The problem of poor attendance includes absenteeism and/or tardiness. Poor attendance can become a serious problem that leads to discharge for just cause. If poor attendance is not managed properly, employee productivity can decline and group morale can suffer as those with good attendance are forced to increase their efforts to compensate for people who shirk their responsibilities.

Sometimes employees are absent or tardy for legitimate reasons—for example, sickness, child-care problems, inclement weather, or religious beliefs. Managers should identify those employees who have legitimate reasons and treat them differently than they treat those who are chronically absent or tardy.

When disciplining an employee for poor attendance, managers need to consider several factors:

• ▪ Is the attendance rule reasonable? Attendance rules should be flexible enough to allow for the emergencies or unforeseen circumstances that most employees experience from time to time, including religious or cultural holidays celebrated by a diverse workforce. Most companies deal with this issue by showing leniency when an employee gives notice that he or she is sick or experiencing an emergency.

• ▪ Has the employee been warned of the consequences of poor attendance? This could be particularly important when an employee is unaware of how much time flexibility is possible in reporting to the job.

• ▪ Are there any mitigating circumstances that should be taken into consideration? Some-times special circumstances need to be considered. These circumstances include work history, length of service, reason for absence, and likelihood of improved attendance.101

Managers should be aware of patterns of poor attendance within a work unit. Employees may dread coming to work because coworkers are unpleasant, the job has become unchallenging, they are experiencing conflicting demands from job and family, or supervision is poor. A disciplinary approach is not the best way to deal with this type of absenteeism. Possible solutions to such job avoidance are redesigning jobs or, when the problem is widespread, restructuring the organization.

For employees whose absences are due to overwhelming family demands, flexible work schedules or permission to work at home (telecommuting) may be desirable. Flexible work schedules are gaining popularity at companies both large and small. Ten months into Xerox Corporation’s experiment with flexible work schedules, absences had fallen by one-third, teamwork had improved, and worker surveys showed that morale had risen.102

Every manager must deal with employees who perform poorly and who do not respond to coaching or feedback. In most cases, the performance appraisal (see Chapter 7) can be used to turn around poor performers by helping them develop an action plan for improvement. Sometimes, however, the poor performance is so serious that it requires immediate intervention. Consider the following situations:

• ▪ A restaurant manager receives daily complaints from angry customers about the quality of one waitress’s service.

• ▪ A partner’s poor interpersonal skills affect his working relationships with the other two partners in his firm. The firm is now failing to meet its goals because of the severe conflicts and disruptions instigated by this one person.

These examples suggest a glaring need for progressive or positive discipline procedures. If these employees failed to improve their performance after receiving some warnings or counseling, dismissal would be justified.

Companies and managers should follow three guidelines when applying discipline for poor performance:

1. The company’s performance standards should be reasonable and communicated to all employees. Job descriptions can be used for this purpose.

2. Poor performance should be documented, and poor performers should be told how they are not meeting the expected standards. One source of documented evidence can be the pattern of the employee’s performance appraisals over a period of time.

3. Managers should make a good-faith attempt to give employees an opportunity to improve their performance before disciplining them.

Sometimes poor performance is the result of factors beyond the employee’s control. In these cases, managers should avoid using discipline except as a last resort. For example, an employee may be unable to perform at expected standards because of incompetence. An incompetent employee (one who is lacking in ability, not effort) may be given remedial training (see Chapter 8) or be transferred to a less demanding job rather than be dismissed. An incompetent employee’s poor performance may be the result of a flaw in the organization’s selection system that caused a poor match between the employee’s skills and the job requirements.

Some organizations use a probationary employment period (a period of time that allows the employer to discharge any employee at will) to weed out incompetent employees early. Probationary employment periods typically last one to three months. In Europe, where permanent employment is the norm, many companies insist on a six-month trial period as part of the employment contract. However, this policy can present a problem when recruiting executives, who understandably want to be guaranteed a permanent position before leaving their current job.

It is not only inappropriate but also illegal to use discipline to correct poor performance when an employee has a physical or mental disability.103 The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA, see Chapter 3 ) requires employers to make reasonable accommodation for disabled employees who cannot perform the job as it is structured. Accommodation may include redesigning the job or modifying policies and procedures. For example, an employee who is diagnosed with a terminal illness may request a change from a full-time job to a part-time job or one with a more flexible work schedule. The EEOC, which regulates how employers respond to the needs of employees with disabilities, would probably consider this a reasonable request, so failure to make such an accommodation could lead to government sanctions.

