Discipline or Corrective Action? What’s Your Preference?
Discipline or Corrective Action? What’s Your Preference?
The age old tradition is to use discipline as a means of changing behavior. The term “discipline” is typically associated with union contracts and has the usual verbal warning, written warning, suspension, and finally termination. There are many variations of this method such as paid suspensions, or two written warnings, but most pretty much follow this method.
I challenge that traditional method. The further you go into that progression, the less chance there is of changing the behavior.
The traditional method requires the supervisor to be a “cop”. Think about a cop’s role. That role is to catch law breakers and punish them with tickets, fines and/or jail time in order to change behavior. Why should our supervisors spend their time waiting for someone to break a rule and them punish them? A cop’s primary job is to enforce rules. That’s not the supervisor’s job. The supervisor’s primary job is to assist employees their production of a product or service.
So what do we need to do? First, we need to change our thinking. If you want to, keep the traditional system, while considering some suggested modifications that we’ll talk about next time.
Try changing the term “discipline” to “corrective action”. Think about it. You are taking action to correct unacceptable behavior, aren’t you? So why not call it that.
Now, the next step. Get over the idea that you have to wait for the employee to break a rule. That makes you a cop. In your world, if you have an employee who has not yet broken any rules, but is a disruptive influence in your group, you still take action.
Suppose this person criticizes everything and everyone in the department. He continually irritates his fellow team members. Do not be afraid of a come back of “Well, he hasn’t broken any rules”. I don’t care whether or not he has broken a rule. If he is a problem for me and my team, I am going to address it. That can be not working up to potential or coming in late twice a week.
This is where the corrective action comes in. At this stage, you are correcting improper behavior. Here is how you do it.
You sit down, in private, with the employee, informing him that this is not a discipline session, but you need to discuss a problem with him. He is a continuing disruption in the department and that behavior is unacceptable. He will likely ask for specifics. I would give a general overview without naming names.
Now that you have outlined the problem, you now want to know what he intends to do to change his behavior. This is important. It is not your job to change his behavior, it is his. Ask him to come up with a plan to change and then the two of you set a date to get back together and discuss his progress.
When he comes back with a plan, congratulate him and set another date to measure progress.
See what is happening here? Corrective action is taking place, not discipline. If he fails to make progress and continues to be a problem, then you have the traditional method to fall back on. And that won’t be a surprise to him, will it.
Next time, we’ll talk about your corrective action/discipline system and how you may want to consider changing it.