makes documenting subpar performance easier for managers, makes accepting responsibility for one’s actions a primary tenet for employees, and most important, shifts the responsibility for performance improvement away from the company and back toward the worker, where it rightfully belongs. As a result, you’ll be able to construct defensible written disciplinary notices that will withstand legal scrutiny.
Save time and make your life easier. These 101 model write-ups provide real-life samples of how positive or constructive discipline plays itself out in the workplace. These samples will save you time because they can be customized to fit most disciplinary situations. Simply put, you’ll no longer have to guess at what verbiage you should include in a write-up. And at the same time, you’ll have a blueprint format that walks you through the verbal discussion with your employee so that you can present positive solutions in addition to clear and unambiguous statements of the consequences of the employee’s actions.
Who Should Read This Book?
Written for human resources managers, department heads, first-line supervisors, and business owners, this book is designed as a quick reference for improving employees’ behavior and, if necessary, constructing terminations that will withstand legal scrutiny. With very little theory, it provides numerous examples of legally defensible disciplinary actions for practically all types of employee performance problems, such as substandard work quality, absenteeism, tardiness, insubordination, profane language in the workplace, and general misconduct.
Why Is It So Hard to Write Up Employees?
It’s simply a fact that in today’s legal system, companies that discharge employees will, if challenged, have an obligation to prove that they made affirmative efforts to rehabilitate those employees before reaching the ultimate decision to terminate. When confronted by an arbitrator or scrutinized by a jury, companies need to show that they had no alternative but to separate an individual who refused to accept the organization’s invitations to improve his or her performance. Without such proof, the company can find itself liable to the former employee for back pay, job reinstatement, and, potentially, punitive damages. To make matters worse, those punitive damages could in certain circumstances be levied against the manager personally (should that individual be deemed to be working “outside the course and scope of his employment”).
This book shows you how to construct documents that are both tough and fair. Traditionally, there are problems that managers face when they confront employees regarding their behavior: How will the employee take the news? Will confrontation make matters worse? What if the employee stays “clean” only long enough to get past the active time frame of the disciplinary write-up?
In addition, because the write-up is a legal document, there is a residual fear that what you put in writing can somehow come back to haunt you. For example, managers typically second-guess themselves when it comes to questions like: Can I write specifics? Am I violating this individual’s privacy? Is the employee’s problem somehow protected by one of the many worker protection laws like the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), or workers’ comp discrimination rulings? What if there are numerous problems that don’t seem to be related to one another—can I move forward in the progressive discipline process by somehow bundling those disparate infractions together?
Managers have come to fear addressing even minor performance shortcomings until they become major impediments. By that time, the problems typically get so out of control that managers reactively initiate the disciplinary process in order to build a “paper trail” for a case against an employee as rapidly as possible. What magnificent advantages lie ahead for managers armed with the tools to proactively address minor concerns before they become major ones!
As an HR practitioner and university instructor, I’ve seen firsthand how companies go through the agony of reinstating poor performers with back wages and reintegrating those individuals into departments that have long since “healed” from the original terminations. And although no system can guarantee that a company will win every wrongful termination challenge, a write-up template that invites employees to involve themselves in their own improvement game plan and that clearly outlines the company’s affirmative efforts to help those employees better themselves will go a long way toward fending off litigators’ attacks.
What Are the Benefits of Reading This Book?
This book provides a structured format that ensures that all the legal theory steps contained in other books on employee relations get carried out consistently in daily practice. That consistent application will build your confidence in the documentation process, save time, and minimize the liability inherent in one of the hottest topics in business today: employee performance management and termination.
It is important to build a foundation upon which communication can thrive. That constant focus on opening the lines of communication is what makes this approach different. So what will the employee warnings in our proposed format accomplish?
First, they will structure disciplinary meetings in a way that forces bilateral communication between you, the supervisor, and your subordinate. Discipline will no longer be a one-sided prejudgment in which the employee steps into the room, “takes his whacks” after having been determined guilty, and then returns to work disgruntled and disheartened. In addition, the language and tone of our samples are personal and concise, making it easier for you to deliver difficult news in a fair and direct way.
Second, they will prompt managers and supervisors to involve themselves in their employees’ rehabilitation by indicating positive (as well as the traditional negative) consequences and by providing training, resource materials, and a commitment to open communication.
Third, they will encourage employees to involve themselves in their own performance improvement. To this end, the write-up paradigm in our samples includes a personal improvement plan (PIP) so that employees can assume responsibility for their own actions; this shifts the responsibility for performance improvement to the employee and away from the company.
Could this proactive and optimistic approach of ours still end with employee termination? Of course. But only if the employees themselves willfully and repeatedly refuse to adhere to established and reasonable standards of performance and conduct. This disciplinary system has two equally important goals: to rehabilitate poor performers and to terminate problem employees legally.
How the Book Is Structured
This book has been designed for easy reference so that you can pull it from your shelf right before or immediately after a disciplinary meeting with one of your employees in order to construct a well-written disciplinary notice. The initial five chapters address the structure and format of the write-up template that’s used in all the samples. Consequently, you can refer back to Chapters 1 through 5 when you’re looking for that right word, expression, or phrase while composing one of your own disciplinary memos.
The online link contains the complete write-ups for all the examples in this book. To highlight for you the critical areas that differ from write-up to write-up, we’ve shortened the sections of the write-ups in the book that remain the same. You can view or print the full write-up at any time from the online resource. In addition, to save you the time of re-creating the template from scratch, Figure 6-1, a blank template, has been included in the online resource so you can download it to your computer immediately.
Disclaimer
The disciplinary modules in this book are based on the tenets of federal law and, in a general way, the requirements of state law. However, state laws covering the various aspects of employee relations and workplace due process differ from state to state. Furthermore, state courts, and in some cases regional courts within states, often differ in their application of basic legal principles that apply to the employment relationship. It is up to you to determine the laws in your state or even in your particular city before administering discipline for workplace offenses.
Please bear in mind at all times that this book is not intended as a legal guide to the complex issues surrounding progressive discipline, termination, and other aspects of your employment practices. Because the book does not purport to render legal advice, it should not be used in place of a licensed practicing attorney when proper legal counsel and guidance become necessary. You must rely on your attorney to render a legal opinion that is related to actual fact situations.