Unfortunately, many myths hinder firms’ compliance with the ADA. One myth is that reasonable accommodation always involves prohibitive expense. Actually, accommodation is not necessarily costly, and more often than not, the money spent to accommodate a disabled individual is minor compared with the cost of litigation. Samsonite Corporation, a luggage company located in Denver, has employed deaf production workers for years. The only accommodation necessary—beyond an accommodating attitude and the willingness of many employees to learn some sign language—has been the use of lights in the production area in addition to the standard beepers alerting employees to the presence of forklifts.104

The willingness of employees to carry out managers’ directives is essential to a business’s effective operations. For example, consider the case of a sales representative who refuses to submit the weekly activity reports requested by his manager.105 How should the sales manager react to the sales representative’s behavior?

Insubordination , an employee’s refusal to obey a direct order from a supervisor, is a direct challenge of management’s right to run the company. Insubordination also occurs when an employee is verbally abusive to a supervisor. The discipline for insubordination usually varies according to the seriousness of the insubordination and the presence or absence of mitigating factors. Mitigating factors include the employee’s work history and length of service and whether or not the employee was provoked by a supervisor’s verbal abuse.

To justify disciplining an employee for insubordination, managers should document the following: (1) The supervisor gave a direct order to a subordinate, either in writing or orally; and (2) the employee refused to obey the order, either by indicating so verbally or by not doing what was asked. The discipline for a first insubordination offense ranges from applying the first step of the progressive discipline procedure to immediate suspension or discharge.

Two exceptions allow an employee to disobey a direct order: illegal activities and safety considerations. For instance, a California court found that an employer had violated public policy when it fired an employee who refused to commit perjury. Other illegal orders that employees can refuse with legal protection are participation in price-fixing and improper bookkeeping.106 The whistle-blowing laws passed in some states provide further protection to employees who can prove they were discharged for refusing to break the law. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration protects the rights of employees who refuse to expose themselves to serious jeopardy. For insubordination to be acceptable, the employee should have “reasonable cause” to fear for his or her safety—for example, knowing that a truck the worker is ordered to drive has defective brakes.

Because the penalties for insubordination are severe, companies should create internal systems and cultures (open-door policies, appeal systems) that allow employees to appeal charges of insubordinate behavior. The legal and monetary penalties to companies for refusing to hear an employee’s reasons for insubordination can be severe. Managers should be sure that insubordination charges are not being used to protect their own illegal or unethical behavior. For instance, a supervisor who charges an employee with insubordination may be attempting to force out someone who objects to the supervisor’s illegal behavior. Companies that ignore such signs of trouble may find that a small problem has escalated into a very difficult and/or expensive situation.

Employees have a right to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace. Unfortunately, many are not. They wake up in the morning and go to work dreading that they will face another day of abuse.107 Employees who feel this way likely experience workplace bullying , a form of harassment that results in employees experiencing mental distress, physical illness, loss of productivity, and a higher propensity to quit to avoid being in a toxic workplace.108 Workplace bullying consists of “. . . persistent, offensive, abusive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behavior, abuses of power or unfair penal sanctions, which makes the recipient feel upset, threatened, humiliated, or vulnerable, which undermines their self-confidence and which may cause them to suffer stress.”109 The bully could be a boss chewing out a subordinate in front of colleagues, a peer who spreads a damaging rumor that harms an employee’s reputation, or a subordinate who withholds support to the boss during a crisis.

Although legal remedies are available for sexual harassment, other forms of antisocial behavior, such as workplace bullying, are not considered to be illegal, yet can be equally harmful to the employees who are being targeted. Therefore, it is up to the organization, with the assistance of the HR staff, to provide remedies to employees being bullied by abusive colleagues.

The media have focused attention on some high-profile situations in which individuals assumed it was permitted to treat employees harshly, and then found out the hard way that it is not:

Staff sergeant Michael G. Rhoades, a drill sergeant at Fort Knox, Kentucky, used abusive methods to train soldiers, including calling them humiliating names such as “fat nasty,” and punching a recruit in the stomach. Rhoades was court-martialed and found guilty of cruelty and dishonorably discharged for mistreating recruits.110

In 2005, CEO Philip J. Purcell was asked by the board of directors to resign his job as CEO of Morgan Stanley, a financial services giant, after a stream of top-performing executives quit in recent years, adversely affecting company performance. Former employees indicated that CEO Purcell treated employees ruthlessly, and was intolerant of dissent or argument with his ideas. He pushed away and demeaned strong executives and preferred to surround himself with yes men and women.111

Some examples of bullying behaviors are listed in Figure 14.5. Although a single occurrence of one of the specified behaviors in Figure 14.5 is not likely to be perceived as a form of bullying, a persistent pattern of displaying one or more of these behaviors to a targeted employee has the cumulative effect of undermining an employee’s self-confidence and morale to the point where the workplace becomes a stressful and toxic environment.

Unless an organization has a communication channel such as an open-door policy that encourages the reporting of workplace bullying behavior and provides remedies for it, employees will tolerate it, and targets of bullying will suffer in silence until they are able to quit. Two social scientists, Christine Pearson and Christine Porath, conducted a survey of employees who have been targeted by bullies to discover practices that reduce these incidents of uncivil conduct between employees. One of the recommendations from this study was for organizations to develop policies that promote zero tolerance for bullying and other forms of employee-to-employee incivility (rude conduct). Supporting this idea, organizations need value statements similar to that of AT&T, which states “we treat each other with respect and dignity.”112 Such statements set the tone for conduct that is acceptable and indicate that bullying behavior is not tolerated. Once there is a general consensus that employees need to be treated with dignity and respect, incidents of bullying can be treated as any other discipline problem.

Another approach to dealing with workplace bullying is provided by Robert Sutton, a business professor at Stanford University, who offers advice to companies who seek to implement and enforce a no-jerk rule when hiring and firing employees. Sutton defines a “jerk” as one who oppresses, humiliates, de-energizes, or belittles a subordinate or colleague. Sutton differentiates between “temporary jerks,” who have a lapse in good judgment and may act rudely on an infrequent basis, and “certified jerks,” who are routinely nasty to people. He says that certified jerks are the employees who pose the greatest threat to an organization’s culture and are the targets of the no-jerk rule. One way of applying the no-jerk rule is to carefully screen job candidates during the recruiting process by getting groups of employees involved in the interview process. In addition, he recommends seeking out former coworkers of a recruit who are not listed as a reference and gathering information about a recruit’s interpersonal conduct at the former employer. When evidence confirms that a job candidate is a certified jerk, the no-jerk rule is used to eliminate that individual from the applicant pool.113

Employees’ use of alcohol presents two separate challenges to managers. First, there is the challenge of managing an employee who is an alcoholic. Second, there is the challenge of managing an employee who uses alcohol or is intoxicated on the job. Each of these employees should be disciplined differently.

Alcoholic employees are generally viewed sympathetically because alcoholism is an illness and medical treatment is the generally accepted remedy for it. However, as we mentioned in Chapter 13, some alcoholic employees have a strong denial mechanism that prevents them from admitting that they are alcoholics: Others may not view them as alcoholics either because alcoholism is often masked by behavioral symptoms such as poor attendance. Thus, a supervisor may perceive an alcoholic employee as someone who has an attendance or performance problem rather than an alcohol problem and discipline the employee accordingly. Organizations with EAPs give employees with performance problems the opportunity to visit a counselor as the last step in progressive discipline before discharge. This is where the alcoholism may finally be discovered and the employee referred to an alcohol rehabilitation facility.

Sometimes employees claim to be alcoholic to cover up their misconduct. If the EAP counselor determines that the individual is not an alcoholic, the discipline procedure is the appropriate managerial response to the problem.

Using alcohol on the job and coming to work intoxicated are both considered serious misconduct and can lead to harsh discipline. Organizations that have job-related reasons to restrict alcohol use at work or working “under the influence” should have clearly stated and reasonable policies. For example, it is reasonable to restrict the alcohol use, on or off the job, of heavy equipment operators at a construction site. It is more difficult to forbid a sales representative to drink alcohol when entertaining a prospective client at a lunch.

The best way to prove that an employee has come to work intoxicated is to administer a blood alcohol content test. A supervisor can ask an employee to submit to this test if there is a reasonable suspicion that the worker is intoxicated. Supervisors may suspect an individual is intoxicated if he or she engages in unusual behavior (talking particularly loud or using profanity), has slurred speech, or has alcohol on the breath.

A first intoxication offense may result in suspension or discharge because of the potential for damage that an alcohol-impaired employee can create. An extreme example of an alcohol-impaired employee’s cost to an organization is the accident in which the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled oil off the coast of Alaska in March 1989. A blood alcohol test revealed that the ship’s captain was intoxicated at the time of the oil spill, which cost Exxon over $1 billion to clean up.

Drug use and abuse by employees also presents a serious challenge to managers. Illegal drug use refers to any use of prohibited substances such as marijuana, heroin, and cocaine as well as the illegal use of prescription drugs such as Valium. The problems associated with drug use are very similar to those associated with the use of alcohol. The key difference is that the use of illegal drugs is socially unacceptable, whereas the use of alcohol in moderation is socially acceptable.

We examined the specifics of drug-use detection systems earlier in this chapter, and we will address the health aspects of drug use in Chapter 16 . Here we note only that illegal drug use is often masked by symptoms such as inattention and unexplained absences. Managers who suspect that drug use or addiction is the source of a performance problem should refer the employee to EAP counseling if the organization has such a program. Simultaneously, they should document performance problems and begin disciplinary procedures. These will prove valuable should it be necessary to terminate the employee because of failure to overcome the substance abuse problem after counseling and treatment. Managers who refer employees to an EAP program for problems that are not strictly related to performance may create some risk for the company, as we see in Chapter 16 .